A light flashed before my eyes and a wave of heat hit and I couldn’t see anything anymore. There was no feeling, no sound, no time. There was nothing. I was floating in an abyss of darkness, a vacuum of timeless space. Was I floating? No part of me was touching anything. Did I even have a body anymore? What is happening? I thought. Wait, thoughts. That’s a good sign. Even if nothing else exists, at least I can entertain myself. But wait, there was a sound, too. A sort of white noise. I could only just hear it as if I were underwater. It started to come into focus. It was...a scream? Who’s screaming? The voice was definitely feminine but it just went on and on as the sound became clear.  Is that me? Screaming? No, it can’t be. I’m not making any noise. As it became clear, the scream got louder, and louder, and louder until I couldn’t bear it anymore. I was about to snap when it cut off and it was silent once more. I suddenly got the feeling that I was upside down, and then the floating feeling dissipated as I began to fall. Next thing I knew, I landed sharply on my spine on the concrete sidewalk of my hometown, Manchester.
I couldn’t say that I wasn’t glad that I was back home, but I didn’t know what had just happened. It seemed as though it was almost moments ago--I had the new pain in my back to attest to that--but I remembered the things that happened as if they had occurred years ago. Looking back through the budding pain in the back of my skull, I could only remember a white light and a woman’s scream.
Looking around, I saw that nothing was different than when I had last walked this street; it was cloudy with a desolate road just as it had been when I went to get bread from the store this morning. No, wait. There was something different. I could hear sirens in the distance. Over the years, instead of growing like most English cities did, Manchester shrunk back to be a small town with several deserted buildings on the outskirts. That being said, everyone knew--or at least knew of--everyone else in town. I began running to see what the commotion was. My back protested initially, but the pain soon dulled. The sounds were coming from just down the road, near the Outlands, so we called them. There were many alleys and buildings there that were in ruin and occupied only by bums and thugs.
As I ran, the sirens got louder and I could soon see the flashing lights of the ambulance. It seemed as though someone had gotten shot. I shoved my way through to the front, curiosity taking precedence over politeness. No one said anything about it. They must be in shock, I thought to myself. As many lowlifes as there were in the abandoned city, there was a rather low crime rate, likely due to the new police force. Burglaries were few and far between with assault and drug deals being even more of a paucity. Murder was basically unheard of in these parts of the country.
When I got to the front, they were still loading the body of the victim into the ambulance. She was a female, likely around my age, by the looks of it, with dark hair and...the same outfit I was wearing? I couldn’t see the face clearly with all the paramedics buzzing about, but she definitely resembled me. That’s odd. I didn’t know of anyone in the area who looked as I did, much less dressed the same. My brain came with a horrifying thought, but I pressed it down because of its sheer impossibility. What if that’s me? No. There was no way. I’m perfectly healthy and alive. I was standing right here, wasn’t I?
Then another thought crossed my mind. The dead don’t have heartbeats. With a slight gasp, I raised my fingers to the side of my throat, desperately hoping that they’d be met with the familiar thump-thumping of my heart. Silence. There was nothing there. No thumping, no beating, not even a quiver. My eyes widened fear of what this meant.
Am I...dead?
I tried yelling and calling out to the people around me but none responded with so much as a glance in my direction. I ducked under the police line and ran forward in my panic, praying to anything listening for one of the officers to stop me.
No one did.
I stopped and looked around at those around me. My mind, blurred as it was with desperation, managed to catch and comprehend a few words from the police officers mulling about.
“...was shot…”
“...point-blank to the forehead…”
“...likely dead on the spot…”
That would explain the white light, if I really am dead. If the last thing I saw was the flash of the gunpowder igniting, then maybe the white light wasn’t the final veil as many people claimed.
“...got any family?”
Family? Neah. My best friend, and closest thing I had to family was still at work. He worked in restoration of the ruins on the other side of town so there was no way he’d have heard the sirens. I had to tell him. I had to.
My phone was no longer in my pocket and I guessed that it was still with my mortal body so I would have to go home before making any calls. Thankfully I was already close to our shared apartment when I was shot. Adrenaline was still rushing through my veins--or it would be if my heart were to continue beating--and I was able to approach the door of the lobby in just a couple minutes. I rushed up the stairs and pulled the key from inside the porch plant. The door unlocked and I rushed inside, straight to the phone.
I dialed his number. It rang once, twice, thrice before he picked up. I gave a sigh of relief as his familiar voice said down the line, “Hello?”
“Neah!” I all but yelled into the receiver.
“Woah there. Calm it down. There’s no need to yell. What’s up?”
