  It began in the pizza shop I passed last night, optimistically grabbing a menu on the way lest I suddenly become wheat tolerant. I perused the board menu before moving on. You can get a small pizza for $6.50. So I went there later. It must have been around 6am. I asked for my usual pizza which is a Margherita with capsicum and onion - small please.
The fat greasy pizza man who looked a lot like urlLink Barth from urlLink You Can't Do That On Television &nbsp;picked up a single slice of forlorn wet pizza from the hotbar, which looked more like a bleeding triangle of cardboard, ripped it in half with his hand and tossed it into the microwave. I wanted to protest loudly but the anger was stuck somewhere in my wind pipe. All that came out was, "Did that pizza have any cheese on it? " The fat pizza man nodded jovially. "Off cos." The oven pinged and he pulled it out. There was no onion or capsicum.
If there was cheese it had sunk into the dough leaving a mere scraping of red sauce that looked like a fresh skin graze. "Six dollars-a fifty" he requested cheerfully. "There's no onion or capsicum. " He frowned. "Noh! We usually-a not putta the topping onna the Marrrgherrritta.
Is-a just-a chis. " "But I wanted onion and capsicum! " He was making me very angry. "Oke. " He nodded with an 'each to his own' expression on his face as if I had requested a medium topped&nbsp;with matchbox cars and marzipan and a cheese smoothie to go. He sprinkled slices of onion and capsicum onto my travesty, humming.
Handed it to me like that. Furious, I gave him my money and stuffed half of the slice down my throat while waiting for my change. He returned with my $3.50, smiling good-naturedly, which I grabbed and then flung the remaining greasy pizza morsel onto the floor furiously, screamed I WILL NEVER EAT HERE AGAIN! and marched out. A fat man walked into the shop as I left and shot me a filthy look. So then I happened to be staring at a photograph of a dead girl on a beach, as you do.
She was pretty and blonde, clad in an acqua bikini, lying flat on her back with her eyes open, face contorted grotesquely like she had been terrified in her final moment. In the background her younger brother was running down the sand, oblivious to his sister's demise, and the freaky thing was - and this is the stuff that Urban Myths are made of - he was wearing her blue t-shirt and the notorious "acqua sarong," which by all accounts he had never actually worn in his life. Not only that, but a circular shape had been cut out around his arse, slicing off one of his cheeks, and had been replaced with someone else's arse cheek, clad in (gasp! ) acqua bikini bottoms . Myself and a couple of other people ooohed and aaahed at this photo as it was explained to us. An eerie feeling settled on us all.
"Even to this day," announced The Explainer, "her death remains a mystery. " Yet it was normal when this dead girl manifested as a drunken poltergeist who lived in my loungeroom. She would enter each evening depressed, stumbling and suicidal, while me and three faceless flatmates sat on unfamiliar couches cutting things out of magazines. I hated her. She was a menace. I would be openly dismissive of her until she became impossible to ignore at which point I would utter icy comments at her, ignoring the disapproving looks from the flatmates who felt sorry enough for her to tolerate her.
She had an unnerving habit of carrying a plastic vase full of knives of all description, from huge chopping knives to butter knives, which she would remove one at a time, touch the tip, and discover prophecies and hidden secrets that would make her hysterical. Her name was Joan. "Look Joan " I spat, "the mail has arrived Joan , have you read your mail Joan ? Apparently your baby is dead Joan , you had a miscarriage, so you don't have to touch your knives and cry anymore okay Joan ? " My bitterness was unmistakeable. I was surprising myself with my callousness.
Joan looked guilty. She had read the letter that informed her of her miscarriage. She hadn't wanted to tell us because it would mean she would have to stop touching her knives and we wouldn't have to feel sorry for her anymore. Wow, my very own poltergeist called Joan. Those were dreams, by the way. 
