Movie Night

Pins and staples, pinning the contrastingly coloured monochrome missing persons posters and neon club flyers to the school’s corkboard, dig into my back as Dash holds me up by the front of my shirt against the wall.

I quickly flip through my mental check-list of what could have caused this, almost missing the muffled “Hey!” yelled from somewhere down the hallway. It’s too early in the year for anything that could’ve gotten Dash this mad; there haven’t even been any tests for Dash to fail. Maybe Paulina dumped him.

“See ya at lunch, freak.” He growls close to my face and then drops me to the floor. I feel his shoe press into my stomach before I slide across the hall into traffic, and scramble to my hands & knees in time to see my backpack get dropkicked into the opposite wall.

He joins his buddies, all looking ridiculous in my opinion in their matching red and white letter jackets, leaving me to pick up my stuff. The other kids in the hall don’t make my life any easier, walking over my binders and- I’m sure accidentally but who knows- my hands as I put my stuff back in my bag.

“Rough.” A familiar voice behind me says.

I make sure to close the zipper this time before grabbing Tucker’s offered hand and getting up.

“Seriously.” I reply as I shoulder my backpack, rubbing the back of my neck self consciously.

“I was just about to tell ‘em off for you.”

“Sure you were, Tuck.”

“I was!”

“You called me over to your house to help you beat Twilight Princess because the Twili dungeon was too scary.” I give him a flat look.

“That hand chases you, man. Slowly.” He shudders. “It’s anxiety inducing.”

I roll my eyes. “I appreciate the thought that you wanted to help.”

“You are welcome.” He says pointedly. Tucker looks down at his phone briefly, fiddles with it, then looks back up and grimaces. “Not to ruin this wonderful moment of friendship, but fix your shirt, dude.”

I look down at myself; it’s sticking up in the places where Dash had it balled up in his fist and, to my utter delight, there is a partial footprint right on the sore spot where I got kicked. That’ll leave a mark, and not just on my clothes.

With a sigh I smooth my shirt down and try to scrub the dirt off, stopping when Tuck gives me the thumbs-up. We agree to just drop the subject of Dash and his posse and get on to more positive topics. We’re used to it by now, anyways.

“So,” I start when we continue walking to class. “Wanna come over this weekend?”

“Your parents are going to that thing, right?”

“Yep, and they got Jazz to go too.” I grin. “Something about some university nearby the convention. I’ve got the house all to myself ‘til Sunday night.”

“Dead Teacher marathon?” Tucker stuffs his phone in one of the pockets in his cargo pants.

I nod, the anger from Dash’s bullying melting away into anticipation on our first movie marathon of the school year. “Dead Teacher marathon.”

We head into Mr. Lancer’s classroom and sit down, trying to plan out the weekend. Emphasis on trying. I roll my eyes at Tuck; this always happens. Well, not always always, but someone usually starts a thing over who’s in charge of bringing what.

“Tucker.”

“I’m just sayin’ Danny-”

“Tuck, are you really up for eating any of the food in my fridge?”

“Then get Sam to bring snacks.”

I grumble at the compromise. “Then you’re bringing the movies.”

“Sure, but I don’t have the last two.”

“You’re the techno-geek, Tuck,” We both look up as Sam sits down on the other side of Tucker. “Just pirate ‘em from the internet… wait, why do you need movies?”

“Danny’s parents are gone for the weekend so we’re marathoning all the Dead Teacher movies at his house.” Tucker informs Sam.

“Ah.” She leans back in her chair. “I can just bring them then; I have the whole collection.”

“Tucker doesn’t want to bring the snacks, though.” I stare accusingly at Tuck. “And I’m not willing to potentially poison you guys; I’m pretty sure I saw a-.”

“Alright class,” Mr. Lancer says loudly as he marches into the room.

“We’ll talk about this later.” I say quickly.

They mumble their responses as class starts, cutting off our chance at conversation.

Θ

After much debating at lunch, we finally agreed that Sam’s bringing the movies, Tucker’s bringing snacks, and we’ll all meet at my house for the movie marathon. It would’ve been an okay lunch, but, like he promised, Dash interrupted us.

Tucker ended up with Sam’s salad all over his sweater, and I ended up with Tucker’s glasses in my food. Sam had a field day trying to get Principal Ishiyama to listen.

I try to forget the cruddy day I’d had as I walk down the sidewalk. I see the emergency ops center and the glow of the FentonWorks sign before the actual house. One good thing about having crazy ghost hunter parents; I can’t get lost when I can see my house from basically anywhere in Amity Park.

Mom, Dad and Jazz are already gone by the time I get in- along with the Fenton Family Ghost Assault Vehicle, or GAV by my parents, RV by Jazz- but they told me this morning that they would probably leave around lunch time so no surprise there.

Reveling the emptiness of the house, I stomp up the stairs, throw open my bedroom door and toss my bag across the room onto my bed. I spin on my heel and head back down the hall to the closet where we keep our extra comforters and pillows and throw some over the banister. They fall in a heap and, satisfied with the small mess that nobody will tell me to clean up, I head back into my room.

I sit at my desk and roll a pencil between my fingers before pacing the length of my room once, grabbing my backpack and settling back down. I silently curse my boredom and the lack of anything to do before company arrives. Being home completely alone is actually kind of… boring.

With nothing else to do I pull my homework out- though it’s just a small worksheet since it’s the beginning of the year- and set to work. I try my best to prevent anything from distracting me, but with my desktop right in front of me I can’t help myself. Not even ten minutes into my homework I start playing Doomed.

The first area of the map is easy; I’ve only played it a gazillion times with Tucker. It gets harder though and it doesn’t help that there are players who don’t even try to play the game. Those jerks only camp rooms and take out other people before they can get through.

I’ve just started really getting into it when I hear Tucker barge into the house downstairs, talking loudly about the food he’d brought.

Logging out and shutting my computer down, I head downstairs. As I make my way down I see that Tuck had brought some bags of chips, plus a couple of paper bags and a tray of drinks I immediately recognize are from the Nasty Burger.

I try not to look too excited. We have all the freedom to eat junk food for 3 straight days, without parental supervision- or I do, at least.

“You sure this is a veggie burger?” Sam stares into one of the bags suspiciously, as if it might suddenly grow a fangy mouth and try to take a bite out of her.

“For the bajillionth time Sam, yes.” Tuck rolls his eyes at Sam as she sits on the couch, the both of them barely acknowledging me as I come down the stairs. “I might be a carnivore, but I’m not that much of a jerk that I’d trick you into eating meat.”

Sam stares at Tuck for a moment before carefully taking the burger out of its wrapping and sniffing it. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She says, lifting the bun and taking a peek anyways. “Thanks, Tuck.”

“You are very much welcome.”

I sit on the opposite side of the coffee table from Sam, cross legged on the carpet and open the other bag. “Combo number 3?” I ask.

Tucker tries to cross his arms while still carrying the chips, dropping a bag in the process, and shakes his head at us. “Why do you two doubt me so much?” He drops the other two bags and adds, “And yes,” He points at Sam, “your milkshake is soy,” points at me, “and yours is vanilla.”

“But I wanted chocolate.” I deadpan.

“Ha ha.” He straightens up. “Wait- you did want vanilla this time, right?”

I smirk and take my milkshake from the holder and take a sip. I usually get chocolate, but I felt like vanilla today for some reason.

“‘Kay, ‘cause that would’ve been awkward.”

“Okay!” Sam claps her hands. “Let’s stop while we’re ahead, and do this already.”

“It’s only like,” I glance around the room and spot the digital clock in the tv stand. “Four-something.”

“We’re watching the whole series, Danny.” Sam rolls her eyes when I shrug. “If we want to watch more than two we should start now.”

“‘Kay.”

Tucker leans down to pick up the bags but stays crouched, probably getting a head start on those chips or settling on the floor or something.

While he’s busy doing that, I go and move the blankets and pillows over to the couch. Just as I separate them back into three different comforters and threaten a war by throwing the pillows at Sam, Tuck gets up and waves a piece of paper around.

“Dude, your parents left you a note. They finished their portal?”

“Hmm?” I walk over to him and inspect the note.

It’s chicken scratch, most likely my dad’s hand writing, but definitely mom’s words. It’s addressed to me, saying to ‘keep an eye on the portal for any changes…’ and goes on and on about scientific nonsense that I mostly don’t understand.

 “Oh, uh, yeah, they did. It didn’t work…” I add under my breath, “obviously.”

Even though it was kind of clear that it wouldn’t work- hello­, a portal to the afterlife on minimal funding?- it was sad seeing my parents so disappointed when they’d worked so hard.

I drop the note on the table, half crumpled. “It’s ‘under observation’ right now,” I use my fingers as air quotes. “I guess they wanna know if anything happens while they’re gone.”

“Oh my gosh,” Sam snatches the paper up and skims over it, flattening it out again. “Danny, you know what we should do?”

“No, you guys know I’m not supposed to bring friends down there- not when my parents aren’t home at least.” I grab the note back when she’s done and crumple it again. “Plus, I thought we were gonna watch movies and eat really unhealthy food, and not mess around with some dangerous lab stuff.” I emphasize the word “dangerous”, but they don’t really seem to care all that much.

“We don’t ever get to see this stuff though, Danny!” Tucker whines. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

“And we’ll only be, like, ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.” Sam says. “We’ll still have time for the movies.”

Sam and Tuck both look at me pleadingly. I scowl.

“Guys, it’s just a boring piece of metal in the ground.” I sigh. “It doesn’t even do anything other than spark and look weird.”

“If it doesn’t do anything it can’t be dangerous then!” Tucker points out oh so helpfully.
“Yeah.” Sam agrees, nodding her head. “We’ll be quick, Danny. I just wanna get a few pictures for my scrapbook! And then we’ll binge Dead Teacher and eat this all this crap. It’ll only take like five seconds, come on.”

“And what if something happens?” I argue. “What if something like, explodes or something?”

“We won’t touch anything.” Tucker holds up one hand as if pledging. “We swear.”

“Yeah! We’ll just go on down, take a look, and come right back up.” Sam places her hand over her heart. “I promise.”

Tuck quickly copies Sam and slaps his hand on his chest. “We only ever get to hear about it! I wanna see it for myself.” His tries to give me his version of the puppy-dog eyes. “Please?”

I groan and drag my hands down my face. “Fine, but we’re coming right back up and doing… this.” I gesture to the general area of the living room.

They both nod enthusiastically.

I lead the way through the kitchen and down the stairs into the lab. The door to the lab used to have a lock, but some crazy experiment blasted the door practically off its hinges once and it never properly locked or closed again. Mom and dad hadn’t bothered having it replaced since they trust Jazz and I not to get into any trouble down here.

That might not have been the most responsible decision.

I get to the bottom of the stairs, the large room dark besides the blinking lights on the working inventions strewn about the lab tables and the eerie green glow from the portal at the far side of the room. I move my hand along the wall searching for the light switch. Finding it, I flick it on.

The fluorescent white lights in the ceiling flicker on, blinding the three of us.

Before I’ve had the chance to blink the dots out of my eyes, Sam and Tucker have already rushed to the other side of the lab, in awe of the large, glowing, hexagonal hole in the floor. I don’t blame them; it’s pretty much ripped straight from some cheesy scifi movie.

The portal looks like a supernatural well. Short, metal fences, which they’d installed just before finishing the portal, partially surround it, covering four of the six sides. At the very bottom is a few inches of, in the place of water, ectoplasm.

It’s neon green, glowing, and looks kind of like half done jell-o. Jazz and I had to sit through a two hour ‘Ectoplasm Safety’ lecture a few weeks ago before being allowed in the lab again.

I have no idea where they got the stuff, but it was recommended that you don’t touch it without a specially made hazmat on, the kind my parents created and wear all the time, even when they aren’t handling dangerous substances.

I stand a little further away than my friends do, feeling the chill that the ectoplasm gives off from here, even through my clothes. It’s not unlike leaving the freezer door open for a little too long, if that freezer was filled with citrus, ozone, old pennies and the general feeling of being watched.

I rub my arm uncomfortably, smoothing down the hairs standing up there.

Sam pulls out her Polaroid and snaps a picture of the portal. She shakes out the image and smiles as it starts going from black to grey. After a moment she slips the picture into the darkness of her bag, now resting against one of the lab tables.

“Awesome,” Tucker gawks at the glowing liquid. “I don’t get why you complain so much about your parents, dude. This is so cool!”

“Yeah, Danny! Aren’t you the least bit interested in any of this?” Sam lifts her camera again. “I mean, it has to be at least a little exciting that you always get the first look at something that might turn out to be revolutionary.”

The camera clicks, then another blank picture slides out, already fading slowly to colour.

“Maybe. Eh, I’m kinda used to seeing crazy inventions all over my house.” I wave my hand at a table cluttered with gun-like things and- a thermos? Dad must’ve been eating down here. “I get lectures about at least half of this stuff over dinner, and it’s my chore to clean the lab, so, no; a hole in the ground’s not all that exciting to me.”

Plus, I got out all of my excitement and curiosity last week, just before the portal failed to work, but I wouldn’t tell anyone that.

“Well, it’s exciting for me!” Tucker says, leaning over the gate around the portal and staring down into the luminescent depths.

“Hey, don’t do that! It might, I dunno, zap you or you might fall in or something.” I grab Tuck and pull him back, side eyeing the seven foot drop with a shiver. “If you guys get hurt down here my parents’ll give me a giant lecture on lab safety again, if they don’t totally murder me first.”

“Glad to see you care so much for my wellbeing.” Tucker says, placing his hand on his chest and feigning hurt.

“You’re welcome. Just stay on this side of the yellow line.” I point down at the black & yellow hazard tape my parents decorated the floor around the portal- and one of the fences- with before taking several steps away from it.

“But,” Sam continues, still standing way too close for my comfort. “A portal to another dimension? You can’t tell me you’re not curious.”

I look down at it thoughtfully. “I guess it’d be awesome if it did work. To be honest,” I admit, “I’ve always wondered what kind of super cool things could be on the other side of that thing.”

Sam takes another picture and, after a conversation between Tuck and Sam about whether or not it could work- with some comic book and video game references from Tucker that only seemed to annoy Sam- I clear my throat.

“Okay, so you’ve seen the portal. Can we get out of here now?”

“Wait, just one more picture.” Sam says, turning to me with a sly look.

I shrug. “So take it.”

She rolls her eyes and gestures towards the portal. “Of you with it. Please?”

I stare blankly at her, but she doesn’t back down.

“Technically it’s your portal, Danny. I want a picture of you with it.” Glancing back at Tucker, who’s creeping back up towards the fence again, she mutters, “Plus, the only photos I’ve gotten so far are of Tucker.”

I grumble a fine and stand near the portal, at a safe distance.

Sam brings the camera down from her face, shaking her head. “No, go closer. Pose with it! Come on, Danny, have some fun! Plus, it’ll be cool! I’ll put it in my scrapbook and we can look back on this day later in life and-”

“Okay! Okay, I get it,” I wave my hands and take a step towards the portal.

