Photobomb: A Short Story by Nikki R. Leigh

Photobomb

By Nikki R. Leigh

“Damn!” Alice shouts. “This place is downright haunted!”

I groan. “Alice, you’ve got to stop trying to make that a thing.”

“But everyone loves a good haunting!”

“That doesn’t make it a compliment,” I reply.

“Fine, but you have to admit, there’s going to be some ghosting happening by the end of the night.”

I roll my eyes in response, looking to the rafters to give me strength.

“C’mon, Lyd, dance!” Alice yells from my side. My girlfriend knows best, so I obey. The two of us are bopping together to the rhythm blaring from the speakers, lights cascading around us.

Dancing here feels so freeing. It feels incredible to be surrounded by people who accept such an important part of your identity, in tune with the crowds and groups and knowing there’s a shared experience between so many of us. 

It wasn’t easy for me to start coming to this side of town, even with people I loved, including my girlfriend, and our friends, always enthusiastic. It’s still not easy.

For me, a night out had its price. It usually came in the form of panic when someone whipped out a cell phone to snap a picture, to capture a moment. A harmless activity, something I wished so whole-heartedly I could take part in.

I just…wasn’t ready.

Wasn’t ready. Never ready. That conflict within that screams at you for being so comfortable with who you are, but so scared to really let the rest of the world know. Afraid for Mom to see. Afraid for my boss to see. For my students to see.

Pictures are taken to be seen. For me to be seen…yeah, I wasn’t ready.

So, I hide from the camera. 

Every time I go out, every time so many of us go out, there’s a fear. That your destination for the night could be your last. That someone could come into your place of solace and commit acts of violence against your community. That a fire could break out. That feeling that something bad could happen always tickling the back of your mind.

I worry about that, but I also worry about being found out. That my face will appear on some news footage. That my parents will find out I’m queer because they have to identify my body. I worry, and I hate it.

“Stop worrying!” Alice shouts from my side, pushing her finger against the small crease that has developed between my eyebrows. “I can see your worry-line. Stop it!”

She knows me all too well.

“Fine, but you owe me!” I shout back.

“I owe you for making you not worry?”

“Yes. You do. Kissies, now.”

She kisses my cheek. Try to be happy, Lydia. Just enjoy.

So I do. I dance. Laugh. Chug a drink or two. Dance some more. The night moves on.

As midnight approaches, the club starts their tradition of counting down to the new day, then unleashing a torrent of soapy bubbles from the balcony to rain down on everyone below. It always feels good. Like a rebirth. The best mingling of being a kid again, surrounded by the bubbles, laughing as they land on the tips of noses, popping them mid-float with the freedom of being an adult. 

The speakers start the countdown and the crowd shouts along, fists bumping with each new second past.

“10, 9, 8…” the crowd yells, and the energy is palpable around us all. “7, 6, 5, 4, 3,” we all continue, anticipating the downpour of bubbles from above. “2, 1!”

Horns blare, dancers cheer, and the floodgates open. Foamy bubbles rain on our heads. Refreshing. Another memory.

I look to the rafters again, watching the lights strobe in and out of the iridescent spheres. Between the bubbles, a dark shape appears.

I blink, sure that I just got some soap in my eyes. I look up again and see it even more clearly. A dark form, wrapped around a wooden pole at the top of the balcony, stares down, straight at us. 

Alice follows my gaze, and jumps back a little, clearly seeing the black outline at the top. 

“What the—” Alice starts, drifting off, unsure of what she saw.

With her exclamation, a dozen other heads whip up. Gasps explode from the crowd, taking in the shape above. The form is humanoid, proportional to an average size adult. Bubbles float in front of it, cascading around its body.

A scream bursts out, someone’s reverie and wonder broken at last.

“What is that?

“Is someone on the balcony?”

“What are they doing?”

“Is that a ghost?”

The last question is mine, uttered to Alice with my mouth hanging open.