He can hear me? But how? I paused before speaking again. This was too crazy. “You...can hear me?”
“Of course I can. Why wouldn’t I be able to? Is everything okay, Danee?”
“Listen to me. This is going to sound crazy but you need to come home. Like, now.” My voice was full of austerity and I hoped that I was able to get the point across to him that this was not a joke.
“Right now? I’m kind of in the middle of something.” Other sounds pertaining to his line of work could be heard in the background: the clanking of metal, machines breaking stray blocks of cement, trucks starting and stopping and loading and unloading with materials for the rehabilitation of the eastern Outlands.
“Yes, now! I’ve been shot!”
“Shot?! I’m on my way. Call the ambulance!” He hung up before I could say anything about the ambulance having already carried my lifeless form away from the crime scene.
I was going to wait on the sofa for his return, but heard another sound. It was a scream but it was different from the one I’d heard before. I looked out the window only to see a young woman get stabbed by an invisible force. She crumpled to the ground and screamed again. No one rushed to her aid even though her voice could likely be heard for at least a mile around. Her hair was cut short and was a pale blonde, almost platinum and her skin was fair as well. I rushed out the window and down the fire escape to come to her aid.
When I arrived by her side, she was already crouched on the ground and holding a hand to her abdomen where blood was seeping through. Her breath came in sobs and her clothes looked like she had just stepped out of the early 2000s. I set my hand on her shoulder and received no reaction. Not so much as a shiver at the contact. There was no change to indicate that she knew I was here. Then her breath hitched and she fell to her side, still as stone and cold as ice. My eyes widened in horror at what I’d just seen. Why didn’t I do anything? Why didn’t I call an ambulance?
The events that had transpired had almost been an unintelligible blur, but nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. The girl’s body started to flicker, as it it were made of the static that sometimes filled the screens of ancient TV sets. She flickered and gradually faded until there was nothing left of her presence here. What was that? I sat there on the summer warmed concrete in silent shock until another oddity occurred.
She reappeared.
Just as she must have before I observed her, the girl stood and looked scared, as if she were having a conversation with a murderer or a dealer to whom she had great debts.
“No, no!” She spoke to no one. Her voice was high and cracking in fear. “Please don’t do this!”
Her words were followed by the same scream that I had heard earlier, along with her being stabbed by an invisible being and crumpling to the ground. This wasn’t just mimicking her previous actions. These were her previous actions. She was on repeat. In a constant loop. Reliving her death over and over. There was one difference, however. The air around her apparition was warmer than the usual July air. But that could just have been my imagination.
The third time she appeared, I knew I had to do something. Before she began to speak or scream, I stepped up in front of her, standing a clear four inches above her as I began to yell at her to wake up. Eliciting no response, I resorted to physical contact. I tried patting her face in quick succession to awaken her from her stupor. Until she was stabbed and died again, exactly as she had before.
It dawned on me then that she perhaps didn’t know she was dead and was cursed to relive her demise over and over again until she awoke to this fact. I realized too, then, that I needed to try harder to make her see the light to save her from this torturous fate. Dying once was bad enough but I don’t think I could stand doing it on repeat for nearly a century, if her clothes were anything to go by. The next time she restarted her death cycle, I slapped her and yelled, “You’re dead! You’ve been stabbed! Wake up!” in hopes of getting through to her. I slapped her again just before she was due to start begging for her life from her killer and saw a glint in her eyes of consciousness.
“W-what?” he voice quivered, small now in comparison to the shouts and screams of before. Her eyes were wide and brows were furrowed, betraying to me her confusion.
“You’re dead!” I said loudly, no longer shouting now that she was among the realm of the half-living.
“I-I’m dead?”
“Yes! You were stabbed in the stomach. Don’t you remember anything?”
She took a look around her at the state of the buildings and at me before glancing down to her stomach. She pulled her shirt up enough to reveal a scar where her wound would be and looked back up at me when she realized what it was.
“This can’t be happening! I have a meeting in an hour that I have to be at! What time is it?” she asked urgently.
“I just told you that you’re dead and that’s what you’re worried about? Being late for a meeting that was probably about 70 years ago?”
Her eyes widened at this. “70...years?” She paused. “What year is it?”
“2078. You’re in Manchester, England. It’s about--” I checked my cell, “--1:30 in the afternoon. You are dead.”
“2078...I’ve been dead for 70 years?” I could see the cogs shifting in her mind. “That’s not very funny.”
Now it was my turn to be confused. “What?”
“Drop this now. Did Jax hire you? Who are you?”