I freeze mid-step, give Sam a cheeky grin, and spin around, heading for the other side of the room first. I pull down a box from one of the shelves where my parents store the stuff they don’t really use that often. When I get strange looks from Tuck and Sam, I pull out the box’s contents.

“A hazmat suit.” I elaborate. “Unlike you, I don’t have much of a death-wish. That stuff is practically toxic waste, guys.” Also it looks kinda cool; I could totally use it for a zombie Halloween costume or something.

Tucker waggles his eyebrows, completely ignoring what I’d just said. “Always wear protection, kids.”

Sam and I just frown at his lame attempt at humor, which also earns a heavy sigh from Sam. I go back over to the portal. “That wasn’t even well executed, Tucker.”

“Hey!”

I hold out the hazmat in front of me, letting it unfold until it hits the floor. I don’t even have time to smile as Sam snaps another picture. I probably look like an idiot. I suppress the urge to giggle.

“So? Put it on.” Sam urges, not even attempting to hide how she’s enjoying every second of this.

Second guessing myself I look uneasily at the white hazmat suit, but slip it on anyways. I open and close my hands a few times when the black gloves are in place, and tap my toes on the concrete to fix the position of my feet in the boots. I zip the zipper up to my neck.

“That doesn’t look like a traditional hazmat.” Sam looks me up and down.

I stare down at myself; it’s like a normal one- god knows I’ve seen a million hazmats in my fourteen years of life- but with slight differences, like the belt around the midsection- I suspect for holding weapons- and the thickness of the supposedly ectoplasm proof material, not to mention the detachable gas mask that clearly isn’t a normal gas mask and looks super creepy despite being white.

“No, my parents made all of these ones special, like ectoplasm drysuits or whatever.” I nod at the portal, “You know, hot-tub portal and all.”

I can almost feel the environmental speech about to come out of Sam’s mouth- pollution in the ocean and whatnot- so I go on quickly, not wanting to waste more time down in the lab when we’re supposed to be gorging on junk food and watching Dead Teacher.

“Not sure, though.” I flip the hood up, not bothering to put the gas mask on, the importance of which my parents had spent at least an hour telling us about. “Hey, maybe this other dimension is some sort of underwater world.”

“Like Atlantis?” Tuck raises his eyebrows.

“Yeah, but like, in another dimension.” I stand on the warning tape and pose stupidly for Sam’s picture. “You never know; maybe it’s a world of mermaids.”

The camera clicks as Tuck and I giggle. Sam waves her hand towards the other side of it.

“Go over there. Better shot.” Her eyes flick towards the box which my hazmat had been in a second earlier. “Also, that gas mask looks badass; you should put it on.”

I raise an eyebrow at her. “The mask? You won’t even be able to see my face.”

“What?” She walks over and hooks a finger under it, holding it up and looking at it closely. “You’d totally be able to see at least part of your face. This part’s see-through.” She chucks it at me and I barely catch it.

“Ugh, fine. You guys owe me after this, ya know.” Tugging my hood back down, I hold it up to my face and luckily remember at the last second how exactly to get the thing on.

I pull the straps over the back of my head and try not to make a face, although they probably wouldn’t be able to see it.

After a minute of slightly struggling to get it on at least semi-properly, I pull my hood back up and lean against the railing next to the portal. The only part of my face visible is my eyes, the lower half of my face being covered by the respirator on the front and the “nosecup” as my parents called it. It’s supposed to prevent the visor from fogging up, I think.

Behind me, I hear Tucker snicker.

I turn to glare at him. “Hey, you-”

I turn and am cut off at my foot sliding unnaturally across the metal and into something. A large hum sounds throughout the lab as the overhead lights flicker for a second. A vibration runs through my hand clutching the railing.

I turn again to try to get a look at what I’d kicked; internally swearing at how I may have just damaged my parent’s greatest achievement, even if it doesn’t exactly work.

Before I can make out what it is the lights die and I hear the click of Sam’s camera, the only warning I get for the flash a second later. I flinch at the sudden brightness, whipping my hand up in front of my face a little too late.

“Ope-” Sam laughs nervously as I stuff my one hand that isn’t death gripping the railing under a part of the mask and try to rub my eyes. “Whoops.”

Blinking the blurriness out of my eyes I yank my hand out and let it fall to my side. I cut myself off before I sarcastically thank Sam.

Because the glow of the portal is enough to illuminate the little metal panel that my foot had connected with and pried from its insecure position just under the fence. A bundle of wires stick up from the portal’s exposed insides, the toe of my boot jammed into the mass.

My eyes widen as I realize that I’d just stepped on a bundle of possibly live wires. Not to mention that they’re glowing, the area around the panel damp with what looks like… ectoplasm? What the heck?

I briefly remember my parents telling me that ectoplasm is corrosive, that I shouldn’t touch it without proper protection, aka the hazmat suits they’d made. Seeing the paneling eaten away along its sides and the hazard tape ending jaggedly at the edge of the puddle though, I can’t help but wonder if the hazmat I’m wearing will actually protect me from that.

I go to pull my foot out, but my stomach shoots into my throat as my other foot, the one I’m balancing on, slips on the slick metal too. I lean into the safety railing, but it doesn’t give me the chance catch myself as it jerks under my weight.

The wires get violently yanked out as my feet go flying and I only get in a sharp, strangled gasp before I plunge face first into the shallow vat of ectoplasm.

It's Fine

Like a failed bungee jump, the wires tangled around my boot are pulled taut a foot too late. A horrible, slick sounding bang splash reverberates in the empty, metal pit as my face hits the bottom of the portal.

My gasmask is shoved up and into my face, digging into my nose and cheeks, while the other half of my body hangs upside down. The couple inches of ectoplasm the portal has at the bottom slowly but steadily floods my displaced mask.

I bring my arm up underneath myself to try and get onto my hands and knees and- my fingernails are digging into my palms through my gloves and my leg is asleep and I’m numb and my head-

There’s this chrysanthemum of colours before everything fades to dull black and dark green.

My head is filled with white noise; it feels like someone clicked the reset button I didn’t know my brain had. There’s a warm buzzing in my skin, like a static shock, and a cool, tingling sensation running through my veins. My entire body feels like I’d been sleeping on my arm and I’m just getting the blood flow back.

It feels like I should be lying down, pins & needles should be digging into the parts of my body that’s touching the floor, but there’s this strange feather-light feeling. It’s like I’m not even touching anything.

A deep feeling of… wrong settles in my stomach, like I did something I shouldn’t have but I’m not sure what. It’s not because of the numbness, or the fact that I’m having a brain-fart and can’t seem to remember what I was just doing.

It’s like… the universe just got mad at me or something. No, that doesn’t seem right- it’s more like the universe just witnessed me do something really stupid, and gave me this look but doesn’t actually care all that much about it. Like the universe was mildly disappointed but shrugged ‘cause there’s nothing they can do about it now-

I make at a face at myself. What am I thinking?

My brain feels like static and I feel jittery. Did I OD on Pixie-Stix or something?

Feeling a thick liquid creep up my cheeks I try to move, to wipe the syrupy substance off my face before it reaches my eyes. I slowly, shakily uncurl my fingers, feeling the inside of my- gloves?- stick to my palms as I open up my fists.

Pain shoots up my arm and a dull ache blooms in my palms. I gasp at the sudden, inexplicable pain, only to choke on something that feels like cold mucus and tastes indescribably disgusting. I gag, but I can’t tell if it’s from the taste or the stuff blocking my esophagus-

Fear sparks in my chest. I can’t breathe- I can’t- breathe.

My eyes flick open, only to find glowing green way too close for comfort. I jerk my head back automatically, muscles in my neck and shoulders protesting loudly, but it stays stubbornly right there. The stuff slides down my cheeks and the- glass?- in front of my eyes lazily. I drag my eyes away from the glowing liquid, seeing that beyond that is just… darkness.

Not crushing, or claustrophobic, just… seemingly infinite dark, stretching out in front of me. For a heart stopping moment I think I’m in space. I blink hard. There aren’t any stars.

Ignoring the growing pain, I bring my lightly shaking hand up in front of my face to poke at the mask when something drifts past. I follow it with my eyes before reaching out and loosely closing my fingers around it. It’s a long, tangle of… wires.

I get a sinking feeling and suddenly, like a kill cam replay, I remember the movie night, showing Sam and Tucker the lab… falling into the portal? I… I fell?

I feel my body jerk, muscles tightened painfully. I had just fallen into ectoplasm- a voice in the back of my mind reminds me corrosive, deadly ectoplasm. That’s way worse than Tucker getting shocked from standing too close.

Shocked. Oh no. The wires.

It’s like Billy Mays just punched me in the gut. Of course there’s more. Just dying by some acidic, otherworldly substance wasn’t good enough. I had just been zapped- it would explain the staticky feeling. No, ‘zapped’ is actually a heck of an understatement. Electrocuted? Fried? Deep-fried?

At least I’m not dead… yet. Well, I can assume I’m not because of the pain. Dead people- zombies- ghosts?- don’t feel pain, and I feel like I just got electrocuted. Not to mention my lungs are full of ectoplasm and I cannot breathe.

My brain snaps to attention so fast I get mental whiplash. My brain is still muddled and jittery but at least it’s giving me more info than everything hurts, dude.

I turn towards where the wires are coming from so fast it sends a wave of pain over my entire body. I let out a noise in my throat that’s muffled by the grossness- the ectoplasm in my mouth. I sputter and gag again, bubbles forming on the surface inside my mask, and try not to panic too much at the thought of being melted alive from the inside out.

The black outside of my mask turns to bright green and I spot the wires my foot ripped from the portal leading into the sudden brightness of what has to be ectoplasm, though why everything else is in darkness is beyond my frazzled brain’s understanding.

I blink, shaking my head. It’s more of just turning my head side to side stiffly, but feels like going through a loop-de-loop on a rollercoaster. I stop; black lines my vision and my neck hurts, probably because of slamming face first into the ground.

Add that to the growing list of What Parts of my Body Hurt.

I realize I’m slowly turning still. I tighten my grip on the wires and pull on it. I stop spinning, but drift towards the light.

I internally jolt to a stop. The Light. Am I… dying? I hadn’t even thought of that. It would explain why I feel so… bad, so wrong, and why everything’s dark but that thing in front of me. It’s the Light.

Mom always said it was either a hallucination caused by some drug the brain makes at death, or a portal to the ghost’s dimension. I whine as my stomach turns.

I drift further into the light before I can think into which one’s worse. I catch a glimpse of the wires floating away from my foot and into the darkness before suddenly I’m feeling gravity again and my gas mask is filling up rapidly with more ectoplasm.

I kick the one foot I can sort-of feel and squeeze my eyes shut when the ectoplasm floods over them. Panicking, and getting the sense that I’m floating not because I’m in space but because I’m in liquid, I flail my limbs hoping that it sends me wherever up is.

Relief floods me as I break the surface, throwing my arms around wildly and praying that I can just- there, the edge. I grab it and hold on for dear life, trying to convince my stiff- and sore- muscles to budge just a little more so that I can get out of this.

I drag myself over the side of the portal, trying not to think about how much this must look like The Ring. I flop onto the concrete and rip my dripping gas mask off, liquid ectoplasm falling to the floor in a wet splat.

I try to get air into my lungs. I just want to breathe and even though I’m no longer taking a dip in the portal I can’t. I feel that grossness in my throat slowly drip out of my mouth in a string of cold drool, and then I scramble to my hands and knees and vomit.

It’s bright and green, the same as the ectoplasm in the portal. The same stuff that’s leaking out of my eyes, tinting my world in odd colours and making things look blurry and simplistic.

I vaguely make out the figures of Sam and Tucker off to the side. I can barely make them out in the dark, but they’re definitely there and… horrified.

I can’t see them clearly at all, but I can tell they’re scared; scared for me, scared for themselves, scared of what just happened, scared, scared- I never knew that someone could be so many kinds of scared all at once, it’s overwhelming and uncomfortable and-

I throw up again, trying to block out that over-stimulating feeling. I struggle to breathe, to get air back into my lungs even though I can’t actually feel that tightness in my chest yet, the familiar need for air.

I can’t really feel anything other than the static running up my body and the numbness in my right leg, not much different from when I had to get my mouth frozen at the dentist’s that one time and I couldn’t talk for crap.

My arm buckles and I collapse sideways. Not having to pay attention to holding myself up I just close my eyes and breathe, shivering. I’m cold, and it should bother me but it doesn’t.

Before I’ve gotten the chance to pass out or just enjoy not moving, I feel my stomach bounce into my throat again and I wheeze before twisting my arms under my chest so I puke anywhere but on myself. It probably doesn’t even matter at this point, though.

Offhandedly, I wonder if ectoplasm is like bleach, in the sense that I shouldn’t throw it up ‘cause it already did enough damage on the way down, you know? With how my luck is today, that’s exactly how it works.

“…ny? Danny, oh shit, oh my god you’re-” I barely catch whoever it is sob. Their voice is almost entirely overshadowed by my own breathing and what sounds like running tap water full blast. “Danny…? Ca… can you hear me?”

It takes a moment for me to process that. I nod, stopping myself from wiping off my mouth and rubbing more ectoplasm onto my face. It’d be useless anyway; I gasp in a quick breath before I vomit again. My jaw is really starting to hurt.

“That’s you, right? You’re- you can’t be- oh my god.” It’s Sam, I decide.

They swore. Despite the dirty jokes and, well, everything, Tucker never actually swears. It’s Sam who does it, though it’s more to rebel against her overbearing parents than anything. Her voice sounds as weird as they look right now, like she’s talking to me with a can on a string. I have to do a double take to make sure she’s still in the same room as me and not just yelling down from the kitchen.

I’m overwhelmed by that feeling again, like a cold, fluttering fire in my chest and a detached sort of fear, like watching a horror movie. It’s making the hairs that aren’t plastered down onto my skin rise, giving me anxiety. Then, oddly, it just clicks.

It is fear, just not… mine.

“I just- I didn’t mean- I swear I-” Sam stumbles with her words, but her talking is lifting the fog from my brain. I can’t tell if that’s good or bad, because now the numb is turning to pins and needles, and the static is turning to burning. The nerves in my right leg are still pleasantly nonexistent though. “I didn’t notice it, I swear-”

I stare down at the floor, blinking at the radioactive-looking vomit, Sam’s voice becoming garbled noise again behind the roaring in my ears. I wish I could hear her because that secondhand fear on top of the pain is making my vision go dark around the edges and I could really use something else to focus on.

I throw up again. A small part in the back of my mind cringes hard and reminds me that I’m the one who’s gonna have to clean that up; cleaning the lab is my chore after all.

I cough, noticing that behind the nausea-inducing ectoplasm, I can taste iron. I blink more ectoplasm out of my eyes, feeling the chill liquid drip down my cheeks, and try to focus my eyes on the ground in front of me. It doesn’t work and all I can manage to see is green.

Closing my eyes, I focus on breathing again and calming myself down. Don’t think about the taste, don’t think about the pain or the almost tangible fear in the atmosphere or anything. Just calming breaths.

