Ghost Stories: Maledictio Tropicana by Margaux Caron

Maledictio Tropicana

When nobody’s looking, I turn into an ananas en plastique. A pretty pineapple, life-sized, with a sturdy shiny plastic shell, my scales are soft and squeaky when you lay your hand on me. You find me standing there, on the kitchen table and you decide to play with the string that dangles from the sides of my green toupee, you can wear me like a handbag if you want. You think that maybe I’m a necklace. But I’m too heavy to be worn as a necklace, why would you wear me as a necklace, I’m not a necklace, put me back on the table, don’t be silly.

When your fingers sense a clip on my side, I open like a Polly Pocket house, and inside me there is a beach and a hut, and on the beach, there are tiny figurines like Polly Pocket dolls lounging. As you grab one, you whisper: Haha she looks like me, Hahaha she does, Hahahaha, she’s got my nose, Hahahahaha she’s got my Air Force Ones, Hahahahahaha she goes to my favourite pub on Sundays, Hahahahahahaha her Mum vanished too when she was six years old, Hahahahahahahaha.

And you keep threading Ha-s and fruits of your imagination like they’re pearls, because on top of spoon-eating peanut butter, drop-kicking raisins, burping into Mason jars, squashing flour mites, snorting almond powder, screaming at the fridge, weightlifting a Le Creuset, and licking dirty plates clean, that’s how you play in your kitchen. After five long minutes and sixty-two breathless Ha-s that turn you purple, you finally shut your gob.

Now, will you come in? Do you want to come in? Please, come in. I said GET IN THERE! You think I open my pineapple body for fun? You imagine I expose my plastic insides to just everybody? I’m not that kind of ananas en plastique.

And when suddenly you collapse like a potato sack and your soul leaves your body, the tiny figurine with Air Force Ones swallows it all, and you’re ok with it because they’re good shoes. I clap closed and night falls on the beach, so you sit at the Tiki bar, but the barmaid doesn’t move. When you catch her gaze, you shriek: Mum? That’s where you’ve been all those years? And your plastic mum looks back at you like you’re fucking strangers. As you recoil, your plastic grandma slides a Piña Colada towards you across the counter. 

I’d sometimes let myself ponder: Ananas en plastique, you can’t keep taking the women of this family away, there are too many in there, you’ll have indigestion, you’ll have an obstruction, you’ll have to see a GP and it takes forever these days, and they’ll find everyone in there. 

But at the end of the day, what are they gonna do? Woop woop, go fetch the police, and tell them it’s back at it, the ananas en plastique.

Margaux Caron is a futurist and a Weird fiction writer. She lives and works in Brussels.