“Jax? Drop wha--You think I’m playing a prank on you? That I was bribed by one of your friends to trick you into thinking that you’ve been dead for nearly 70 years?” She can get angry all she wants but pissing me off was not okay. I was trying to help her for Chuck’s sake! And here she was accusing me of pranking her. I muttered, “Denial,” under my breath. She didn’t seem to hear me.
“So you haven’t talked to Jax? Yeah, right. He talks everyone into doing something for him. But if he really didn’t talk you into this, and you’re doing it anyway, you must just be a bloody bollock!” She was shouting.
“Anger.”
“Anger? You think I’m going through the stages of grief? I’m the one who’s dead, not someone in my family!”
“Newsflash: I’m dead, too. I know it’s not easy, but get over it.”
“You are? But wait, who killed us?” Her anger had almost completely dissipated.
Neah was going to be here soon if he didn’t go to the hospital first. They would surely tell him that I was dead and he would be heartbroken. I needed to call to tell him to come home first. “Come inside. We can talk more comfortably there.”
I lead the girl back up the fire escape and into my living room. She sat on the couch while I went to make tea. Did ghosts need to eat? Were we able to drink? I could obviously still manipulate the corporeal world, but what did that look like to those who were still living? First and foremost, I needed to direct Neah away from the hospital. He couldn’t go there without me talking to him first. I put a kettle of water on the stove and picked up the landline on the wall next to the sink. They were all but obsolete in this day and age, but it was still good to have one. They were cheaper and more reliable than cell phones, anyway.
I dialed his number from memory and it rang only once before a frantic voice could be heard on the line.
“Yes? What is it?” He sounded distracted, as if  he was driving.
“Neah, it’s me. Don’t go to the hospital. Come home instead,” I said calmly, as if I was just having a normal conversation.
“Daneel? Why are you still at home? Why didn’t you call the hospital and go there?” He was almost yelling into the phone.
“That doesn’t matter right now. Just come home and I’ll explain everything when you get here.” I hung up after that. At least he knew now that I wasn’t in any of the local hospitals. He usually trusted my word but this was something serious. What if he calls an ambulance to pick me up? For all he knew, I could be laying on the floor bleeding out from a bullet wound to the chest.
I stood there in the kitchen before the water began to boil. I took it off and put the loose leaf diffuser in. Hopefully the mint flavor of the tea would help to calm down the random girl in my living room. Speaking of:
“So, what’s your name?”
“Alice. Alice Walker.” Her voice quivered slightly.
I poured the steaming drink into two mugs before carrying them into the other room. “I’m Daneel Smith,” I said as I sat on the couch and placed the mugs on the coffee table in front of us. “How old are you?”
“I’m 18. Or at least, I was. Now, I suppose I would be 88.” She took a drink before she said, “I was born in 1990.”
“You’re handling this quite well. There are probably others who would have completely freaked out by now.”
“I’m really not. All I can think to do is swear over and over that I’ll never steal again and maybe, just maybe, I’ll wake up and this will have all been a dream. I’ll wake up and see that it is not 2078, but 2008 and I can leave that alley alone and go on to my meeting.”
“Bargaining,” I whispered quietly as I could to myself. I recognized what she was going through, but her presence was getting hotter, as if the air surrounding her was boiling. I leaned over the arm of the couch to pick up my laptop. I opened it and began to search things pertaining to the supernatural. Not wanting to be completely rude, I continued the conversation. “This meeting you keep talking about: what is it for?”
“It was a job interview. I was going to work at a store right down the road from my house.” Alice stared straight forward, hardly blinking. “I just wish I could go back and do it all again.”
She sounded like she didn’t want to talk anymore, so I dropped the conversation and continued my research. I found that we were both, indeed, ghosts, as was fairly obvious. The site I was on said that some spirits don’t realize that they’re dead so they remain in an echo form, presumably reliving their death just as Alice was. It said that they could only be freed from this cycle by a great shock and once free, would continually deteriorate into something much more dangerous than a ghost. I learned that the freed echo would eventually turn into a poltergeist, a raging, uncontrollable presence that only causes damage and harm. They are mindless creatures and cannot think of their actions and cannot be broken from this stage.
There is a way to prevent it, however, other than just killing the spirit for a second time. It claimed that there was not enough evidence to prove that this method worked, but what evidence can you really have about ‘curing’ ghosts? It said that if others were able to stop them from going through all the stages of grief, they would reach acceptance pre-maturely. If not, they would never reach it and revert back to anger until their energy was completely used up. I told her this but all she did was nod in response and lean on the arm to her right.