I inhale, then exhale. My mouth dries up so I try to slow it down. It feels awkward, like my lungs don’t know what they’re supposed to do anymore, but I keep bringing in air.

As I concentrate on my breathing, I don’t notice Tucker come back, not until a towel drapes over my head. I hadn’t even realized he had left, but now that he’s back I notice that the feeling of fear in the air had been less for the last minute. Now it feels doubled; I feel like I could suffocate in it.

Unfolding my hands, palms stinging and joints stiff, I reach up to grab it. I pull my eyelids open when it’s no longer there, but on the ground under me. I take it with a shaky, green stained hand and just… touch it to my face. I would groan, but I barely have the energy to wipe my face down, so I settle for a huff and lean into my hand, dragging the towel across my eyelids.

After rubbing it over the general area of my eyes a couple of times, I let the towel drop to the floor with my hand and stare at Tucker’s now slightly clearer feet, my eyes half lidded.

I feel like I’m gonna pass out, but I’m too sick to my stomach. So I just sit, my legs kind of tucked underneath me in a sort of awkward but comfortable way, with one hand in my lap and the other twisted in the towel on the floor in front of me. No one says anything, probably because of the huge Oh Shit moment we all just witnessed firsthand.

“…Danny?” Tucker? It’s definitely Tucker who says it. It came from in front of me, so yeah, Tuck. The roar in my ears has turned to a crackling noise, like eating Poprocks and soda at the same time. It’s obnoxiously loud.

I can’t pull up enough energy to speak, so I give a small nod. I don’t even think they notice.

“…you’re-” He starts but breaks off.

There’s a thickness in the air; hesitation from all three of us, apprehension from the two of them. I try to look up but my head swims so I continue to stare at Tucker’s shoes.

“You…” He stutters, then blurts out, “This is crazy oh my god- we just killed- y-you’re a ghost.”

I can almost feel the “…?” above my head, in a little cartoony speech bubble.

That is utterly ridiculous. After dragging myself out of that portal, I know I’m not dead. If I had just died, I would not feel like someone short-circuited my brain and tried to drown me in refrigerated Ooze Toobz. Plus, if I was dead, I’d either be pleasantly nonexistent or… I don’t know, doing whatever ghosts do. Haunting. Spooking?

I wouldn’t have thrown up that much, that’s for sure. Do ghosts even have insides? Maybe when you die you like, puke them all up.

I laugh morbidly- or try; I can’t do much of anything right now. It comes out as a particularly rough breath instead of anything near a laugh, and I think they take that as me about to throw up again ‘cause Tucker scoots back bit. I’m still breathing; dead people don’t do that. They don’t hurt this much.

Definitely… probably not dead.

“Whaah-?” I manage to say on an exhale.

“Dude…”

“Tucker.”

“Sorry.”

I don’t have time to decipher whatever they’re saying to each other before my stomach launches itself into my throat; I hunch over and am once again spewing my guts.

“Oh jeez. You okay?”

“He’s-” Sam’s voice hitches. “Look at him, Tucker, I don’t think he’s okay.”

“It’s a standard question Sam. I know he’s not okay!”

I shake my head but I don’t think they notice because I hardly did and I was the one who did it. I steel myself, take a deep breath, and cough out some words, finally.

“Not… okay…”

The bickering instantly stops and after a second I feel a towel on me again, but this time whoever it is does the work. They scrub my hair and work down from there and I let them, because there’s no way in hell I’m sitting here covered head to toe in ectoplasm and refusing help. That and I don’t really have a choice.

Also it kinda feels nice.

I feel their hands shake against me through the towel as they clean off the ectoplasm, hear their unsteady breathing close to me.

I force my eyes open- I didn’t even realize I closed them again- and see Tucker crouched in front of me, lip worked between his teeth, furiously scrubbing against the neck of my hazmat, I’m guessing so he can take the thing off me. He looks like he might start crying or hyperventilating at any second.

“Danny?” He stops and leans in to look me in the eye deliberately, like he has to really think about it. Or maybe it’s just me; anything past Tucker is a mess of colour and oddly shaped shadows.

I furrow my brow at the glare on his glasses and then I can’t see him because I go cross-eyed. Breathing suddenly doesn’t seem that important as the cold burning in my chest turns to real burning, suddenly spreading like wildfire to every inch of my body.

Tucker lets out a choked jumble of incoherent noises and grabs me as the room turns sideways. My ears pop and my eyes slide closed for a moment, dots of light dancing across the back of my eyelids. There’s a scuffle near my head, a few words that I can’t understand.

I blink. Tuck is several feet away, tentatively moving closer. My cheek, slimy and sticky, is pressed against the cold basement floor, soothing compared to the sudden blazing heat.

Tucker reaches out, fingers hovering over me, a look of… relief on his face? My breath rasps in my throat and I take my arm out from its scrunched position under me to push myself back, only succeeding on half propping myself up on an elbow.

Tuck reaches out but backs up again when I whine. I push myself back up onto my hands and dip my head, almost retching on my arms. I want to ask why he’d be happy all of a sudden, but can’t so I focus on trying to stop being sick.

“What was that?” It’s Sam, I can tell because that is her voice, in the same room instead of a million miles away behind a wall of white noise.

“I-I don’t know.”

I cough to the side until the remaining grossness is out of my throat as Tucker continues taking a stab at getting my hazmat off. Towel over his hand so as not to touch any ectoplasm, he scrubs at the zipper.

This time the zipper gives and it slides off of me easily. I feel someone hook their arms under mine, lift me to the side- though the proper word would be drag- and lay me on my back on the cool floor away from the mess of ectoplasm and vomit.

It feels good, the cold settling my stomach down momentarily. They continue scrubbing my head with a towel, and I let myself tune in to whatever they’re saying.

“I don’t know!”

“How is he still alive!?”

“Stop asking!”

“I’m just kind of freaking out here, okay!?”

“Freak out quieter then!”

“I can’t! My best friend just fell into a death trap and was a ghost for a minute!” That is definitely Tucker. “So-or-ry if I can’t exactly keep calm!”

“He’s my friend too, you know! And he wasn’t a ghost- it must’ve just been some side effect or something…” A sigh. “Look, just help me out over here, okay? We need to get this off his leg somehow.”

“Fine, okay… fine…” There’s a small pause before Tucker asks, voice dripping with anxiety, “Are you sure this is what we’re supposed to do?”

“Not really, but I don’t think we should just leave it either.”

“It… it’s stuck to his pants though.”

“I know.”

“It’s burned.”

“I know.”

Tuck whimpers. “This is why I hate hospitals.”

“You hate hospitals for a billion reasons, Tucker.” She doesn’t put as much into her tone as she usually would’ve, only sounding kind of defeated and scared.

Whoever is massaging my head is an angel sent straight from the heavens. I let my eyes drift up and spot Sam over me. At the look on her face I stop, the sickness in the pit of my stomach and the fingers picking through my hair fading to background sensations.

She looks… really upset.

I involuntarily jerk my leg, barely actually feeling the movement. It’s like my brain and body are disconnected. I hiss, and hold my breath as the light, buzzing, numbness in my thigh and hip turn to burning. The rest of that leg stays numb.

I peek out of one squinted eye. I can only see Sam, the ceiling beyond her hidden in darkness. She’s trying to talk to me but I can’t hear anything beyond my own wheezing breaths. I swallow, trying not to gag at the taste of vomit and ectoplasm lingering on my tongue.

“Look at me.” Sam orders, cracking voice fading into clarity. “Stay- stay awake- please.”

I can’t stay awake though, and she scrambles for something to say when I start to drift off. I hear her saying things, but it’s like she’s speaking an entirely different language. She brushes the back of her hand across her cheek and that grabs my attention. Is Sam… crying?

I look up at her, a little confused. I strain to hear what she’s trying to say to me and almost don’t hear it when she mumbles, “Don’t pass out, it’s almost off, just- please, please don’t die- I swear to god-”

What’s off? Don’t die?

I must be messed up ‘cause all of a sudden the thought of death doesn’t exactly hold as much weight as it should. Instead I feel a prickle of relief that I won’t have to deal with the aftermath- healing and getting in trouble and worrying about Jazz trying to psychoanalyze me afterwards.

I’m tired, and my chest hurts, and my brain supplies me with the word “paralyzed” when I wonder why I can’t feel my leg. The world takes on a surreal, dream vibe and I let my eyes drift closed.

“If you don’t start talking to me I’ll…” Sam sounds lost, unsure, but then I feel her sit up straighter beside me. “If you don’t talk right now I’m going up to your room and smashing all of your stupid model rockets.”

The words “Smashing” and “Stupid model rockets” gets my eyes open.

“Whaah-? No-” I reach out intending to grab her arm, but it ends up just flopping onto the floor beside her. I try to tell her to lay off my rockets- I built those from scratch- but it just comes out as a bunch of unintelligible noises, with a no thrown in.

Even though she probably didn’t understand a majority of what I tried to say, Sam seems satisfied that I’m not dead yet. I gasp sharply when I hear a tearing noise and cold air hits my leg, the contrasting temperatures only making the burning more prominent; like accidentally touching a hot pan.

I try to look around but she holds my face, forcing me to stay staring up at the ceiling. I can hear Tucker saying stuff. He sounds freaked out.

I have to deliberately keep my eyelids open to look up at Sam. “Wha-z ‘ppenin’?” I blurt out. My tongue feels awkward in my mouth.

“N-nothing, it’s fine.” Sam’s eyes flit towards the noise, then she leans in close, pointedly looking at my face. She whispers, “It’s fine, it’s fine-”

I get the feeling she isn’t saying that for me. I let my cheek press against the concrete, let their voices become background noise again. Just focus on my head.

Falling

“Danny?”

My cheek is press against the concrete, their voices background noise.

“Danny.” Not a question. They’ve stopped cleaning my hair off at some point; I don’t know when. Everything is calmer now; I can feel it in the air. Everything is clear and cool. The pain is… it’s less than it was, only a dull thrumming now.

“Danny, please get up. We need to get all of this off of you.”

I crack an eye open and look up at Sam, but don’t lift my head. I offhandedly wonder if she trashed my stuff like she said she would, or if maybe that was a part of a dream. She takes an uneven breath.

“Can you get up?”

Can I get up? Holy crow, I can barely open my eyes and you’re asking me to stand? On my feet? Which I can’t currently even feel? How can I stand on something I cannot feel? And I don’t know if it’s real or a part of a waking dream but I think I’m shaking really bad; too unsteady to stand, too tired.

“We need to bring you upstairs. We’re wasting towels trying to get this stuff off you and there’s no light down here and… We just- we need to get you upstairs, okay?”

I make an unintelligible noise that they wrongly take as an “alright”. They pull me into a sitting position. My vision disappears for a second and when it comes back they’re standing me up somehow, chatting idly about whether or not FentonWorks’s water heater is electric or not.

The pain is now only at the level of a bad migraine with a small spike every few seconds so I go along with their plan to get me into the shower or whatever. I can feel the ectoplasm hardening in my hair and that isn’t something I want to happen; I have no idea how hard it is to get out.

I’m being sat down at the kitchen table all of a sudden. Ignoring the fact that it appears they’ve teleported me, I lean heavily half on the table and half on Tucker, with my leg bent weirdly under the chair and hands splayed on the table so that I don’t fall over.

I feel Sam comb through my hair with a hot wet cloth that smells like dish soap. Their conversation is muffled, but that doesn’t matter right now.

I barely register being helped over to the couch, only really acknowledging the fact once I’m relaxing into the all too wonderful fluffy goodness of the big comforters I forgot I’d brought down, at least one of which has to be filled with like, angel feathers and rose petals.

That concrete has nothing on this.

Tuck and Sam argue over something. Not sure what, though it might be about me. Tucker is pulling out all of his tech, Sam is running around the house. The sun is setting outside, or I’m passing out, but I’m sure it’s just the former. But that makes no sense; we couldn’t have been in the lab for more than half an hour. I had blanked out at some point, but it… it couldn’t have been for that long.

Tucker appears, kneels in front of me on the floor and says something quietly.

“Hm?” I hum.

He jumps slightly, as if he thought I wasn’t entirely conscious too. “Uh, the power’s out…”

I look up at him and then around the room. Ah, no wonder it’s dark then; all of the lights are off.

“The phones are out, none of my stuff works, it’s getting dark out- we don’t know what to do.” He takes a shakey breath. “I-I’m sorry, man. I didn’t think- I didn’t know that would happen.”

I chew the inside of my lip at the sound of his voice cracking.

“The portal must’ve-” He sighs. “I’ll explain later; you look like you’re kind of out of it and…”

I close my eyes when he doesn’t finish. I feel something come close to my face so suddenly that I would’ve flinched if I had the energy. Tucker’s fingers brush my nose but slowly pull away when I exhale. I can’t begin to imagine the crap I’m putting them through right now if Tucker just seriously checked to see if I’m-

I can’t really finish that thought.

He pulls a blanket over me as Sam storms into the room; I don’t need to see to tell that much. She’s still wearing her steel-toed combat boots and those are not easy to miss, delirious or no.

“Everything’s down and there’s noth- Tucker what the hell are we gonna-”

“I-I dunno.”

“I don’t know shit about how to deal with this-”

“I don’t either- I think we just need to calm down.”

“How do we keep calm when Danny just-”

They’re so quiet I think I must’ve blacked out again. I open an eye to check, surprised to find it watering and slightly crusty. Crying? No, it’s too cold, and… green? I rub my eyes with a hand which gets their attention.

“Danny, are you okay?” I hear Sam ask. “I mean, okay enough to walk somewhere?”

“T’a ‘spital?” I slur.

I’m not sure they understand me until she replies. “Yeah, can you get up?”

I groan, mutter nonsense, and try to push myself up. Sam helps me sit and I let her hold me up. She lets go when I nod and I lean into the couch heavily. I rub my eyes again, feeling flakes come off on my hands.

“Maybe not then… Here,” I feel Sam prod my hand. She’s talking to me in that voice she uses on stray animals.

I stop long enough to see her holding out a tissue, process what I’m seeing, and then take it. I continue halfheartedly scrubbing down my face, picking the crusty gross stuff out of the corners of my eyes and eyelashes, even some that had been on the sides of my face and cheeks from when I was lying down.

I look down at the tissue, covered in green-yellow goop. Wonderful. There must’ve been ectoplasm literally in my eyes. Sam takes another tissue from the box and holds my face forwards, scraping off the spots I’d missed.

“You gave me a heart attack.” She says as she scrubs at my cheek. I never thought I’d see Sam like this- in fact it had never even occurred to me that I might ever see her like this. It feels weird.

“Mmm.”

“I’m serious. Do… do you even know what happened?” When I don’t reply she sighs. “Danny.” She looks me straight in the eyes and I notice the marks on her face, like her make-up was running.

Oh. It was, ‘cause she was crying. That I remember.

“You looked- you looked like a ghost- I…” Her eyes flick away for a second. “I think it was just some kind of side effect from falling in that stuff, but I swear to god-”

She clears her throat and I wait.

“I thought you were dead, Danny.” She leans back on the table and looks at me. “You… you took ten years off my life when that stupid gate fell.”

