GHOST-BOYFRIEND COMES TO DINNER • by Chelsea Sutton

You bring your ghost-boyfriend to your parents’ house for dinner. And everyone immediately freaks out.

“What are you talking about? A GHOST for a BOYFRIEND,” says your father after he comes around to the reality that this isn’t a prank.

“He’s dead and he’s my boyfriend,” you say. “I’m not sure what’s so hard to understand.”

“I don’t know why you’re torturing your mother like this,” says your aunt.

“I’m never going to have grandchildren,” cries your mother.

“How do we even know he’s THERE,” says your father.

You look at your ghost-boyfriend, who is floating calmly above the seat next to you. It took a lot of practice to tap into the part of yourself that can see him clearly. You have to remind yourself that others have a harder time with this, that your family in particular is only seeing an empty space where you are putting a reassuring hand on his ghost-thigh.

You nod at him and your ghost-boyfriend lifts up a fork for everyone to see, just like you planned. He pours some creamer into your coffee (no one offered him a cup). He flips a single pea from a spoon into the water glass sitting in front of your aunt.

The room erupts into chaos.

“Hold on, hold on,” says your uncle, “HOW did he die?”

“That’s a very personal question,” you say.

“But was he dead BEFORE you got together or were you together and THEN he died and you just kept on keeping on?” says your uncle.

“What does that matter?” you say.

Your uncle lowers his voice. “Well if you were together and then he committed suicide, then that might say something about you, you understand, and also might mean you’re planning to join him, in which case we know you’re hysterical and something has to be done.”

Your mother wails.

“This is not a story about suicide,” you say.

“Then what the hell IS IT?” says your father, lowering his voice to match his brother’s.

“I guess it’s a story about unlearning,” you say.

“These kids and their PC language,” says your uncle.

“I’m so scared,” says your aunt. “Don’t you have a chill? I HAVE A CHILL.”

“How in the WORLD did the two of you meet?” says your mother. She wants a meet-cute to salvage this dinner. Some indication that ghost-sperm works just as well as the regular stuff.

“I was contemplating the end of the world,” you say.

Sighs circle the table.

“Her generation just goes on and ON about this climate change business. The summer is HOTTER? Oh no, you’re uncomfortable!” says your uncle. “End of the world!”

“The economy is the way it is because THEY believed this virus was real and shut everything down,” says your father.

“RIP grandma,” says your mother.

“RIP,” says your aunt.

“If you are so good at communicating with ghosts, why couldn’t you bring GRANDMA to dinner?” says your mother.

“They are a selfish generation,” says your father. “It’s not all her fault. She’s impressionable. Naive.”

You clear your throat. “What I mean is that… I guess I was feeling entirely powerless, what with everything going on in the world,” you say.

“Your VOTE matters. Be sure to VOTE for the right GUY,” says your father.

“This is because you let her watch that one ghost movie… what was it…” says your aunt.

Ghost?” says your uncle with a mouth full of corn.

“No, the other one,” says your aunt.

“But when I met my ghost-boyfriend, he taught me about death,” you say.

“Here it comes. She’s got a death wish,” says your father.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” says your uncle with a mouthful of potato.

“No…” says your aunt.

“Oh, please don’t tell me you want one of those natural burials,” says your mother. “You would do that to me ON TOP OF DYING?”

“I guess I thought I was afraid of death. But I’m just scared of being ignored, forgotten,” you say.

“You hear this? It’s the memememe generation,” says your father.

Casper!” says your aunt. “I mean Casper.”

“Never saw it,” says your uncle, with a mouth full of chicken skin.

“That’s the thing with ghosts,” you say. “We forget them all the time. The moment we leave this table, you will forget he was even here.”

“I’m not going to forget THIS day,” says your mother. “It’s the day all my dreams for your wedding were DASHED.”

Your father looks at your boyfriend. Your boyfriend smiles at him. Your father only sees an empty space, but he smiles back.

“When we leave, you will forget, and he’s found peace with it,” you say. “It’s something I’m working on.”

Your mother passes down the plate of legs and breasts, glancing nervously at the spot where she can definitely not see your boyfriend. “Does he want white or dark meat?”

You look at your boyfriend and nod. “And I guess I taught him that just because you’re forgotten doesn’t mean you can’t change something. Even if it’s small.”

“Ah HA! She’s reading self-help books,” says your father. “I knew it.”

Your boyfriend reaches across the table and begins to squeeze a porcelain salt shaker in the shape of a wide-eyed babydoll, whose face had unnerved you since you were a child.

“Explains a lot. I never needed any of that woo-woo stuff to have CONFIDENCE,” says your uncle.

Your boyfriend squeezes and squeezes.

“You were always a rare specimen,” says your aunt.

And squeezes.

“What you need is a real job,” says your father. “Earn some real money. Get a real-boyfriend.”

And the salt shaker shatters.

More chaos. You grab your ghost-boyfriend’s ghost-hand and walk out the door.

“You broke it!” you hear your mother yell at your uncle.

“Careful how you pass the plates!” says your aunt.

“That thing was ugly anyway!” says your uncle.

“Where is that daughter of yours?” you hear your father say. “I thought she was coming home to dinner tonight.”


Chelsea Sutton is an LA-based writer and theatre maker of what she likes to call gothic whimsy. She’s a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a Humanitas PlayLA award-winner, a graduate of the 2022 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside. Her first flash fiction chapbook Only Animals is now available through Wrong Publishing, and her first novella is forthcoming February 2026 from Split/Lip Press.


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