So I had been right, then that Alice was experiencing stages of grief. The only problem now, was that she was already on bargaining, the third stage. Depression was next, and acceptance would be last if we could help her. I could only hope that Neah wouldn’t freak out. As I thought this, I heard a car pull up into the parking drive just outside. I sighed and closed the computer, replacing it in the basket next to the couch. Neah was home and I was dead. There was another dead girl on my couch who appeared to be dozing off over her cup of tea. This was good. Her falling asleep would give me time to explain everything to Neah and try to come up with a plan of action.
I heard pounding footsteps rush up the concrete stairs outside in the corridor and the door swung open moments after.
“Daneel!” he called as he rushed in. He looked around, searching for any piece of evidence that I was alive or dead. Anything that would help him. Then his head turned in our direction and his eyes rested on the couch for a few moments before moving on. Apparently he couldn’t see us either. He could, however see the cups of liquid that were still hot and sitting on the table. A confused look passed over his face before he moved on to search the rest of the house, calling out my name repeatedly as he went.
When he came back out from the hallway and back part of the apartment, I tried yelling out to him as well. He didn’t seem to hear. As he was about to leave, likely to check with the local hospitals, I did the only thing I could think of: I pushed my half-full mug off the coffee table. It shattered on the ground, sending chips of ceramic and tea everywhere. That definitely got his attention.
“Hello?” He stopped with his hand on the doorknob, ready to walk out and looked around. His eyes rested on the broken mug on the floor and then began to look around for the force that had knocked it over.
“Neah!” I yelled. I shouted a couple times before I determined that he wasn’t able to hear me. I tried walking up to him and setting my hand on his shoulder but it passed right through. Okay. So I can’t touch or talk to him. How was I able to make these drinks? And sit on the couch? Before, I talked to him on the phone and--That’s it! The only time I had spoken to him since dying had been on the phone. Alice was awake but not fully on the couch and was barely focused enough to comprehend that he had come home.
Leaving the living room, I grabbed the phone off the kitchen wall and dialed his number. Neah looked over when I picked the phone as if he could hear the click of it being yanked off the charger and the beeping of the number buttons being pressed. Moments later, his phone began to ring and he pulled it out of his pocket. When he saw the number his eyes widened slightly and he pressed it gently to the side of his face.
“Who is this?” he asked, right off the bat. He began walking slowly forward through the kitchen.
“It’s me.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It is. I’m standing right in front of you. Please stop walking; you’re going to run into me.”
He stopped, looking taken aback. “Th-there’s no way you’re actually here. You told me that you had been shot and that you were here. I checked through the whole house and there is no one here.”
“Then explain the mug. And this call. You know my voice, you know it’s me you’re talking to but the number is the house phone. I knew you were walking across the kitchen. Think about it.”
He didn’t respond for a minute and I could practically hear the gears in his mind turning. What he said next, I didn’t expect: “Prove it.”
“What?”
“Prove it’s you and that you’re here. You want me to believe that you’re somehow invisible, the least you can do is give me something to go on. Open the cabinets, write something on the whiteboard, do something that shows me that it’s really you I’m talking to!” He was almost yelling. Did he really not believe me? I did as he asked though. I opened every cabinet and every drawer and then wrote ‘Deez Nuts 2080’ on the freezer whiteboard.
He laughed a bit when he saw what I wrote and said through the line, “Okay, that’s definitely you. I don’t know anyone else who would write something like that. What happened? Why are you invisible?”
“You know how I said I was shot? Well, I’m not so much invisible as dead.”
“You’re not invisible,” he said slowly.
“No.”
Realization dawned on him and he started shaking. “You were shot...and killed?” His voice was quivering also.
“Yes. This morning apparently. I’m still here though!” I added as pain crossed his face at losing his best friend. Tears were about to well up in his eyes. “Hey, hey. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re not? But you’re not alive! You’re a ghost!”
“Come now, you think the world can get rid of me that easily?” He was sitting at the dining table now. I sat in the chair next to him. “You think I’d leave you without a fight? You know I’m too stubborn for that.”
He cracked a small smile and wiped his face with his hands. Alice stood and walked over with the mug. She sat in the chair across from me. “Why did you call me? Why didn’t you just talk?”
So he wasn’t quite the brightest crayon in the box.
“I couldn’t. When you came in here yelling for me, I was yelling right back. You could even ask Alice; it woke her from her nap. I even--”
“Alice?” Neah interrupted.
“Yeah. She’s another ‘ghost’ I met outside. She’s sitting across from--well, I guess that’d be diagonal to your left.” He looked and gave an odd little wave. Alice weakly waved back. “She waved back. Speaking of, we need your help. Put your cell on speaker so you can hear both of us.”