“Ih-t’was mm-melted?”

“Yeah, I noticed.” She says and despite the sarcasm I can tell she’s afraid.

“E’m fine, Sam.”

“I’m scared you’re- you’re not fine!” When I try to give her a mock exasperated look, she makes a hissing noise in her throat. “Danny, we have no way of getting you to the hospital. I don’t know if you’re gonna die from that stuff or even what it did to you before when you… and your leg-”

I squint my eyes, rubbing them when they start feeling yucky again. “I’m fine… Ss-Sam.”

She raises her eyebrows at me as if I’d just said something ludicrous. Which I guess I had.

“Ser’slee. ‘Nd it’s ectoplasm.” I frown at my garbled speech. “It’w’nt kill me…”

Knowing that ectoplasm is supposed to be acidic, I try not to end my sentence as a question, and I don’t know if Sam noticed or if she’s just humoring me by nodding her head. I decide to move on to the next topic.

“S…So… what d’ya m-mean I w’s a ghoa- ghost?” My tongue feels numb and I can’t get it to work properly.

She looks down at that and doesn’t say anything for a minute.

“When you came out of it- out of the portal… you looked weird.”

My brows knit in a frown, silently asking for her to elaborate.

“You… just- I don’t know how to explain it, you were just… you looked like a ghost- I mean, I’ve never seen a ghost before but that’s… that’s probably what it’d look like if-” She shakes her head, giving up on finding the right wording.

I wipe more gunk out of my eyes. She twists around for a minute and turns back around holding my partially melted milkshake; our meals from Nasty Burger are still on the coffee table.

“Here, you might wanna get the taste out of your mouth.”

I stare blankly before connecting the sick feeling and throwing up with what she said. I reach out to take the cup, but Sam makes an annoyed face, grabs another tissue and wipes my hand clean before placing the shake in it. She folds my fingers around it for me, like I can’t do it myself.

…okay, I won’t lie, I can’t do it myself.

“We need to get you help.”

The thought of going to the hospital gives me an inexplicable surge of anxiety.

“I’m fine.” I say way too fast. I blink at myself, wondering if I actually said that out loud or just thought it. “Jus’ need t’sleep.” I take a sip of my shake, letting it linger on my tongue to savour the taste and letting my eyes go unfocused.

“Really?” She flops onto the couch next to me, tissue box in hand. “You’re really giving me the ‘I just need to sleep it off’ bit?”

When I don’t say anything she grumbles.

“Danny, you just fell into- ectoplasm?- and got electrocuted. Your hazmat was burned so bad it was basically glued to your leg.” My eyes are flicking down before I can think about it, but I’m wrapped in a blanket and can’t see my legs. I look back up at her dumbfounded as she continues. “You screamed so loud, Danny. We-”

“Thought I w’s dead.” I say bluntly, chewing the straw and blinking at my milkshake. When did I scream? When I got electrocuted, or…?

“Yes. We did.” I can see her fight down a shudder. “It was so surreal.”

The word ‘we’ gets me to remember that there’s another person here and I look around.

Tucker is sitting by the stairs, his various electronics spread out on the ground in front of him, all of their screens black. He tosses his PDA to the ground, barely catching it before it lands on the carpet, and then places it more carefully in the lineup, muttering an apology.

“I think the energy the portal gave off when it turned on fried my stuff somehow.” He gestures to his collection after catching me staring blankly.

“I think it might’ve caused a blackout.” Sam says with a mix of humor and concern in her voice.

I tilt my head to look out the window and note that none of the streetlights are lighting up and every house is dark. The big FentonWorks sign is dark too, the street looking out of place without it glowing brightly in the dusk.

“Whoops.” I laugh, though it sounds more like a heavy breath.

Tucker scoops his tech up, putting each device in their own personal pocket of his cargo pants, and comes over into the living room.

“You sure you’re fine? You passed out earlier, and threw up a lot.”

“I did?” I only remember the puking part of that. “Wh’n’d I pass out?”

“Downstairs, when we were trying to…” He swallows, then continues. “…to get the hazmat off you.” He looks over his shoulder towards where the door to the lab would be through the wall. “I don’t know how long we were down there-”

“All the clocks stopped.” Sam says, staring at her fingers ripping holes in a tissue.

“-but we couldn’t move you ‘til you woke up so we just… sat with you.”

Tuck looks down at me harshly, though I doubt the look is directed at me. “I kept thinking you’d died, man. You stopped breathing a few times.”

“Stopped breathing?” I repeat softly, placing my cup back on the table. It seems heavier than it should be, and a lot less appetizing.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done if you’d died down there.” Tucker matches my tone.

He takes a seat on the far side of the couch and I let myself slide back down, nestling into the comforters and pillows.

Θ

I wake up when I hit the ground with a sickening crack. Or maybe it was when I let loose a strangled scream as I fell. Whatever, that doesn’t matter. Somehow, I am back in the lab. I fell into the lab and am now lying on the concrete again, but this time the cold isn’t appreciated.

I recover from getting the breath knocked out of me and gasp in pain, clutching my left arm. I roll over onto my stomach which heaves when I see the glowing towels and puke over by the portal. Had the portal always been that bright? It must be because it’s filled to the top with ectoplasm now, though I don’t remember it ever looking kind of like… a swirling galaxy actually.

Huh, that’s pretty cool.

Maybe comparing it to a whirlpool would be more appropriate- hot tub portal and all.

A lump beside the portal catches my eye. It’s glowing, just like the mess a few feet away from it, but it’s… it’s my hazmat, still covered in ectoplasm. It’s in horrible condition; the right pant leg is shredded at the thigh, everything below that missing completely. Someone definitely went ham on that and if my parents find out I ruined their specially made hazmat-

Well, I’ll be a ghost for real.

And then, for some weird reason, for the first time I notice that I’m missing something, and that something is lying beside the suit, just as wrecked if not more; my pants. My jeans are burned and the leg, where it’s cut off in strips, is glowing slightly; I don’t think a person wrecked those.

Wait. My pants… my pants are on the other side of the room. My pants-

I’m pant-less, as in wearing no pants. I am sans pants. I’m only wearing really dorky UFO boxers. Sam saw me with no pants on, hold on a second while I’m over here being utterly mortified.

But that doesn’t really matter when oh my god my leg.

Someone tried to bandage it. I don’t need to see under the wrapping to know that it’s really, really, really, most likely bad because it goes from my foot to my hip under my boxers and there is no way in hell that that is a good thing.

Ugh. It goes under my boxers. I wonder who did it.

Never mind that- I don’t wanna be around this mess; it’s making me feel ill again.

I use the lab table next to me as a crutch to stand up, leaning on my left leg. It’s like now that I’m aware of my leg it’s… not necessarily hurting, but just really uncomfortable to put weight on or move. Like when you accidentally scratch a chalkboard or something and it makes that god-awful sound that kills you in your soul, but instead it’s… a feeling. In my leg. It doesn’t hurt, but that doesn’t make it any less painful.

I hear Sam and Tuck stomping down the stairs, obviously, to add embarrassing insult to injury, having heard my scream.

“What happened!?” Sam bursts into the room, skipping the last few steps, properly dramatic as usual.

Tucker runs over. “Seriously, dude. What the heck?”

“Sorry.” I look up at the ceiling trying to decide on what to say. “Uh, I dunno.”

They both look up too, bewildered. I don’t know what they expect to see. There’s nothing there anyway.

“I fell.” I add, unhelpfully.

“Uh,” Sam looks back down at me. “You fell?”

“You scared the heck out of us because you tripped? You shouldn’t even be walking right now you idiot!”

I glare at Tuck. “No. I… fell.” I point lazily at the ceiling. “Fr’m there.”

“…What were you doing on the ceiling?” Tucker places his hand on his forehead as if looking at something from a distance and whistles as he looks up. “That’s like, fifteen feet, dude.”

“I wasn’t on the ceiling Tuck-” I cut off as I have no idea where I’m going with that. “I dunno. Jus’ woke up down here.”

“You okay?” Sam looks at me sympathetically, but the corner of her mouth twitches.

Laughing at me in this situation? Heartless. I try to stare at her as blankly as I can with my arm and leg as they are, and what I hope is eye boogers, but is probably ectoplasm, building up in my eyes.

“I’m guessing that’s a ‘I’m fine but not really’.” Tuck says. “Come on, let’s go back up, I doubt-”

He pats my arm and is cut off by my yelp. I stumble to the side away from his outstretched hand and hiss, holding my upper arm. There’s definitely going to be a bruise there in a minute.

“Crud, sorry!” He holds his hands up passively. “I didn’t hit you that hard, did I?” It might’ve been meant as a jab, but it’s more sincere.

“No, my arm’s jus’ mess’d up.” I grind my teeth and try to get my words right. “I land’d onit.”

“Ah, yes, the tumble.” Tuck nods his head and looks up suspiciously.

“I’m serious Tucker.” I celebrate internally as my words do not slur.

But my satisfaction is quickly interrupted by the fact that I am falling again. I hear Sam and Tucker make shocked noises as the floor drops out from under me and I once again land on the hard ground. My legs buckle immediately and I’m sprawled on the floor in the dark.

Crud, the Fenton Stockades. I forgot this room was here; I haven’t been down here in a few years and happily suppressed all memories of this place. I sit up and blink a few times, happily surprised that my eyes adjusted already; I didn’t want to fumble around in the dark. No, that can’t be right.

I rub my eyes, and stare at my hand, sickened. The goop coming out of my eyes is glowing. My stomach flip flops when I blink and feel it trickle down my face towards my mouth. I hastily wipe it away before it goes any further and look around.

The stairs, over there. I make my way towards them, sniffling. I wipe my eyes again, then lift my shirt up and wipe my entire face down. I can feel the sticky goo on my white shirt’s collar; that’ll definitely stain.

“Darn it.” I mutter as I make my way up the steps one at a time. I trip a couple times even though I was taking extra care to place my bare feet.

The door opens as I pull my foot up, almost falling over once more near the top. I wobble on my one good leg with my hand on the steps in front of me for balance.

“So,” I hear Tucker call out warily. “You fell.”

I grumble a noncommittal response as I climb the rest of the way up.

Ghost in the Mirror

If I had any choice in the matter, Sam and Tucker would not be here. They would’ve gone home a long time ago, never having known I was under the weather. Being sick alone sucks but like, I don’t want them cleaning up my mess. Who wants to clean up vomit? No one.

Also it’s embarrassing to have to sit, throwing up in the bathroom without pants on, while they clean up. I would’ve… I dunno. I guess I would’ve done it by myself after I stopped being sick. If? No, after.

Unless mom, dad, and Jazz came home before then, but I have ‘til Sunday night at least. I think.

I hug the porcelain, panting slightly. I don’t know how I can still have anything in my stomach to throw up, yet here I am, face in the toilet, spitting up thick, cold, green clumps of the physical embodiment of my hatred for everything in the paranormal field of science. Why couldn’t mom and dad have gotten normal jobs? This wouldn’t’ve happened if my parents were like, lawyers or something.

I can feel sweat on my face- no, it’s too cold and thick to be sweat. It’s like the crap I’m throwing up; must be ectoplasm.

I grimace at the fact that ectoplasm is leaking out of my nose and eyes, and heave into the toilet. I brace myself against the seat and try to push myself up so can use the sink, gargle some water, wash my face off. My hands are shaking real bad.

I fall back against the bathtub when my arm refuses to lift my weight and my leg gives out. My shirt at this point is ruined, stained green all over. I have no clue how it got covered with so much ectoplasm. I hope it didn’t sink through too much, but that hope is in vain as I feel the coolness against my back and chest. Great.

I feel it in my hair too, slicked down and sticking to the sides of my head, like hair gel, except really slimy and kind of glowing. I groan into the toilet when I throw up again.

I make sure to flush before leaning against the bathtub again, shivering. I feel my shirt squish and stick to the tub and make a face. Oh, gross. It’s probably permanently stained; farewell, plain white shirt.

I lie against the bathtub, one arm draped over the side and my forehead against the flat edge. It’s cold, which is not helping at all since the ectoplasm seeping through my clothes is freezing. I feel like I’m getting frostbite on my insides, right in the middle of me and it’s competing with the vomiting and crying and sweating for most irritatingly uncomfortable.

I think I hear someone coming upstairs, but I don’t move. I just continue to sit- lean? Lie?

I feel my stomach in my throat again, my esophagus close up. I don’t bother moving to the toilet, just hug the side of the tub and puke into it. I feel more goop come out of my eyes and my vision blurs in a mucky green.

I lean with my head over the bathtub, watching the not-quite-liquid roll down into the drain slowly. It reminds me of that stupid documentary we had to watch in class once about the different types of lava.

I prop my leg underneath me so I don’t fall over and bring my good arm up, pressing the heel of my palm into my eye to clear it. It comes away dripping ectoplasm, not surprising but giving me a heavy sinking feeling in my chest.

I hear the door open through my heavy breathing and the crap in my ears. I don’t turn around, just stare at the green running slowly down my wrist.

                                                                   “Oh my god.”                                     

Tucker is beside me in a second, hands hesitating briefly before slipping his arm around me and sitting me up straighter, away from the tub slightly, just enough to pull my shirt over my head. I make a scandalized noise before he throws a towel over my shoulders.

“Dude, why didn’t you call us?” He says with a slight panic.

He throws my shirt to the side and lets me fall back over the side of the tub, back to him. I reach up and touch the towel lightly, not sure if I should try to wipe the ectoplasm off or not. I’m back in aware but too sick to do much mode.

“Here,” He grabs the towel and starts rubbing the ectoplasm off me. I fold my arms in front of me on the side of the tub. “Jeez, Danny…”

I can feel he wants to say more but doesn’t. It would probably just be along the lines of “we need to get you to the hospital” or something anyways and the thought of that still gives me this bad feeling.

“What the heck- where is all of this coming from?”

Tuck tosses the towel over to join my shirt and grabs another. I realize he’s actually throwing them straight into the little garbage can in the corner. That’s most likely for the best; I don’t know if those can be salvaged or not.

“You should’ve called us up. Danny?”

I attempt to say something sarcastic, but it just comes out garbled and I cough something up about half way through. Tuck waits until I’m done and then turns on the tap to rinse the bathtub. He leaves again and I try to tell him to stay but it only comes out as a moan.

I hear him yelling down the stairs. He’s calling for Sam, pro’lly telling her I’m gonna die or-

The cold feeling in me gets stronger all of a sudden, right inside my ribcage. It’s more than uncomfortable, it’s like I swallowed a freezer full of ice. The pressure upsets my stomach, somehow managing to pull out whatever was even left in there.

I heave, hack up whatever’s leftover and yell something unintelligible over my shoulder to Tucker in the hallway. He rushes back into the room immediately.

“Oh no, wha-”

I don’t get to hear the end of that sentence because I’m falling through the floor again. I get a glimpse of the kitchen from above before I barely miss hitting the countertop, smack against a chair sending it and myself flying against the dinner table’s leg which slides across the tile.

