(Open on a run-down TV station’s broadcast studio. The equipment is from the 60’s and there is dust everywhere. It’s extremely quiet and the video has a slightly hazy quality, as if it’s very, very slightly out of focus. Sitting on an ancient beanbag chair is Mack, a furtive and nervous man, slight of build and grey of hair, who is chain-smoking compulsively. He is dressed in a very battered, tattered, and worn greatcoat and a taxi driver’s cap. He has a working-class London accent.)

Mack : So the cameras are rolling?

(Camera pans briefly to an ancient TV camera that looks like it’s more of a rat hotel than a working piece of technology. )

Producer (offscreen) : Uh…. yeah. Sure.

Mack : And this is going to go on television?

Producer (offscreen) : …it’s going to be on YouTube.

Mack : What’s that? A TV station?

Producer (offscreen) : Um…. yeah. A new TV station.

Mack : Good,. good. Bout time we got something new.

Producer (offscreen) : Now, can you state your name-

Mack (too fast, interrupting) : Call me Mack.

Producer (offscreen) : …right. Can you tell us what you do for a living?

Mack (laughing) : Living? Oh, we don’t use that term in my line of work.

Mack pauses expectantly for laughter. There is none.

Mack (coughs, squares himself) : Right. Well, I suppose you could call me a professional ghost chaser, although I always thought “liason with the pre-dead” had a nice ring to it. Very posh.

Producer (offscreen) : So you talk with the dead…. for a living?

Mack : If you can call it a living. The pay’s crap and the hours are long and nobody ever says a kind word. But we all must do what we were made to do, right?

Producer (offscreen) : And what makes that the work you’re made to do?

Mack : I see dead people.

Someone giggles offscreen but is quickly stifled. Mack is nonplussed.

Producer (offscreen) : Right. And what made you want to talk with us today?

Mack : Well, I just thought it would be nice if someone who actually knew what they were talking about told people about the world of the dead.

Producer (offscreen) : I see.

Mack : I mean, I’ve only been doing this kind of work since I was fifteen years old. and that was back when… well. let’s just say back when this studio was brand new, dig?

Producer (offscreen) : I dig. So what did you want to tell people?

Mack : That most dead people, just like most live people, are decent, hardworking entities that just want to live their afterlives in peace and quiet and have absolutely no desire to harm the living at all.

Producer (offscreen) : Is that so.

Mack : Damn right it is. The ones you hear about…yer, uh, ghosts, spirits, demons, phantasms, vampires, and werewolves and the like… they are the deranged killers oif the world of the dead. They are entities with something seriously wrong with their insubstantial minds that drives them to act out against the living. They are freaks and lunatics and in no way representative of the post-life community whatsoever.

Producer (offscreen) : I see. So most of the dead are harmless?

Mack : Exactly. But you never hear about them, do you? All the media focuses on is those few of them that act out, and that biases people against the dead. It’s like how in America, you only ever hear about black people when they commit a crime. So people end up thinking all black people are criminals. It’s the exact same thing.

Producer (offscreen) : Bigotry again the dead.

Mack : Exactly. It’s pure livism, is what it is. Er…. that is what we in the community call the preferental treatment given to the living.

Producer (offscreen) : Because they are alive.

Mack : Yes. Just for that.

Producer (offscreen) : Does everyone who dies become a ghost?

Mack : Can’t rightly say. And don’t ask me nothing about no afterlives either, see? Because I dunno that either. I’ve known dead people who seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth, but that could mean anything. And I have known living people who died and never showed up as a spirit at all. But if I had to guess, I would say that roughly one person out of five becomes a noncorporeal entity when they shuffle off this mortal coil and snuff it.

Producer (offscreen) : But…. that would mean there are billions of ghosts in the world.

Mack (laughs bitterly) : Yeah, and don’t I know it. And they all seem to have my number. Luckily, most of them don’t like being near the living, so they end up in all the lost and forgotten places of the world.

Producer (offscreen) : Are there any in the room right now?

Mack looks around perfunctorily.

Mack : Nope. Guess nobody cared enough for this place to stay here after they died.

Producer (offscreen) : I have to say I am relieved.

Mack : Understandable. You’re still prejudiced. Change takes time.

Producer (offscreen) : Going back to something you said earlier, are you saying that all those supernatural entities…. um. the ” ghosts, spirits, demons, phantasms, vampires, and werewolves and the like”… they are all just manifestations of the dead?

Mack : All the ones I’ve met have been. All post-living and all completely insane. I suppose some people just can’t handle life after death.

Producer (offscreen) : Must come as quite the shock.

Mack : Yeah, especially for them atheists.

A few offscreen people laugh politely. Mack beams.

Producer (offscreen) : Is there anything else you’d like to tell people?

Mack : Nothing comes to mind. Actually, wait, no… there is something.

Mack leans in towards the camera.

Mack (gently and sincerely) : Look…. all I really want to say is…. death… it’s not that bad. Okay? It’s really not that bad. So don’t worry about it so much. Sure, dying is terrible, but being dead…. it’s not that bad. You see? So relax and enjoy life.

After a few seconds of silence, Mack abruptly gets up.

Mack : Well gentlemen, it has been a pleasure sharing a conversation with you, but I am a very busy man, as you might have guessed, and I am already late for my next appointment. Toodle-oo!

Mack disappears. No flash, no sound effect, just gone. The studio breaks into dismayed and alarmed hubub.

Producer (offscreen) : Someone turn that damn-

Cut to black.