“That’s a freakin’ ghost!” someone shouts, answering my question. And with that, the dam bursts. It is clear that there are only two courses of action: get scared and run away, as about a third of the crowd is doing, or try to capture what is happening. Curiosity seems to win. Phones are pulled out by trembling hands and point upwards at the spectral figure. Flashes go off in a blinding flurry of activity. The dark figure doesn’t move, doesn’t seem to care that it is being photographed.

“Holy crap, he’s smiling!” 

I notice that people are shifting between snapping their photos and looking at the results. I caught Alice doing the same, and I hover over her shoulder.

The dark form surrounding the being is shed in the photos, exchanged for a translucent but visible twenty-something year old man, dressed in his finest skinny jeans and muscle tank, decorated in dazzling jewels.

“He’s really working it!” someone else from the crowd exclaims.

And he is.

He moves from the balcony and takes a place on the dance floor.

Aren’t ghosts supposed to be scary? Because this one, shaking his hips with his best 90s dance moves in the middle of the floor, bubbles floating around—and through—his spectral form is just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen, dancing his heart out right in front of me.

Cool, until the sound of phone cameras clicking and chiming stampedes into my ears, and I realize the lenses are pointed towards me, behind the ghost.

That’s when the fear hits.

These pictures are going to be everywhere, on every news station, blasted on countless social media profiles, hell, maybe even in history books.

Outed. I’d be outed.

My heartbeat hastens, sweat dots my forehead, and I can barely make out Alice’s concerned face looking into my wide eyes. The panic sets in.

I can’t believe this dancing, jovial ghost is about to out me to the world.

He must have sensed my fear, my strong emotion, because the next thing I know, he’s headed straight towards me, floating into me. He stays.

The ice chills me to the core, his sadness, his excitement, his death blasting into my mind, inside my soul. I feel it all.

I feel how he spent the better part of his young adulthood in a bar just like this. I feel how he danced with his partner, a man his age, smiling from ear to ear, lighting up the room as they danced. I feel how he died, in a violent car crash, on his way to pick his boyfriend up to come to the bar. I feel how all he wanted to do was dance with his lover, be free in the world in his place of acceptance. I feel his lifetime, his hopes, his death over and over. His regrets. 

And then, I just feel me. The dancing specter has passed through me after telling me his story. And his story is mine. 

The worry, the constant, plaguing worry, drifts away with his form, dissipating in the air. I hear the crowd groan at his absence, already pouring over the photos they had taken.

“Oh my God, are you okay, Lyd?” Alice asks, hugging me.

“I’m fine. Did you see him? He like, touched me or something.”

“He didn’t just touch you, he went into you. For like two minutes you were just standing there and he was gone and people were freaking out and I was freaking out and—”

“I’m okay,” I reassure her, returning her hug. 

“Good, because I thought I was going to have to Baba-duke it out with his spectral-ass.”

I take out my phone.

“I love you, you know that, right?” I ask Alice. 

“I do.” She smiles at me, melting my heart. She points to my phone. “A little late there, don’t you think?”

“I was hoping we could maybe commemorate this moment. Not every day you get haunted at the gay club,” I say. 

Alice laughs, then shuffles beside me. I hold my phone, pointed towards us with my arm outstretched. 

I snap a photo of the two of us and load it into my social media feed.

“Not afraid of who’s going to see us?”

I shake my head slowly then rest it on her shoulder. Live free, live loved, live open if you can. 

“I think it’s about time I give up that ghost,” I respond, looking at the picture I snapped. In the background, the dancing spirit peered out from behind a pillar, winking. 

Thanks, bud.

Nikki R. Leigh (she/her/hers) is a queer forever-90s-kid wallowing in all things horror. When not writing horror fiction, she can be found creating custom horror-inspired toys, making comics, and hunting vintage paperbacks. She reads her stories to her partner and her cat, one of which gets scared very easily.

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