I proceeded to explain to him the poltergeist situation with Alice and how we needed to help her after he did as I said. Alice was laying her head down in her arms on the wood table. I couldn’t see the rise and fall of her abdomen for breathing but, then again, she and I don’t exactly need to breath. Or eat. Or have a heartbeat, but you know. Whatever.
“So you’re telling me that you’re dead and I shouldn’t panic, there’s another ghost girl in the room, and she’s going to turn into a very dangerous presence if we don’t do something in the next hour or so?” He said this slowly as he began to work through it in his mind. He seemed to already be thinking of a solution. He may not be very conventionally wise, but he did know how to solve a puzzle when confronted with one. “Do we know anything about how to prevent that?”
“Well, I searched around on the internet before you got home and this one site claimed that there was only one way to resolve this other than to kill her. However, I don’t think--”
“Kill her?” He gave a small burst of a laugh into the phone. “I mean, no offense, but she’s already dead. You can’t kill her again!”
“If you would let me finish, I would get to that. There is a way to kill a ghost; all you need to do is burn the remains with a bit of rock salt but I don’t think that’s the ideal course of action.”
“What do you think we should do then, o-spirited-one?”
“I...don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you. The site I was on said that we could help her reach acceptance but I don’t know how to do that,” I said sheepishly into the receiver of the phone.
His eyebrows furrowed as he thought further into this. “You said that this was a change originating in the failure to accept and acknowledge one’s own death, yes?” I nodded before realizing that he couldn’t see me and muttered an affirmative into the phone instead. “Then to counteract it, all we need to do is help her accept that she’s dead.”
I looked around at the girl in question, still laying face-down on the table. She didn't seem too interested in the conversation even though it was about her ultimate fate.  "Neah, she knows she's dead. I've already told her. In fact, I was the one who got her into this mess."
"That's exactly why you need to be the one to get her out of it. Even if Alice knows she's dead, she may not accept it. How long has she been deceased?"
"Since 2008." I told him. "Being here in her future was a big shock for her."
He face fell as he raised his hand to cover it. "Alright. That might make things a little more difficult. We can’t show her that her family has let go and moved on.  Though, perhaps we can convince her."
I turned to Alice and stoked her light hair. The air around her was getting extremely hot, signifying that she was close to the end. I pretended not to notice as she rose her head at the touch. "Alice," I started gently, making sure my mouth was near enough to the phone so that Neah could hear what I was saying too, "How are you?"
“You really don’t need to be so delicate. I’ve heard the entire conversation, you know.” Her voice was low. “There’s no way I can let go of this. I’m alive but I’m not. I’m Alice but I’m not. I’m home but I’m not. Everything is just so confusing. And I just want it to stop. So much is happening that I can’t wrap my head around it.” Her voice sped up and raised in pitch as she was speaking until it reached a frantic tone. “There’s nothing I can do but sit here and wait for a second end, if there is one.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” I tried to soothe her, rubbing her back. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Her elbows were propped up on the table as she buried her face in her hands. “I’m scared,” she said quietly, her voice shaking. “I don’t know what’s going to happen and I’m scared. It’s like there’s a light at the end of this tunnel but I don’t know what to do.”
“Go to it. Go to that light and all will be as it should be,” Neah said suddenly as he looked where he assumes Alice would be.
Not expecting him to speak directly to her, Alice looks up in shock. “You really think so? What if it’s hellfire that I’m seeing?”
“Is there any reason you would deserve to suffer more after already reliving your death millions of times over for 70 years?” he asked her.
“I--well, I was into some bad stuff. That’s why I was killed--”
“But is there any reason that you wouldn’t be able to meet your glorious end?” he interrupted. A new expression spread across her face, one of hope. The air around her was beginning to cool.
“Neah, it’s working. Keep it up,” I whispered into the phone. Alice was too lost in her realizations to hear.
“There is nothing you could have done to earn this kind of punishment.”
“But I--I was in deals, I didn’t have a job, I was a dropout. I--”
“Hush. All that is done and in the past. Nothing can change that. You deserve no retribution. Of any sort,” Neah said sincerely.
“Not even turning into a poltergeist?” she asked warily.
“Not even turning into a poltergeist,” Neah confirmed with a slight smile. It was amazing the effect his smooth voice had on her mind. With just a couple sentences, Neah had turned her entire mood around and had given her the thing she needed most: Hope.
Alice nodded and looked down once more, smiling slightly to herself. “You’re sure this is the right choice?” she asked us both. Even after everything she’d heard, she was still unsure of herself. Seeing the approving looks and nods from both Neah and I, her smile widened. “I guess I’ll see you on the other side, then.”
Her head tilted back and in a glow of white light, she was gone.