Sunlight filtering through the blinds woke Kemba up earlier than he wanted. Putting “acquire blackout shades” on his mental list of around-the-house projects that he would need to complete sometime, he blearily reached for his phone to check his messages. He had plenty of messages, both from old teammates as well as a few of his new teammates who were eager to get to work.
One message in particular caught his eye. It was from an unknown number, which was strange, given that Kemba was blocking all calls and texts from those not in his contacts list. The content of the message was a short phrase: “are you woke?”. Kemba didn’t care much if he was considered “woke” or not by whoever the arbiter of “wokeness” was, so he deleted the message and went on with his morning. His stovetop had not yet been put through its paces, and Kemba was pretty sure he had pancake mix on hand.
The backwards-written “GOVERNMENT”, Kemba had scrubbed off the bathroom wall the night before, but he could still make out the faint red letters as he entered the room. This confirmation that the events of the previous day had not been an illusion was an unwelcome one, and he rushed through his teeth-brushing and stubble-shaving routines to get out of there quickly. However, when he got into the kitchen and settled into his cooking routine, he forgot about the seemingly supernatural goings-on of his life and instead thought about how he could invite his new teammates over for a breakfast of buckwheat pancakes and his special-recipe cajun-style scrambled eggs.
Kemba continued to read through his messages as he ate his pancakes, pausing to answer the ones that required only easy one-word replies. It was early enough in the summer that many of the other Celtics players were off doing other things, but there was a big enough group still in Boston that it would be worthwhile to get some informal practices going. He wondered if there was some kind of group chat going or if he should start one. Starting one would establish him early as a leader, but he also didn’t want to be perceived as a usurper.
To give himself time to mull over that important decision, Kemba decided to keep unpacking his things. There was a second bedroom in the condo that would be perfect as a home office/man cave. He didn’t have any furniture to go in there yet (other than a beanbag chair and a desk lamp), but he did have a bunch of vintage basketball posters that he could put on the walls. After figuring out which of his poorly-labeled boxes contained the rolled-up posters, he ventured to the room and flipped the light switch, providing light to the otherwise dim room.
Even though Kemba knew he hadn’t yet put anything in that room, there was already something in there. Sitting at the exact center of the floor was a globe. But it wasn’t an ordinary globe: the earth was represented as a flat disk instead of a sphere. As Kemba watched with terror, the disk began to spin by itself, faster and faster, and laughter from an unknown source filled the room.
Fear-stricken, Kemba turned and ran down the short hallway back to the den. However, what he found there wasn’t any better. A skeleton was sitting on his couch, and when Kemba ran into the room, the skeleton turned to him and gave him a big grin.
“NOOOOO!” Kemba wailed, sinking to his knees and despairing for his sanity. “WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?”
The skeleton had an odd appearance, as if its human, flesh body was being overlaid with it at a bad angle. When it moved, this secondary apparition faded in and out. “As you, Kemba, are the new point guard of the Boston Celtics, it is my duty to haunt you…forever!” While the skeleton said this, Kemba caught a glimpse of its true form.
“Kyrie? Is that you?” he asked.
“Yes, I am Kyrie Irving.”
Kemba’s fear subsided as he tried to make sense of the situation. “But you’re in Brooklyn now, just like you always wanted.”
“Yes, but my relationship with teammates and leadership in Boston was acrimonious,” replied skeleton-Kyrie. “Therefore, I have cursed the point guard position so that the Celtics will forever be playoff underachievers.”
All the strange things that had happened to Kemba were starting to make sense. But if his position was cursed (and it obviously was), what could be done about it? There was no way for him to heal Kyrie’s wounded psyche. Unless…
“Hey, if you can haunt me in Boston, do you think I can haunt somebody down in Charlotte? You know, transfer the curse on to somebody else?”
The Kyrie-skeleton thought about this for a moment. “You could try, I guess. If you assumed your soul-form, I would have no way to curse you, as we would both be soul-beings.”
Kemba smiled. “I think I’m going to have to arrange a visit with your old friend Terry Rozier, then.” When he looked down at himself, he saw that his human skin and muscles had vanished, leaving only his skeleton behind.