I lie prone, not noticing that since I’d come to a stop I’ve been letting out one prolonged “ow” turned moan into the floor. I turn my head so my face isn’t squished anymore and push myself up- only to crash back down when my hands slide.

Right, covered in slime equals slippery.

“Shit!” I hear Sam curse loudly as she runs into the kitchen, skidding to a stop a foot away from me on her knees.

I try my best not to groan, instead choosing to sigh and just lie on the floor trying to blink ectoplasm out of my eyes. When that deems less than effective I rub my eyes-

Or not. My arms stay where they are this time.

“We need to call his parents, get them to come back!” Tucker says. I didn’t even notice him come into the room. “We’re in way over our heads here-”

“We can’t, remember?” Sam reaches out but only lets her hand hover over me. “But yeah, we need to get some help here.”

“Nnn…” I attempt to say something.

I stare at the underside of the table instead, at the tiny signs of childhood rebellion; the name “Jazz” in black, and underneath in blue, messier handwriting “stinks”.

“You idiot… you said it was fine you dumbass.”

I just want this to be over. I thought it was but… I glance at the clock, just visible from this angle. I have trouble making out the numbers, but I think it might be 9 something. Time flies when you’re dying.

I close my eyes, ordering my body to keep my insides inside for once; I won’t make it to the sink if I throw up now. Plus, I feel hollow, like I haven’t eaten all day. Is there finally nothing left?

 Θ

I blearily open my eyes. I open my eyes.

Never mind, I try to open my eyes, but they’re swollen and there’s too much grossness in them; they’re sealed shut. I have to breathe through my mouth because my nose is plugged up, but it doesn’t make much of a difference since it’s dripping down into my throat, coating it in mucus.

I can feel the ectoplasm in a gooey puddle under me; I’m on the floor of the kitchen and I wouldn’t be surprised if I was stuck, like my eyelids. Soft breaths come from close by. I guess… Sam and Tucker are still here. Asleep?

I drag my arm across the floor, feeling the semi-dried- no, that seems inaccurate- semi-solidified, ectoplasm squish across the floor, and pick at my eyes. I get enough off of my left eye to open it a little, and see my two friends sitting on the other side of the room, leaning against each other, fast asleep.

A pile of dirty, radioactive-looking towels and washcloths sit in the corner, a Nasty Burger bag crumpled beside Tucker, but not empty. Sunlight streams warmly through the window.

I get a grip on the tiled floor under me and push myself up, sadly, with everything I’ve got. I hold my hurt arm over my chest. I’m dirty and sore all over, but the worst of it seems to be done with, like a particularly vicious bout of the stomach flu.

So much for marathoning Dead Teacher, my brain supplies.

I grab a washcloth from the table- it looks like Sam and Tuck had raided the house for them, collecting the stash here in the kitchen- and scrub my face down. Once my eyes are properly cleared I take a look at the clock again.

Oh, it’s 3:35. In the afternoon. When was the last time I checked the clock? Eight… no, nine? That’s…

“Eighteen hours?” I croak. I slept so long.

I look down at myself expecting ectoplasm, but only find that I’m shirtless. I feel a little self-conscious about being near naked, but then remember that I’m also sitting in fluorescent green ghost gunk and shrug it off as unimportant.

Speaking of, I could’ve sworn I was covered head to toe in the stuff, but now it’s only on the floor and the whatever parts of me had touched that. Sickness-induced hallucinations? Jazz said that was ‘typical for adolescents’ once, a couple years ago.

Yeah, that’s… that’s it.

I spread the washcloth out on my hand and run it down one arm, then the other. I go to move on, but the little cloth is fully dirtied so I toss it in the general direction of the pile, not even getting close. It lands on the floor, spreading a green smear under it. I feel my jaw go slack and a lump in my throat.

“Tuck.” I call out, my voice hoarse. “T-Tucker.”

He doesn’t stir.

I look down at the green stain below me. I guess they’d stayed up late, watching me, cleaning. I don’t think any of us have slept in this late before. I don’t think any of us have been this messed up before.

“Sorry, guys.” I mumble.

I grab some paper towels conveniently right beside me and scoot to the side onto a dry spot. I wipe my feet and exposed leg down, noting that the bandages on my leg are the only clean thing on me, then crawl over and sit on my knees in front of the two sleeping people.

“Tucker.” My voice is raspy. I put my hand on Tuck’s leg and, having no energy to shake him into consciousness, just lean my weight into it. “Tuck, I need to have a shower.”

He grumbles in his sleep. I sigh.

“Tucker,” I say a little louder, firmer. I swallow some goo that had risen up into my mouth and cough into my arm. “Tuck I need help to get to the bathroom, I think I’m gonna be sick again.”

He blinks his eyes open and I exhale slowly.

“Danny?”

“Yeah.” My voice cracks. “Help me to the bathroom?”

“Yeah, sure of course, buddy.” He lets Sam slide to the ground before standing and helping me up. “You okay?”

“I feel like crap.”

He laughs humorlessly. “You look pretty much how you feel then.” I try to glare, but focus on climbing the stairs instead. “Are you gonna pass out again?”

“No, might puke though.”

“Good to know.”

He drops me off in the tub and leaves to get me some clothes that aren’t filthy. I take my remaining clothes off, turn the shower on and just sit, letting the water run over me.

I don’t go to the toilet when I feel it coming; I just throw up in the shower and let it wash down the drain. It’s not as much as before. I hear Tuck come back in a few minutes later, but he just sits on the toilet on the other side of the curtain.

“I’m sorry, Danny.”

“Why?” My throat is like sandpaper, gooey sandpaper, so I gargle some water. “You’re the ones who had to clean up… I think.”

“Yeah but you’re the one who’s going through something that might kill you, and we didn’t even try to get any help.” He sounds like he might start sobbing. “You coulda died and we just sat there.”

“I shouldn’t’ve brought you guys down there in the first place though. This isn’t-”

“No, we convinced you to show us. If we’d just watched the movies none of this would have happened.” It sounds like he has his face in his hands, his voice kind of muffled. “I should have gone to get someone when I wanted to.”

“You probably had a good reason not to-”

“No, I didn’t have a good reason.” Before I can argue he goes on. “I was gonna go get help, but you said not to so I freaking stayed like an idiot.”

“Wait- I said what?” I’m like, 67% sure I never said that. I wanted to, but I’m pretty sure… I shake my head. “Never mind that. You had a reason to listen to me, right?”

“I should’ve gone anyways!”

“Look, playing the blame game isn’t gonna help anyone, Tucker. It happened, no matter whose fault it is.” I peek around the shower curtain. “Can you get me something for my stomach? Like Gravol or whatever.”

“Yeah.”

While he’s gone I cough up more ectoplasm into the shower and hope I’m not contaminating the water supply or anything. I sit with my right leg out of the way so it doesn’t get wet and lean back against the side of the tub, face tilted upwards, letting the water rinse me off better than those facecloths and some paper towels could.

When Tuck comes back in he passes me a bottle and I take a pill that I hopefully won’t throw up.

“You think I’m radioactive now?”

“Seriously, dude?”

“Too soon?” I laugh, but it’s frail, hardly a laugh at all.

“I hope not.” I hear him shift. “Just don’t pass out in the shower.”

“Yeah, that’d be awkward.” I try my best at a sarcastic tone but it comes out a whisper.

Tucker speaks up again after a moment. “…Are you gonna tell your parents when they get home? Or call them when the power comes back on?”

“They’ll kill me.” I start rubbing my skin down, less for getting any remaining gunk off, more for the feel. “But I’ll have to. If I have radiation poisoning- or ectoplasm poisoning- they could pro’lly help.”

“Yeah, and hey, on the bright side, maybe they’ll be so relieved you’re okay that you won’t even be in too much trouble.”

“That’s great, Tuck, I’m sure that’ll happen.”

A knock on the door cuts off his reply.

“Danny? You in there?” It’s Sam, of course.

“Yeah,” Tucker answers.

A pause, and then, “You’re showering together?”

“What! No!” Tucker clarifies. “I’m just making sure he doesn’t pass out and drown.”

I almost make a quip about worst case scenarios, but feel it isn’t appropriate so I scrub shampoo into my hair and listen instead.

“He okay?”

“Yeah, I gave him some pills and he’s stopped throwing up.”

I work my lip between my teeth, and try to prove Tucker right.

“What about… you know…” She makes a frustrated noise. “The falling through the floor?”

“Danny?” Tucker asks.

“I dunno.” I mumble.

“It’s probably just a side effect.” Says Tuck, but his tone falters. “You know, from the ectoplasm?”

I nod, though no one can see it. “It’s probably temporary… it’ll be gone after it washes out of my system.”

“…and his leg?”

Tuck doesn’t say anything at that, and I don’t know enough to comment so I just stay silent. It seems like an unspoken conversation is happening between them two.

“Did- did you want your burger after you get out?”

I think for a moment before answering her.

“I guess.”

“He says yeah.” Tucker repeats louder.

“Okay, I’ll… I’ll heat it up.”

Sam leaves me and Tuck alone.

I spend a few minutes picking pieces out of my hair and just enjoy the feeling of the water pittering on my skin. The water swirling down the drain slowly fades from tinted green to clear.

My stomach seems to have settled but I’m still cold. I can’t really feel whether the water is hot or not, but there’s steam in the air so it can’t be cold, yet I’m still shivering like I’m waist deep in snow at the North Pole. If I wasn’t sick to the point where I’m probably delirious still, I’d think that there was frost on the shower curtain beside me.

And then I recognize the feeling. It comes in a cold flash I guess.

I gulp and warn Tucker. “Tuck, it’s happening again.”

“What is? Danny?”

Shaking like a leaf, I reach out past the curtain and go to grab a towel only to realize they’ve all been used up. Tucker respectfully looks away, even though I’m covered by the curtain, and holds up my clothes; a NASA shirt, pj pants, and clean boxers. I turn the water off and grab them despite being soaked. I pull my shirt over my head and stumble through the rest, but eventually get it.

“What’s happening, Danny?” Tucker asks again.

My breathing becomes ragged as the cold feeling grows a little more intense than the three times I fell. I hold my hands to my chest and shut my eyes, not really sure how but it helps a bit; calms me down. I brace myself for the fall down into the kitchen, a pun already forming on my tongue to say to Sam who must still be down there.

I don’t fall. I can tell before I open my eyes that something’s… off. There’s something over my face for sure, but the thing that really catches my attention is the secondhand feelings and the pain in my arm fading away. The final nail in the coffin is the “oh snap” from Tucker.

I pull my hands away slightly and note that Tucker is pressed against the door now, staring with large eyes. But I don’t really look over at him, because there are gloves on my hands. I magically conjured gloves onto my hands…? I don’t want to see any more of this but I’m reacting before I can stop myself. I look down.

Now, I’m not stupid. I come from a family of literal geniuses, and even though I tend to procrastinate, I still get B’s and A’s in school. I’m not dumb, though I admit I’ve done dumb things in the past- I’m fourteen years old. Things, especially things I don’t really like, don’t easily slip my mind.

So that brings me to this. Even though the monochrome hazmat jumpsuit is inverted for some reason- it now being mainly black with slightly stained, white gloves instead of the reverse- I recognize it as the one my parents gave me, except it’s glowing- no, I’m glowing. Oh. Oh.

“You-you’re…” Tucker stutters from across the room. “Oh man.”

I’m frozen in place, holding my breath as if that might explain or fix anything. I don’t know what to do; all I can think of is Sam trying to explain what happed.

A ghost? No, that can’t be it. I was just alive, just human a second ago. Did I die? Did I really have ectoplasm poisoning or whatever? Is that what it feels like? You just get cold and then, oh, there you go. You are now a ghost, thank you for shopping DeathMart™.

“What-” I’m cut off by, well, myself. I would’ve shivered if that voice hadn’t been mine, so I don’t blame him when I see Tuck pull his arms a little closer to himself.

It… sounds like I’m speaking from the inside of a long tunnel, all echo-ey. There’s also the fact that I’m wearing the gasmask again, muffling my voice a little. I wonder for a moment if it sounds the same to Tucker, or worse somehow. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m hallucinating all of this, or dreaming.

But it’s too real.

I swallow down some bile that’d risen in my throat and try again.

Sort of. “What- I’m- I don’t-” I stammer, not sure on what to say.

Tucker takes a small step forwards, but hesitates, seemingly deciding whether or not to do something. Then, “You’re a ghost again.” He breathes.

“Again? As in more than once?” My voice quivers, but that might just be the echo.

He moves his mouth a few times before he decides on one thing to say. “When you- when you came out of the portal…” He grits his teeth. “You were a ghost, Danny. You’re a ghost…?”

We both just stare around the bathroom for a minute, but avoiding the topic seemed to just build it up into an explosive.

“A ghost?” I finally let my hands drop stiffly to my sides.

“A ghost.”

“Am I dead?” My voice hitches. “Did I just die? Am I dead right now, Tucker!?”

“I don- I don’t know!”

“But I’m a ghost I’m dead!”

“I’m gonna be arrested for murder!”

“What the heck Tuck! I’m the one who died! Why are you freaking out!?”

“Because I’m the one who killed you!”

“You didn’t kill me! And why am I still wearing this!?”

“I don’t know, dude! I don’t know how- how- how ghosts work!” He waves his arms at me. “You’re the one with the ghost hunter parents you should… be the one to…”

He fades out and we stare at each other in blank horror.

“My parents!”

“Oh crud, dude, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t of-”

“They’re gonna kill- they’re gonna re-kill me! Is that even possible!?”

“Ah!” Tucker pulls at his hair in frustration. He’d ditched his hat at some point. “I- don’t know!”

“What is even going on!?”

“I don’t know!” Tuck repeats. He visibly tries to calm down, takes a few breaths, flexes his fingers. “Does it… do you feel any different?”

I think for a second then shake my head and humour him. “No, not really. Just…” I clench my jaw as I think. “Just lighter.”

“Lighter…” He says, barely more than a whisper. “Did it hurt?”

“What, when I fell from heaven?” I joke, but my voice cracks and my tone is serious and I think I might start crying if ghosts can cry. “Right now no.”

“But before?”

“When I was puking and stuff yeah!”

“Damn, dude. Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“I can’t help it if I feel responsible!”

I run my hands over my face, but stop when they just run over the gasmask. I reach under my hood and behind my head and start trying to take it off. “This is way worse than just…getting in trouble, or being sick.”

Tuck doesn’t say anything to that. I flip my hood back and pull the mask off; it’s black now, and there’s ectoplasm dripping from the respirator. I grimace.

“I’m dead.” I step out of the tub, grabbing the sink as my boots slip on the wet bathroom tile. Where’d the bathmat go?

“I died and now I have to tell my parents that I accidentally killed myself while doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing!” I know I’m freaking out but I have a pretty good reason, so I don’t stop. “That’s literally all of the worst case scenarios combined!”

“H-hey, maybe you’re not really dead, maybe it’s like…” Tuck shrugs. “Halfsies?”

“Seriously Tucker?”

“No no no, hear me out! You were a ghost in the lab, but then you turned back somehow!” He is using too many hand signals and I can tell he’s feeling nothing even remotely close to positive, so I can’t tell if he’s trying to convince me or himself. “I bet you just died, like, half way or something. O-or! I don’t even think you died at all! It was probably like, getting bitten by a radioactive spider!”

