“Me”

(A chapter from Midnight)

It’s not like I don’t know myself and that this search for those many somethings is supposed to be all about my inner journey to find my mysterious, missing self. I’m not missing and I’m definitely not mysterious. I’m just Spencer.

But let me start with me. The narrator. Imagine my voice is Morgan Freeman and I know you will absolutely love this story. Morgan’s voice has that effect.

People love to rain down praise on my work, but I think I’d be simply soaked if it wasn’t for my hidden weapons. My truly endless supply of music.

I believe it’s an art to match a sound bite of a musical track with moving images that don’t belong to you. I’ve done this for the last twenty years. I’m not rounding the number, either. It’s been twenty exact years that I’ve been working with movie trailers in one form or another. Somewhere in those two decades, the time was right and the opportunity existed and I simply got lucky. 

My name is Spencer Holloway. Since I’m a ghost I might not have many sit-down shake-the-hand sort of meetings where I introduce myself, so assume I’m doing this now. I’m forty-something. Over forty. Did I already tell you my age? And speaking of which, do ghosts age? Do they celebrate birthdays? I don’t know. I have no answers for you. I’m detailing all of this in order to try to figure some answers out.

My career trajectory isn’t worth detailing. I guess some details will spill out here and there. But the journey went from I really want to be Steven Spielberg but I guess I’ll do this to So I guess that’s not gonna happen but I’m a lot better than all of them to How in the world did that happen?

Dreams can be strange things. They’re never fully formed. They’re single snapshots in your mind, while the living-out-the-dream becomes a miniseries.

I’m a Chicago guy. Grew up a little bit of everywhere before settling down in a Chicago suburb. My office or offices or whatever you’d like to call them ended up being in Chicago. During the heyday. But since then I moved out to be closer to where I live. I’m in the suburb of Appleton. That’s where my offices are. We live in the neighboring town of Geneva. Or lived there. That’s where my family still lives.

Ugh.

This stuff bores me.

Look. In about five seconds I’m going to go into some dark space and be confronted with the demons of my past while slaying the dragon. Just wait.

Four.

Three.

Come on, Two.

One.

Yeah.

Okay, maybe not. Maybe I’m still standing here rambling on.

Maybe it means something. I don’t know.

I’m not Frodo. Or Bilbo. Or any of those.

I’m not carrying a ring.

I’m no comic-book character (and please don’t get me started on the state of comic movies in cinema because I will blow a gasket . . .).

So yeah.

Look, blah blah blah. Successful or not. Life or not. I died. End of story. But I’m still here. Ah, intriguing story.

Let’s just move on, shall we . . .

I mean—I have to move on. Right?

Right?