"Ghost Noise"
He woke to the squeak of a mop.
Not the pain, not the cameras, not the sirens—those were gone. Just two housekeepers in yellow gloves working a bright rectangle of sidewalk where his story had stopped. One scrubbed; the other salted tri-sodium like a priest. A security cone blinked at them, apologetic.
Mike hovered a foot above the scene—no body, just a fist‑sized sphere braided in red, white, and gold light, a hum where a heartbeat used to be. Wings—if that's what they were—unfurled and refolded themselves on instinct, featherless and perfect.
"Wh—what the hhell," he said, and it came out like breath in a cold room that only he could hear. "I'm a gghost."
He dipped until his glow touched the still‑wet pavement. A housekeeper shivered and rubbed her arms. "You feel that?" she asked.
"Leave it," the other said, tired. "City'll turn it into a mural by morning."
Mike rose. He figured wings out the same way he had footwork in 1986—by doing it wrong fast until it worked. Walls didn't matter. Locks didn't matter. He slid through glass, pipe, ribcage, drywall. Everywhere he passed, people got goosebumps, then told their friends they were crazy.
Across the drop‑off loop, a kid with a cracked phone was rewatching a short. The thumbnail was a blur of light and a man in a hospital gown stepping into it. The caption read IRON SPLAT (HD) with skull emojis.
Mike drifted over his shoulder.
Onscreen, he leapt—beautiful; stupid. The glass blew out into glitter. Time stretched. Then the sound—KRAAANG—and the chat chyrons of the last ten minutes of his life: holy sh—; no way; clip; laughing faces, crying faces, more laughing.
"This ain't funny," Mike said, little wings flaring. "I j—just died like a legend, d—dammit."
The kid flinched, looked around. "Weird chill," he said to no one, and hit share.
Mike left the hospital and crossed the city like a light leak. In apartments and bars and rideshares he found his clip everywhere—slowed down, memed, set to a dozen songs that had no business being sacred or catchy. News panels argued whether he'd been brave, sick, sinful, or off his meds. The lower‑thirds all rhymed: IRON MIKE, IRON MISTAKE. He watched a sports show replay the leap with telestrator arrows like it was a busted coverage.
"Y'all laugh?" he said to the television universe. "You l—laughin'?" He threw a ghost‑punch at the screen. His fist went through pixels and plastic and a man's sternum he did not intend to touch, and the man coughed and said, "Damn, I just felt my whole life."
Mike turned away before he could feel bad about it. He had people.
Home found him as soon as he wanted it.
The house was the same and not. A candle trembled in the kitchen. On the TV in the living room, they'd turned the volume as low as guilt. Somebody was angry, so they picked at a label until it came off in strips. Somebody else said, "We forgive him," quick and correct, because that's what love does when it can't fix anything.
Being forgiven like that hurt worse than being hated. It felt like a book snapping shut.
Mike drifted closer and reached for a shoulder he'd carried before. His hand passed through, left a chill and a Did you feel that? and nothing else. On the side table, a laptop screen glowed: Premiere in 15: "Jake Paul Speaks on Mike Tyson" with the bell icon glowing like a dare.
"Oh, s— no," Mike said, and went to find the YouTuber.
He didn't have to know where. Fame is a kind of GPS. He slid under a studio door into ring lights and a rented ficus. Jake Paul sat in a hoodie, eyes shiny with the kind of wet that has a publicist. A camera rolled. A second camera rolled a different angle. A third watched the other two.
"…we lost a legend," Jake said to the red light, voice trembly, hands steepled the way coaches do during timeouts. "He was my hero and my opponent and my—"
Mike put his whole ghost behind a right hand and threw it at the bridge of Jake's nose. The punch went through sinus and thought and memory, a cold wash that made the kid's breath hitch.
"Whoa," Jake said, blinking. "Did—did Mike's ghost just hit me?" He turned to the A‑cam and found the bit sweet spot with the ease of a man who'd found it a thousand times. "Anyway—like and subscribe if you loved Iron Mike. Ten million for the champ."