“Are you seriously trying to tell me that, even with this,” I gesture to myself hysterically, “I did not in fact, die, I just, what? Got super powers? Are you serious right now, Tucker!?”

“I thought you didn’t even believe in ghosts!”

“I- I didn’t…” I sigh. “But superpowers? I appreciate you trying, I do, but can we be more realistic?” I put in reluctantly, “Even if it’s depressing.”

“Fine.”

“My parents…”

“How ‘bout we deal with that when it comes to it, alright?”

That sounds like a terrible idea but I nod anyways. “Sure.”

I make a face when I realize that Sam’s coming. I don’t mind her coming back up, but the fact that I can feel it like it’s some kind of sixth sense is a little unnerving. At… at least I know why now. Ghosts are weird. I’m weird?

“Sam’s comin’ up.” I blurt out, staring at the wall as if I could see her through it, and Tucker blinks at me. He doesn’t say anything though when she knocks on the door again.

“I uh… sorry I kind of forgot that we need power to use the oven.” Sam says sheepishly. “If you’re up for eating fries cold, it’s downstairs.”

“I’m…” I swallow down more gunk. This is making me feel queasy again. I try to sound natural when I talk, failing horribly. “Okay, in a sec.”

I instantly can tell that she knows; it’s like the anxiety itself is seeping through the door and contaminating the air. I forgot my voice is weird. I should’ve let Tuck answer for me. Damn it.

“I’m coming in.” She says before immediately opening the door and stopping dead. “Oh.”

“Sam! He could’ve been naked!” Tucker yells, having had to move when the door took his spot, but she’s staring at me wide-eyed.

“I don’t think that matters at this point, Tucker.” I murmur, holding my arms up against my chest, fiddling with the material on the gasmask.

It’s not untrue, I mean I was only wearing underwear earlier. I doubt Sam even cares at this point.

She gulps, just staring at the hazmat and doesn’t speak. I look at the ground and my boots, spreading weird really white light across the room, brighter than the sunlight coming from the window.

“I’m gonna say it,” Tucker announces after an uncomfortable minute of silence. “This is something we have to deal with, guys. Or… at least figure out what’s going on.” His gaze flits over me, probably taking in the crap we have to figure out before my family gets back. “This probably- this isn’t something that we can deal with later.”

I play with my fingers, picking at the gloves self-consciously.

“How?” Sam asks the dreaded question.

Tuck coughs before answering, “I-I don’t know, but we have to do something.” He looks at me before turning back to Sam. “Maybe there’s something that could help in the lab?”

It’s in the air coming off of them. There’s fear mixed in with other things that I can’t exactly name because I’ve never been like Jazz. But I know it’s not exactly positive and I can’t help but think that they might be scared of me. I take a small step back.

“I don’t think there’s anything that could help down there, Tuck.” I drop my hands to my sides, gripping the gasmask in one hand and rubbing circles on my leg with my other. I shut my eyes for a second and bite the inside of my cheek before continuing. “My parents hunt ghosts, I don’t think…”

I don’t need to finish my sentence.

“We should check anyways. Aren’t you always saying that their inventions always backfire?”

I nod with a small smile, remembering some big gun they’d invented. I have no idea what it was supposed to do, but it definitely wasn’t supposed be a flame-thrower. It now sat on the “malfunctioned/never gonna finish” shelf.

He continues, “Well, maybe they have something that could backfire in our favour?”

“They only have weapons and stuff; I don’t think there’s anything down there that could help at all.”

He grumbles, annoyed. “Well, then maybe it’s what I said before.”

“What did you say?” Sam pipes up.

“That maybe he just has-”

“I doubt it’s superpowers, Tuck.”

“Whatever. I don’t think you’re dead though.” He adds quieter, “You can’t be…”

“Here,” Sam strides towards me with borrowed confidence and grabs my hand. She can’t hide the way she plants herself firmly and consciously in front of me.

She slides my glove down, just enough to show the pale, almost green looking, glowing skin of my wrist. It reminds me of a lesson in science class about bioluminescence we had once, and the thought of whether or not ghosts are bioluminescent goes through my mind briefly before I realize what she’s doing.

She presses her fingers into my wrist and the room somehow becomes even quieter despite the lack of anyone talking. After a minute she lets me pull my glove back on and places her hands on her hips.

“There; it… it’s slow, but you do have a heartbeat. You are not dead.” Sam says each word slow and deliberate, giving me a hard look before crossing her arms and drifting back to the door.

“You changed back before, so maybe it’ll happen again,” She shrugs. I wonder if she actually believes that I’m fine, or she’s just trying to make things seem normal to divert attention away from the fact that I’m probably dead.

“Why don’t you come eat? You must be starving after… after all that.”

I stare at the floor between us, chewing on the inside of my cheek. I’m not so sure about that but… I mean, why not?

I silently agree with a short nod and follow them out of the bathroom. I freeze at the doorframe and start, feeling my breath catch and stomach flip again- not that I’d actually stopped being nauseous at any point in the past 24 hours.

I turn towards the toilet, but not fast enough to miss the- the- thing in the mirror, which… can’t be me. Because I could’ve sworn that on the way in here my hair had been black- and bound by the laws of gravity- my freckles hadn’t made a reappearance as glittering splashes on neon across my cheeks and… my eyes…

They’re unsettling, to say the least. They’re- my eyes are- still blue, but the colour is almost completely covered up by the neon green glow in them. I feel my jaw ache.

Anything not completely black- gloves, skin, hair- is stained lightly with what I’m assuming is ectoplasm.

I dive to the side and flip the toilet lid back in time to vomit, which happily turns into dry-heaving and a coughing fit after only spitting up some green stomach juices. I feel a light hand on my back as the sour taste in my mouth just makes me gag more.

“Darn it,” I hack into the toilet.

“Maybe you should wait a little while before you eat then.” A hand reaches out and flushes the toilet, black and purple nail polish chipped. “But at least you’re not throwing up too much anymore.”

I make a disgusted noise and go to rinse my mouth out in the sink, carefully averting my eyes from the mirror. She’s right though. That time it tasted less like plasma, more like stomach grossness.

I don’t realize how thirsty I am ‘til water hits my tongue; I’m super dehydrated. Yeah, I could go for that milkshake now.

Movie Night: Part 2

 I let Sam lead me down the stairs and back over to the couch. The tissues I had used have been thrown out, and I wrinkle my nose at the smell of ketchup, meat and fries wafting from the paper bag on the coffee table. It’s almost as overwhelming as the stench of ectoplasm and feelings still lingering.

I catch sight of a bit of green on the floor in the kitchen and try to swallow. It’s hard when my mouth is bone dry.

I sit down in the same spot as before and stare, eyes half-lidded, down at my hands in my lap. The gloves are like staring at a dull light-bulb; bright, but not enough to hurt my eyes. I feel like I should be freaking out more. I feel like we all should be freaking out more. Are we just shocked?

I look up when someone nudges me- it’s Sam. She clenches her jaw.

                                                               “How’s your arm?”                        

I lift my left arm, remembering it’d been hurt, and move it experimentally. I rub the part that had gotten the brunt of it. Weird. Before it felt like it was bad but now it feels fine, like it had never even been bruised, let alone fractured or worse.

Getting my nerves fried must’ve exaggerated the pain after they started working again… or something. That’s how it works, right?

“It’s fine, I guess.” I say while trying to look down the inside of my suit at my arm, pulling the collar away from my neck.

I lift my head as I hear a humming, and after a second recognize it as the power turning on. It’s blaring compared to the lack of noise up until now. I grab the remote control and test the tv; it turns on with a high pitched whine. The digital clock below it flickers back on as well and flashes 12:00.

I grin crookedly at Sam. “We can still watch Dead Teacher?” I say hopefully. That would be a proper distraction.

She snorts, not looking away from the tv now playing some random show. “Actually? Yeah, I’d be okay with that. If you’re okay now it’d pro’lly be alright to relax for a while, and we’ve still got a full 24 hours before your parents come home.”

To my surprise and pleasure she goes and grabs her bag, dumping out a few movie cases. That was easier than expected. I thought I’d get some “but the house is a total mess” or something and then be forced to clean up.

I decide not to mention it.

“You bought all of them?” I lean forward and tap my fingers on the coffee table, feeling the pit of hunger start to overshadow the nausea.

“Yep.” She plucks one out of the pile and cracks it open. “Every single one.”

“But those are…” I squint my eyes at the stickers on each case. “Special Edition.” I say, as ominously as I can with a crackling- and echoing- voice.

“Yup.” She turns on the cd player and places the disk on the little tray when it slides out. Her shoulders slump and she flicks a stray lock of hair out of her face as she pushes the tray back in. I shut my mouth with a click as it dawns on me that she was tense up until now.

“Hey, Tucker!” Sam calls towards the kitchen. “We’re watching the movies.”

Tuck leans out of the kitchen. “The power’s on?” He looks at the tv. “We’re still doing this…? Cool!” He pauses half way to the couch though. “Oh, I should probably call my parents.”

“Same.”

I wait on the couch for them, rubbing the aching palm of my hand with my fingers, smooth out some curved indents in the glove’s material. I slide my free hand into the Nasty Burger bag and pulling out a fry to nibble on.

 Θ

The intro credits run. I chew on the straw in my shake and roll a fry between my gloved fingers. If I hold a fry in my hand it looks like I’m shining a flashlight through it. But it’s not a flashlight; it’s me, glowing, like a giant, living glowstick.

I glance to the side at Sam and Tucker, wondering if my glowing is bothering them. It’s… actually not bothering me as much as it should. It’s like it should feel like something, anything. It should feel unnatural or weird but…

I turn my head so that if they unglued their eyes from the screen for a second they wouldn’t see me shut my eyes, an attempt to clear my buzzing brain.

I consider bringing up how the floors might get stained by the mess we left in the kitchen and basement, but decide that I’d rather wait until my legs didn’t feel like jell-o and my arms could lift more than half a cup of melted, day-old milkshake. I don’t want to sit on the couch watching my friends clean up my mess.

I look over at Tucker, swaddled in a blanket in the recliner across the livingroom. He’s seemingly absorbed in the movie even though we’ve all watched it only a billion times- rewatched every movie every time they released a new one, and sometimes just for fun- and know that nothing interesting will happen for another twenty minutes or so.

Sam’s eyes are kinda glazed; she’s obviously somewhere else. I stare back down at myself.

What if… what if I don’t just turn back like they said? What if my parents come home and I’m like this? What if Sam lied and it turns out I’m not really alive anymore; I’m just some- some echo? Just what’s left of the real Danny Fenton’s consciousness?

The phrase “existential crises” suddenly has a very personal meaning.

I watch the characters on the screen with a heavy sense of dread and a feeling of being disconnected. There’s glare on the tv and I realize belatedly that it’s me, a white silhouette blocking my view of the characters on the screen. I bring my knees up and rest my head on them, fiddling my fingers between my legs and chest, rubbing circles on the sore parts of my palms.

No wonder Sam and Tuck aren’t looking my way. I wouldn’t, not when I’m like this. I feel creepy. I feel like nightmare fuel, but like in a pulling a prank or acting in a haunted house kind of way to be honest.

That disconnected feeling wavers and I feel a spark of terror run through me, like getting an electric shock. If I’m dead… If I’m really dead…

My mouth is dry all of a sudden.

My parents really are gonna freak if they come home only to find out that instead of just wrecking the house like a normal 14 year old, I died. My first time having the house all to myself for a weekend and I got myself killed.

That thought is put on hold as my fingertips feel warm. It’s like reverse hypothermia, a tingly warm feeling spreading up my hands and in my chest. For a second I have no idea why, then the warmth spreads and I recognize it.

I gasp, Tucker and Sam turning around in time to see a flash of bright white light envelope me- something I hadn’t noticed the last time I guess. It scares the heck out of me, a lot more than these cheesey horror movies. It catches all three of us off guard and I literally jump in my seat.

I rocket launch myself over the side of the couch and land on my back on the carpet with a hard bang. Ugh, yep, definitely felt like this back in the basement; hot and awkwardly heavy, like I just got off a trampoline after being on for a little longer than necessary.

Immediately I’m aware that I’m wearing the pajama pants and t-shirt that Tucker got for me when I showered. No hazmat, no gloves, no boots. Just my official NASA T and pj pants. My heart hammers in my chest loudly, comfortingly obvious.

“Holy crud.” I say in a small voice, staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes. Regular, non-glowing, blue eyes, if I had to guess. They aren’t glowing anymore. I’m not glowing anymore.

I don’t know what to say other than they were actually right; I did change back. I turned into a ghost, and then turned back after a while. I really am alive still. I revel in the relief that accompanied the warmth of turning human again. Never thought I’d ever be in a situation where I’d be glad to not be dead anymore. If I was dead. I don’t even care, as long as I am okay.

I blink up at the hand that appeared over me as I was lying on the floor, attempting to digest this information. I grab it and allow Tucker to pull me up. Sam composes herself as I stand on my feet, keeping my weight off my right one.

“See?” She says, crossing her arms and leaning back into the couch. “I told you.”

“Yeah.” My voice cracks.

Θ

I wake up, but continue lying wrapped up in a blanket enjoying half sleep. I don’t remember falling asleep. I feel something on my leg, groaning when I try to move it but pins and needles shoot up from my left foot. I turn and look over across the couch.

Sam had fallen asleep on my foot, my other one propped up against the back of the couch, and Tucker is slouched over in the armchair, snoring gently. The tv is off.

It’s still dark out so I decide to just go back to sleep.

Θ

I wake up again to someone urging me awake. I hurriedly sit up, throwing the comforter off me and blinking the sleep out of my eyes. I look up at Tucker smiling down at me.

“Morning.” He says. I notice he’s wearing different clothes; they aren’t mine.

I fall back over as it finally hits me that nothing’s wrong. “What?”

“Just thought you wouldn’t wanna sleep all day again, Aurora.”

“Aurora?”

“Yeah, as in Sleeping Beauty?” I raise my eyebrows at him which is apparently enough to get him to explain himself. “I wanted to show off in second grade, remember?”

“Oh… yeah.” I let out a pained sigh. “What time is it?”

“Like, ten.”

I shove my face under a pillow. “Ten?”

“Yup.” Then, more kindly, “You feeling better?”

I mumble incoherently about my brain and the headache hammering slowly into my forehead before lifting my head. “Yeh.”

“My parents let me stay another night ‘cause I told them that… you had the flu, and were alone.”

“Mmm.”

“Danny, I know what we talked about before- in the bathroom- but…” He takes a deep breath. “But I think you maybe… shouldn’t tell your parents until we know what happened and how… and if they can even help at all.”

I look at him again, ready to argue, but remember that my parents are self proclaimed Ghost Hunters and just nod my head. Wow, that’s messed up.

“Yeah, I guess I’ll just wait and see for now then. I still think it might just be weird side effects from, you know, falling in ectoplasm. It’s probably not even that big a deal.”