Mike recoiled with a sound no mic could hold. "Y—you fake‑ass clout vampire," he hissed, and the only person who heard it was a sound engineer who told everybody later he'd had a moment. Mike left before he could find another television to punch uselessly.
He looked for someone serious, someone who said words that mattered. He found the press room in Washington mid‑statement—suits and flags and lenses. The Vice President stepped to the podium with note cards. She spoke with the certainty of a person walking a tightrope made of talking points.
"Mike Tyson," she said, pausing for gravity, "was a great boxer. Truly great. And greatness is… when you do great things." She smiled like that solved math. "So tonight, as we remember greatness, we remember that he was great."
Reporters coughed into their sleeves to hide grins. An aide winced so hard a pen snapped.
Mike floated five inches from the teleprompter and tried—God help him—to will verbs into the sentence. He couldn't. He listened to another minute of solemn nothing and bolted skyward like a prayer that had given up on language.
"F— this planet," he said, not to be cruel but because he had run out of patience for anyone who wasn't bleeding truth. "I'm g—gonna go see if the Earth is even r—real."
Up was easy in a body that weighed exactly hope. He cut through cloud and the wet lungs of the city. The helicopters became toys. The air thinned, the blue darkened, and a rim of light—thin as eyelids—ringed the world.
"Round or flat," he said, half laughing, half mad, "let's d—do the science. Maybe it's on a turtle. Maybe there's a big ol' tortoise out here with a city on its back. That'd be cool. That'd be fair."
He punched past the last breath of air into a quiet that had no walls. Below him, the planet turned—not like a coin, but like a ball. A marble with skin. Day curved into night along a soft gray scythe. The ocean caught a line of sun and threw it back like a hook. Lightning stitched over a continent with no sound at all.
Mike hung there because he could. The red thread of him pulsed (rage), the white (mercy), the gold (something like authority) and all three hummed together in a chord that felt new.
"Man," he said, and the glow of him brightened as if laughter had wattage. "It's r—round."
He let the dumb disappointment come and go—the kid part of him that had wanted a turtle, or elephants, or proof the universe had a joke bigger than death. All he got was a blue marble and an edge where the light bent just so, and he loved it against his will.
"Okay," he told the curve. "No turtle. No plate. Just you."
He angled his little wings toward the moon and pushed.
Space took him like a lake takes a skipped stone—one bright hop, then silence, then the next bright hop—until the Earth hung behind him like a blue coin and the moon swelled ahead, pocked and patient.
Light exploded in his path.
Out of it stepped a child built like a statue: four years old by height, ancient by posture, cords of muscle under gold‑white armor sized two realities too big for him. White wings flared wide, their primaries webbed in little hexes of gold scale; every movement threw sun at the dark.
The toddler's voice came out cathedral‑deep. "Michael Gerard Tyson," it boomed, with the calm of someone who had named stars. "Stop."
Mike hovered, a fist‑size sphere braided red, white, and gold, wings flexing without air. "Who the hhell are you," he asked, "a sspace baby?"
"I'm God," the child said, like a tired bouncer. "Or close enough for the next five minutes." The tiny brow furrowed. "You died early. You have to go back."
"Back where?" Mike demanded. "Earth? Nnah. I sssaw what y'all did with me. Memes. Clout vampires. Politicians. I'm d—done."
The baby in armor folded his arms, which looked exactly like a bodybuilder trying to remember kindergarten rules. "You have a second chance," he intoned. "Be a better father. Be a better man. Fix what you broke. We can even tune the little things—" he twirled one goldfinger vaguely at Mike's glow, "—the lisp, the stutter. You can change your fate."
"My fate just splattered on a Camry," Mike said. "I'm not going back for round two with the internet."
"Not a democracy," said the baby, sighing. "I make the calls."
"I ain't g—goin'," Mike said, stubborn as a safe.
The child drifted closer, gauntlets bright enough to blind an angel. "You're going," he said gently, and pinched Mike's glowing orb between both hands the way a toddler takes custody of a glitter ball.
"Don't," Mike warned.
"One," the baby said, bending his knees.
"Don't you count—"
"Two," the baby said, winding up with the solemn confidence of a four‑year‑old about to throw the game winner.
"Man, do not—"
"THREE!" the baby God declared, and jump‑shot Mike toward Earth like a basketball.
The aim was atrocious.
He missed the whole planet. Missed by a lot.
Mike yelped as the blue marble skated past and fell away. Stars wheeled. The baby God's face did a small "uh‑oh" in the shrinking distance, then blinked out.
"NO NO NO— EARTH IS THAT WAY!" Mike shouted, streaking into the dark like a comet with opinions. "You sstupid mmini‑Zeus— learn to throw!"
Galaxies unspooled. Nebulae opened like bruises blooming. He learned there were colors your eyes never told you about because your life was small and mean and full of rules. He learned space had its own quiet, and it wasn't empty; it was waiting.
He arrowed toward a new spiral—bright center, long arms—drawn not by gravity but by the dumb magnet of accident. Within it, a star like a nail head. Around that, a dust halo and two suns. Beyond those, rock and sand and trouble.
The planet ahead was a dried tongue. From orbit its deserts were a palimpsest of old wind and bad decisions. He knew the name without knowing how he knew it. He did not say it yet; saying makes things real.
The pull sharpened. He fell.
Night had flattened the dunes into black silk. Far below, a ravine threaded with junk—fins, bent struts, a smeared arc of scar where something had failed its turn—held a crumpled engine that steamed like an argument cooling. Small shapes scampered over it, yellow eyes bright, little hands quick.
Jawas.
Mike hit the wreck in a gleam of gold that didn't have to obey physics. He sank through scorched metal and sand and into a pocket of stillness where a boy's body lay crooked as dropped wire.
Small. Dirt‑streaked. Hands blistered by controls they were born to. Neck wrong, limbs wrong, eyes closed but not peacefully closed. Whoever had come first had backed away fast—the way people back away from a kid shaped like an answer they can't afford.
The light in Mike changed key.
He moved without moving. The red in him (fury) eased just enough to make room. The white (mercy) unwound like cool water. The gold (authority) laid a hand on both and said not yet, but now. He slipped into the boy the way heat slips into metal.
Bone hummed. Knits closed. The neck straightened with a tiny thunder. Tendons re‑strung themselves. Lungs remembered. The heart caught its beat and kept it. Flesh crept over what had been raw.
Above, the Jawas went still, then began to whine at one another in question marks. One leaned down with a probe and got back a spark that wasn't from any battery he knew.
Light burst under the wreckage—gold through the seams, gold in the boy's chest, gold in the old machine's ruin.
A small fist came up through bent cowling and punched.
Metal gave. Sand avalanched. Jawas yelped—"Utinni!" scattered like birds—and scrambled back up the embankment, robes a flurry, eyes clicking fear and profit at once.
The boy dragged himself free—sandy hair full of grit, cheeks scored, eyes open and confused and alive. He stood, wobbled, set his feet the way pilots do without meaning to.
Mike looked down at his hands.
Small. Pale. Callused in useful places. White.
He turned them over like they were evidence. "W—what the f—" he began, voice high and young and not his, "am I a wwhite boy?"
The Jawas froze at the sound, thrilled and horrified.
Mike stared at the horizon that was not a horizon he knew. Two pale orbs were climbing—twin moons, or maybe one moon and a planet—painting the sand in tin colors. The constellations were wrong; everything was wrong in a way that made a crazy kind of sense if you'd just been thrown by a divine toddler with no aim.
He squinted at the sky, mouth open, chest heaving like a machine that needed a tune. "What the f—" he said again, softly this time, like a prayer. "Am I on… Tatooine?"
The desert answered by being very quiet and very old.
Far off, something howled the way engines sometimes howl when they're alive and don't like it. The Jawas decided, as a group, that this particular junk pile could wait for morning. They ran, chattering, toward a ridge, robes whipping the sand into little ghosts.
Mike—inside a boy who had just failed his first race and, by all accounts, his last—lifted his new hands and flexed, testing tendons and balance and fate.
Night pressed down. The dunes held their breath. Two pale lights climbed.