I pull myself to my feet and yawn. Just in case, I don’t put weight on my right foot.

“We should probably do the laundry… and clean the rest of the house, huh?” I point out. I notice someone put an old popcorn bucket on the table; puke bucket. Lovely. Smart though. “Where’s Sam?”

“She’s taking care of the laundry; she wanted me and you to do the floors- if you’re up to it.”

I grumble but follow Tucker into the kitchen, lean on the table and stare down at the stains on the floor. How on Earth do you even start to clean something like this up?

“Where do we even start?” I mutter.

We soon find out that hot water and dish soap is actually all you need to remove ectoplasm stains, though it’s kind of difficult to tell the difference between the soap and ectoplasm since my parents bought bright green soap. We decide to eff it and pour half a bottle on the floor.

I take the mop, Tucker takes a giant sponge and we take care of the kitchen mess pretty fast- the lab too, albeit the small war of throwing bubbles at each other when it’s revealed we used too much soap, and the nausea returning briefly at the sight and smell of ectoplasm.

I decide, after Tuck and I are done with the floors, to help with the rest of the laundry since we’d used up a majority of the towels, if not all of them, as well as do my own dirty clothes that mom’s been nagging me to do for like, a month.

Sam also had a change of clothes, somehow wearing casual pajama pants and a tank top and still sticking to her goth style perfectly.

We make the house look okay with a couple of hours, as if nothing at all had happened. And then, because there always has to be something, Sam says, as we stand in the kitchen, “We don’t need to waste electricity; it’s daytime!” and turns off the lights in the kitchen. Unfortunately the blinds on the windows are down.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me right now.” Tucker throws his hands up.

“Oh man. I’m so sorry guys.”

Sam drags a hand down her face, cracking her fingers on her cheeks. “It’s fine, Danny, it’s not your fault.” She somehow sounds apologetic and done with my crap at the same time.

The floor is glowing slightly right where the stains were, not a lot but definitely enough that it’s noticeable and will be questioned if seen. There’s a handprint. It looks like a murder scene under blacklight. I can’t think of a single excuse that wouldn’t get me in a heck of a lot of trouble.

“Hey, maybe I’ll get lucky and my parents’ll think it was one of their experiments?” I feel my shoulders raise along with my voice the further into that sentence I get.

“Actually,” Sam says, snapping her fingers, “that could work.”

“Oh wait, no, guys!” Tucker slaps his forehead with a groan. “The bathroom.”

“Great, just wonderful.” I hook my hands around the back of my neck, arms pressed against the side of my head and elbows in the air. “Sorry about this you guys. So much for a fun weekend.”

“Shut up, it’s not your fault.” Sam repeats, more forcefully this time. I get the feeling she’ll punch me if I apologize again. “Let’s just try to get it out I guess.”

“Leave the lab and kitchen, they won’t care about those.” I say, really not wanting to do any more cleaning. This is getting ridiculous. “They work on their stuff up here at breakfast all the time.”

“So, just the bathroom then?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose and turn to go up the stairs.

“You sure you’re okay?” Sam asks, following close behind.

“Yeah, all that was probably just temporary. I’ll be fine.” I know I’m lying, and swallow a lump of gunk that’d risen in my throat when they can’t see.

When we get to the bathroom we don’t turn on the light. Luckily, it isn’t as bad as the kitchen or lab since the ectoplasm hadn’t sat for as long as it had downstairs, so we leave it. I guess we should have cleaned it up right away. Darn.

“Glad that’s over.” I lean on the countertop back in the kitchen and try to block out everything that had happened over the course of the weekend. I stare at my foot as I slide it back and forth on the tile, feeling none of it.

Tucker huffs, “Seriously.”

“Okay,” I straighten up. “From now on, no more movie nights at my house.” I’m half serious, but keep a light tone.

Sam rolls her eyes and opens the fridge, tapping at a tray of test tubes and a shivering box. “Is anything in here edible?”

“I don’t think so. Unless you want to be throwing up ectoplasm for two days, you probably shouldn’t eat anything in there.”

She shakes a carton of milk, then puts it back uncertainly.

“Maybe we should get out of here for a while.” She looks around the room, eyes flickering towards the basement more than once. “We’ve been cooped up here since Friday.”

“Yeah,” Tuck agrees.

I cover a yawn with my hand. “…Sure.”

Jeez, I hadn’t even really noticed it was Sunday already. That was the worst weekend of my life, and I was blacked out for most of it.

We go over the house once more, remembering to scrub down the chair I’d been sitting on after they’d brought me upstairs and to bring the garbage bag filled to the top with paper towels outside before putting on some decent clothes and getting the heck out of FentonWorks.

Θ

My parents get home in the afternoon.

Jazz stops half way to the stairs to give me, wrapped up in a comforter and surrounded by junk food wrappers, an incredulous look. I blink at her and almost panic when I remember the only thing we hadn’t cleaned up was the living room.

My parents walk in, dad not really noticing the mess. Mom stops in her tracks.

“The power went out all weekend.” I say conversationally, voice rasping, and then turn back to the tv.

“Daniel James Fenton, what did you do to the living room?”

I freeze, thumb hovering over the unmute button on the remote, and make a split second decision.

I turn to look up at my mom and say, in as sick a voice I can manage, “I got the flu. Would’a called but… power was out.”

“Oh honey,” mom coos and sets down her bag. She kneels in front of me and presses her hand to my forehead. “You’re feeling a little cold. Did you throw up?”

“Yeh.” I glance at the bucket still on the coffee table.

“You still feeling a little sick?”

I don’t need to exaggerate the answer for this one. “Yeah.” I make a face.

“You’re sure it was the flu?”

I try to keep a pokerface. “Yeah.”

She stands up and turns to dad. “How didn’t I notice my baby getting sick?”

“Baby…? Mo-om.” I look to dad and Jazz but Jazz is dragging her stuff up the stairs and dad looks like he doesn’t know whether to coddle me or not.

Mom turns back to me and sits on the edge of the couch. She runs her hand through my hair. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I would never have left you by yourself if I knew.”

“It’s fine.” I wave her off. “Tuck and Sam were here.”

“Oh, well I’m glad you weren’t alone, but still…” She leans over and looks me in the eye. “You know we love you right?”

“He knows that, Mads.” Dad laughs, picks up both his and mom’s luggage and starts heading up the stairs.

She smiles at him, but looks back me anyways. “You know that right?”

“Yeah, I-” I suddenly feel guilty. They’re my parents, why am I not telling them what happened? “I-” Even if I get in trouble for it.

I look away bashfully. “I love you too mom.”

She gives me a side hug, the gun on her belt cold even through the comforter. She gets up. “You look tired, hon. Why don’t you take a nap? Or have a bath? There’s a bathbomb in the cupboard, I think.”

“Uh- ye-yeah, I think I’ll go lay down in my room.” I turn off the tv and stand up, letting the comforter fall back on the couch.

I run up the stairs, stumbling once, and retreat into my room.

I’m not that tired and I don’t think I could fall asleep so I don’t bother lying down, just close my door and stand around in my room. I wander around, itching my stomach. The scratching goes down to my hip, thigh and then knee.

At my knee I gasp and yank my hand back. My knee gives out and I almost fall, but catch myself on my bed. Oh yeah, my leg. I shift it, feeling the wrapping under my pants loosen a little bit.

Tucker and Sam had avoided talking about that particular detail and I hadn’t brought it up. Along with the odd tingly sensation, my leg’s been stiff, but I think I’ve hidden it well enough that my parents and Jazz haven’t noticed. Or maybe they just think I’m tired.

I lock my door and go to sit in front of my mirror. I slip my pants off and carefully remove my socks too as I’d worn them over the bandages, partially to hide them. I roll up my boxers until I see where it ends on my thigh.

I rip off the piece of medical tape and begin to unravel the binding, trying to keep my hands still as I grow more nervous the more I peel off. Whoever did this must’ve used up all of the freaking stuff because oh my. I think it just looks bad because of how much medical wrap they used. It’s fine.

I get to the skin. There’re dark green and purple bruises running up my leg. I push the bandages down and follow the lines, getting darker the closer to my foot I get. I grimace as I pull the bandages off of my knee, green stained fabric sticking slightly to skin that doesn’t just look weirdly burned, but…

I hold my breath as I peek under the wrapping at my shin and lower. Parts of my skin looks scraped, like someone tried to sharpen a knife on my leg. I look up at myself in the mirror and wrap my leg back up to my knee as quickly as I can with my hands shaking and my throat closing up.

How this is not incredibly painful is beyond me, but what’s even weirder is the fact that there’s… scar tissue and new, pink skin around the worst parts of it; it looks like it’d been healing for a long time, like I hadn’t just gotten this. I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure burns like this don’t heal in two days.

I lean back and stare at my mirror to get a better look at the parts of my leg that isn’t making me want to puke.

I follow the bruises going up my leg, past my underwear, up under my shirt. Crap, is this what’s so itchy? It’s not super bad, but it’s bad enough that I can’t ignore it and might scratch it by mistake.

I lift my shirt and feel my stomach drop.

It’s… what was it called? A Lichtenberg scar? Like what people get from getting struck by lightning. Green lightning arcs up my reddened skin. From my hip and up the bruising and redness fades, leaving just a ridiculous- and kind of badass- scar spreading up my side towards my shoulder. I gape at myself in the mirror.

How the hell am I going to hide this? Do I hide it? Should I?

I start to cover the rest of my leg up again. I can’t show anyone this; they’d freak out. They’d wanna know how and when I got it. Then they’d question why it’s healing so fast, why there’s green, why it does not hurt and how the hell I’m even still alive and running around when I just got electrocuted so bad it left a Lichtenberg scar all the way up to my abdomen.

No, I don’t want to scare anyone. If I tell my parents what happened it’ll be after I’m better, when they won’t just ignore everything I say and only pay attention to the fact that I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing, and that I got hurt doing it.

I slip my pants back on, my socks too, mindful all the while of my totally wrecked appendage.

I might never be able to tell them, though; my parents will always freak out, even if I tell them years from now they won’t just brush it off as some childhood story we can laugh about. It’ll be obvious it was something way worse than any watered-down version I might tell when they see how bad the scarring is.

“Oh god.” I falter, the bunched up fabric of my socks slipping out of my hand. Tiny, wrinkled, green ghosts stare up at me.

If I’m seeing the healed version of this what the heck did Sam and Tucker see?

I fall backwards onto the carpet. Why do I have the literal best friends in the universe? And how in the scorching depths of hell did they put up with this, and the puking and me passing out?

Θ

I lie still in my bed, keeping my breathing steady and low and my hands on my chest. My insides are cold, but I’m overheated and sweaty.

That feeling in my chest came back and will not go away and I’m sure I’ve been lying here for a long time. I can’t just ignore it and sleep because I’m afraid that I might… I dunno, turn into a freaking ghost again and my parents will burst into my room and see, and I don’t want to lock the door just in case.

Oh, how right I was to keep my bedroom door unlocked.

I make by far the weirdest noise I’ve ever heard, a blend of a drawn out gasp and a mute scream as I fall through my bed, through the floor and land on the kitchen table. For a split second I think the table might break but it holds, only clattering a napkin holder, salt and pepper shakers, and a few other miscellaneous things onto the floor.

I hold my breath and don’t bother moving, glaring at the ceiling as if it was the culprit and not my own stupid fault. Shoulda moved.

My back hits the freshly cleaned tile after I pass through the table as well a second later. I groan and roll over onto my stomach, rubbing at my back. The floor smells like fake lemons and dishsoap and it does not make things any better. In fact, it just pisses me off even more.

I wait for myself to phase yet again and to smack into concrete. When it doesn’t come I crawl out from the table, stand up and, purposely avoiding the clock and luminescent floor, leave to go back to my room.

I try not to take my anger out on the creaky stairs and pad lightly down the hall back to my room. The door is too loud opening, and my parents left their door open as usual but it doesn’t seem to wake them so I’m good.

It’s all still annoying though.

I shut my door with a small click and collapse back onto my bed.

S’all good. I just went downstairs for a drink. I totally walked down the stairs normally. Did not fall down there by accident in a one hundred percent impossible way. Because you can’t just go through solid objects like that.

My skin has cooled down but that just makes the cold in my chest seem worse somehow. When I rub my chest I can feel the annoying little ball of ice, like touching the door of a freezer. The cool seeps through and my body frustratingly refuses to shiver, as if it’s just used to it now.

It’s alien, but it still feels infuriatingly normal. It’s really obviously there, but at the same time it feels like if I stopped paying so much attention to it I could just… live with it. Ignore it.

But not right now. Right now it’s unusual and scary and annoying. It’s something I never asked for- okay, maybe I asked it for once when I was seven, but I didn’t mean this. If I ever asked for weird abilities it would’ve been something a little more controllable and fun.

Super speed. Pausing time. Flight. Inivisibility. Teleportation.

I don’t know, just anything that isn’t turning into a ghost and falling through things at unpredictable times. Something less what the heck and more awesome.

My thoughts are interrupted by that cold, not there feeling again and I suffer a shorter fall this time. I hit the ground, my head bounces off the carpet and my forehead smacks into the underside of my bed.

I groan and hold my head, kicking my legs around. I’m so exhausted.

Float on By

 I stare groggily up at the school as Jazz pulls up in her small, blue car. I was totally up for taking the bus or walking but mom was having none of it. She got Jazz to drive me and, of course, she talked the entire ride to school about oddly specific things, like joining clubs or sports teams, hinting that I need to, I dunno, get more friends or something.

We pull into the school parking lot. I close my eyes for a second, and then open them slowly.

When I got up this morning I noticed that my leg was even less messed up and no longer had that fuzzy, numb feeling. It still doesn’t hurt though. When I left the house I noticed something else that had me officially worried that I might be imagining everything weird that’s happened since Friday.

Dark, vaguely animal-like creatures ignoring the laws of physics glide through the air as if it were water, some internal light flickering as the blackness that is their bodies shift with movement. They don’t bother going around people or things, just go right through them as if they didn’t even exist.

I stare out the windshield at the school, stomach filling with dread.

Back towards FentonWorks, they’d only been shadows in the corner of my eye. The closer to school- or maybe the more I woke up- the more popped up, the more I saw.

I try to brush it all off as another side effect from exposure to ectoplasm, just like the glowing and falling through the floor.

Ugh, I thought- er, hoped that the side effects would stop, if you can even call them side effects. The more I think about it the more it sounds like I’m ignoring an actual problem.

I have a feeling today isn’t going to be the greatest as I step out of Jazz’s car and make my way as slowly as possible towards the building. Whatever, just a few hours and then I can go home and sleep. Or try to, if my brain will let me.

I stumble up the front steps and into the school, ignoring the creepy hallucinations the best I can while hoping that today can just go by fast and simple, with no screw-ups or odd powers- side effects acting up.

Sam and Tuck meet me at my locker, seemingly having decided not to talk about the accident or anything that had happened over the weekend, at least not in a crowded public space.

Instead they chatter away about usual things as if it were a regular day; new tech, a big crossover movie that Sam’s excited for, video games, the Halloween dance next month. I’m almost convinced that everything from Friday until now has just been all my imagination. Almost.

Seeing that I’m not exactly joining in, Tuck pulls me to the side of the hallway as we make our way to homeroom.

“So, um…” He begins, tense. “Has anything, you know, happened since yesterday?”

I don’t answer right away. “Mmm, not really.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asks.

“Nothing’s happened. I’m fine.”

“You’re fine?”

“Yup.”

Sam narrows her eyes.

Tucker taps his finger on the side of his cell phone and looks quizzically at me. “Nothing happened? At all? You sure, dude?”

“Yeah.” I stare at Tuck’s ugly sweater, and then the shadow thing gliding past on the other side of the hall. At least they’re putting a large amount of space between me and them.

Tucker and Sam look at each other, then down. It takes me a moment to realize what they’re about to ask.

It’s Sam who says it. “You’re… walking around pretty okay.”

“Yeh.”

“Why?”

The worst leg-related thing that I’ve had to deal with today was hiding my new limp. It’s not even because I’m in pain or anything, just that my leg is stiff. I can’t really bend my knee too far; it was harder to put on my socks than it should have been. Other than that, nothing’s wrong at all.

I open my mouth, unsure of what to say. Oh, don’t worry about me, I just healed super fast. Maybe I do have superpowers. Maybe I have superhealing.

I look down at my leg and then back up at them. “Because I’m fine.”

“We’re gonna need a little more than that, Danny.” Sam crosses her arms.

“I’m gonna be straight with you, man; your leg was pretty messed up.” Tucker seems like he’s forcing himself to tell me, as if saying it brings back terrible memories. “You… do you remember what went down?”

I remember ending up on the couch. I remember falling. I don’t remember much before that other than secondhand fear and feeling really far away. “No…?”

“It was bad.” Sam says quietly. “So why are you walking around like it never happened?”

“‘Cause I’m fine. Really, I feel okay. My leg doesn’t even hurt.” To prove this I lift my leg and shake it side to side. They give me skeptical looks.

“Seriously guys.” The warning bell goes off and I sigh. “Let’s go; we’re gonna be late.”

I lead the way to class since they don’t seem to want to move and we make it in time for the late bell.

 Θ

So far, the day is okay. I almost fall asleep in class, and frustratingly can’t write notes for a good twenty minutes because I can’t keep my pencil in my hand, but other than that everything is weirdly fine, a lot better than I thought it would be.

Until lunch that is.

We’ve barely sat down before I hear “Fenton!” being yelled from across the cafeteria. I don’t look, hoping that if I don’t respond Dash will just forget I’m even here. But of course, I chose wrong. I feel him grab my shirt from behind.

“Hey, Fen-toenail, I’m talkin’ to you.”

Sam raises her eyebrows at his butchered version of my last name. She leaps out of her seat and angrily yells “Hey!” when Dash yanks me up from my seat and drags me away by the collar of my shirt.

“Why don’t we have a nice, friendly chat, Fenton.” He says, not a question.

I look back long enough to see the other A-Listers blocking Sam and Tucker, preventing Sam from verbally destroying Dash like she typically does. He hauls me through the doors to the cafeteria and into the hallway, pushing me up against some lockers when we’re out of clear view from the lunch room.

I want to say something snarky but bite my tongue, knowing it’ll just get me into even bigger trouble if I say something stupid now. Instead I try to think of why he could be bullying me today. Bad grade? Got dumped? Something to do with football, maybe? Still too early in the year for anything; he’s probably just doing this for fun.

He sneers at me. “What should we do today, Fenton?” He spits my name out like saying it correctly puts a bad taste in his mouth.

He doesn’t give me time to answer, instead he rips open the nearest locker and begins to stuff me in it. Instinctively, I catch the sides of the locker and struggle against him, twisting myself so that my back is against Dash and my feet are on either side of the locker.

“Come on!” Dash growls. “Just go in-”

I flail my arms around and kick against the locker. I feel one of my hands collide with something. I hear a grunt and Dash say something very inappropriate.

Suddenly he lets go of me. I drop to the floor, a loose piece of paper on the floor catching under my foot when I try to break my fall and trips me forwards into the lockers. My right knee buckles and I drop with a small yelp. Dash grabs a fist full of my hair and yanks my head upwards, his face barely inches from mine.

I really want to tell him to go eff himself, but settle for the best glare I can muster.

“You think you can jus-…” He stops with wide eyes and stumbles backwards a step, letting me go. I guess best glare I can muster is pretty impressive.

I clutch my chest as the cold spark there prickles up my spine, fills my bones and makes my eyes burn. I slap my hands over my face before it even registers that that feeling is the same as when I’d phased and am shocked when my palms are lit by the green glow now coming off of my eyes.

I stagger to my feet, panicked. I don’t get the chance to make an escape, though, as I am abruptly being shoved down the hallway and into a janitor’s closet around the corner. The person pushing me propels me into the back wall and slams the door shut. I hear the click of the lock being set.

“I thought you said these- side effects stopped!” Sam hisses close to me.

“I didn’t, I-” I rub my eyes, attempting to rid them of that icy feeling and look up at Sam, face tinted green from my eyes. “I didn’t mean to!” I turn away. “It just happened and…”

“I know. It’s just that…” She sighs. “Dash could’ve seen something- probably did see something.”

“I can’t control it, Sam. It just happened.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I know.” She crosses her arms. “So it hasn’t stopped then?”

“…I guess not.”

After a moment of quiet, she says, “You know, you need to defend yourself, sometime.”

Thankful for the change in subject, I snort. “Have you seen Dash? He’s like, twice my size! And a football player. How am I supposed to defend myself from that?”

She contorts her face and doesn’t respond.

I know she’s been trying to convince Mr. Lancer and principal Ishiyama about the A-Lister’s bullying habits, but without any luck. The school is too sports obsessed to ever consider punishing their prized football players or cheerleaders and risk their chance at winning games, unfortunately for the nerds and losers of Casper High.

I slide to the ground and try to get a hold on the fluctuating cold spot in my chest. I’ve been doing good so far today; there’s no way I’m falling into the basement of the school- if it even has one. If it doesn’t, I’d phase into… whatever’s under the school. Dirt.

I rub my hands over my face, up through my hair and hook my hands behind my head, looking down at my knees. Try not to think about it.

Sam sits down too and pulls out her phone, probably to text Tucker to tell him to get over here from wherever he is right now. I try to ignore the tap tap tap of her nails on her phone and squeeze my eyes shut.

It can’t be that hard to just tell it to stop, but it doesn’t listen. The more I focus on caging the little ball of cold energy, the more it seems to grow and spread and just get stronger. My eyes flash open when Sam shakes my arm and I make a frustrated noise when the spot flips out of control, I brace myself for impact and in a flare of white light I’m-

Still in the closet.

Oh. Oh no.

“Gah!” Sam scoots back in alarm. “Shit, Danny!”

“I’m sorry!” I whisper-yell, trying not to be too loud. “I didn’t mean to!” My voice trembles behind the weird echo, more clear than it should’ve been with my face being covered by the-

-the gasmask. Crud. Oh damn. I had a little bit of hope that the other night had been the last time- if not a dream- but I was wrong and this is way worse than just falling through a floor.

I think I’m gonna be sick.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” She raises her hands in a placating gesture. “You just… scared me. Warn me next time, okay?”

“I barely have any warning, Sam! How am I supposed to tell if I’m gonna…” I search for the correct word, tugging at the hazmat I’m suddenly wearing again. I poke at the visor of the gasmask, a small, barely noticeable green smudge on it giving me something to place my irritation on.

“I don’t know.”

I look around the closet, now more visible in the soft light coming from me. It’s not too big, but it’s not small either. I know I’m looking for a distraction but I honestly need one right now or I may have a panic attack.

Sam’s sudden fear at me doing whatever the heck that was gives me more anxiety, negating the effects of staring at shelves of cleaning products and completely cancelling out her feigned calm. Her spike in unease makes me uncomfortable as neither of us are doing anything.

“What?” I ask, unable to stand it anymore.

“W-what do you mean?”

“…Am I freaking you out?” I say, quiet voice cracking. I clear my throat.

She swallows, looks me over once, then replies. “I’m just worried about you… and…”

“And what?”

“And you’re floating a little bit.”

“Floating a little bit…?” I stare in blank confusion for a few seconds before I look down at the floor- ignoring the fact that I don’t have a shadow- and notice that I am in fact hovering just over the floor. I breathe in through my teeth, which probably sounds like something out of a horror movie through to Sam. “What the heck? Why?”

I was wrong last night. I don’t think any powers or abilities or whatever are controllable.

Sam shakes her head. “Another side effect?” She doesn’t sound convinced in the least.

“Is it really just a side effect at this point, though?”

She chews her lip and doesn’t respond. I can sense her guilt along with the fear and I try to block it out as I begin to catch on to the fact that there’s an odd sense of satisfaction I get from being able to tell what’s she’s feeling. It makes me uneasy.

I blink when I notice I can hear someone come down the hallway and stop just outside the door. Well, less hear, more feel. Like clothes straight from the dryer sticking to you with static, along with that pressure against the inside of my ribcage- secondhand emotions. I stare at the door until they knock.

“Guys?”

Sam gives me a look, before going to answer it. It’s Tucker, I decide half from common sense, half from listening really hard. Like before, the sound of their voices are distorted, but I can sort of tell the difference between them by feeling for it. It’s not perfectly indistinguishable though; it’s like trying to tell the difference between two very similar cats- static-y cats, that shock you when you pet them.

It’s weird and scary, and I store that in the ever growing file of ‘What I’m Keeping to Myself Forever’.

Sam stands in front of the door for a sec, unlocks it and then opens it a crack. She mumbles something to Tucker and that feeling of anger outside the door turns into dismay.

I stare at my hands balled up on my legs. I’ve only had this happen once- twice, according to them- and I’m already way too tired of it. Actually tired, too- physically and emotionally tired of this ghost stuff.

This is super uncomfortable and it’s making me self-conscious. I’m all too aware of the detail that I am not entirely human right now; that I’m different enough you can see it. If I could erase the fact that I can apparently die on command from their memories and hide all of this from them, I would.

Sam moves out of the way to let Tuck in as I poke at the floor underneath me, right where I should be touching it, and closes and locks the door again.

“So,” He says slowly as he sits against the shelf across from me. “It’s not temporary is it?”

I frown, holding up my finger to see grime on the end of my white glove. Not touching the floor isn’t that bad.

“Is there, I dunno, a trigger or something?” He continues, furrowing his brow in thought and looking at nothing in particular. “Was it Dash, maybe? Or was it random…?”

“…I don’t know, I think it’s random?” I decide to answer. “There’s just this… cold feeling and then this happens.” I make a motion towards myself with my hand. I try to ignore their slight flinch and the flutter I get in my chest when I catch it. “And it happens too fast to warn you guys, so…”

“A cold feeling.” Tuck says.

“Yeah.”

I see his eyes flicker down and linger a little too long on the ground under me. He opens his mouth as if to inform me of my defiance of gravity, seems to think better of it, but opens his mouth again and says it anyways.

“You’re floating, dude.”

“I’m aware, Tucker.”

He tilts his head curiously and I can tell he’s going through all of the information he has from comic books, video games, and movies. I shift under his gaze and go to rub the back of my neck sheepishly, but remember I’m wearing a full on hazmat when my hand meets the hood instead of skin.

“Are you doing that? Like, on purpose?” He finally asks.

“What? Floating? No, I’m not.”

“Huh.”

Tucker seems a tiny bit more comfortable talking about this than Sam and I, or maybe it’s just him being a geek and loving having the chance to put his knowledge of superpowers to use- even if it probably won’t help, considering it’s all mostly “fake science said with enough confidence to actually convince people it’s real”, according to my parents.

“I’m still thinking,” He finally says, “That it’s maybe the half…” He trails off. I get the feeling he’s talking more to himself. “Or maybe getting shocked with that ectoplasm stuff gave you ghost-like powers, or made you yourself ghost-like, ‘cause it’s obvious that this,” he points at me, “isn’t going away any time soon, and you’re definitely not dead per se…”

He fades off making a confused face. Great, he’s stumped.

“Why don’t you just ask your parents, dude?”

“I thought we talked about this.”

“We did, but why don’t you just ask ‘em what ghosts are, exactly?” He shrugs. “You don’t have to tell them everything, just find out anything that might help explain what’s going on. If we understand what ectoplasm and ghosts are, maybe we can figure this out on our own?”

I wave a hand dismissively. “I’ll ask them later then, but if I’m gonna get a lecture on ghosts, you guys are too.”

I’ve sat through dad’s eager rambling too many times to actually be crazy enough to ask a ghost-related question in his presence- especially when there’s a good chance it’s a question they’ve already answered.

“We’ll all ask them tonight.” At my tired look he adds, “They’re ghost experts, Danny. If anyone knows what’s goin’ on- or could figure it out- it’s your parents, dude.”

Somehow, I doubt that even if we knew everything my parents did, we’d be able to figure this out. I find myself relenting anyways. “Yeah, I guess. We’ll go after school.”

We sit around in the closet discussing random stuff until the bell rings, signaling the end of lunch. Sam and Tucker give each other uncertain looks.

“You guys don’t have to stay.” I say as I start to float higher. “I can just stick around here-”

 “By yourself?” Sam interrupts. “No. We’re not leaving you to deal with this alone.”

I lift my hands above my head and scowl as they bump the ceiling. I push against the ceiling and drift back down to the floor, legs still crossed. I bet this is what it’s like being in space. I can’t help the small grin.

“You’ll be late for class.”

“So will you.” Sam counters.

“We’re staying.” Tuck leans back on his hands comfortably, as if to say there’s nothing I can do about it.

I stiffen and spread my arms out as I lose balance and start to spin upside down. “Darn it,” I grumble, starting to move towards the ceiling again. My back touches the ceiling. I give up on staying near the ground with an aggravated noise in my throat. I’m lying on the ceiling. Don’t get to say that every day.

Tucker smirks. “Hangin’ out on the ceiling again?”

“Shut up.”

“Just don’t hurt yourself this time.”

I glower down at him.

“Flying… heh.” He smiles, knowing exactly what he’s saying. “Ya feel like an astronaut up there?”

I laugh, and it seems to dispel the nervousness. Flying.

“Yeah, actually. It’s weird; I can’t really feel gravity right now. It’s trippy.” I place my hands on the ceiling behind me and push, rotating into a sitting position. “It looks like you guys are on the ceiling.” I point out.

“Hate to break it to ya,” Sam leans back as well to get a better look up at me.

I fake laugh, and push off from the ceiling again, twisting mid air and spreading out my legs to land on the ground. Maybe flying is more manageable than I thought. Or maybe not; I am using the floor and ceiling to move around. Still better than falling though.

“Hey, I think I’m getting the hang of this.” I say as I stay on the ground for a few seconds before beginning to float upwards against my will again. “Oh no.”

Instead of stopping myself, my hand goes straight through the ceiling and I continue floating up past it. Sam and Tucker yell incoherently after me. To my utter horror, I go right through a second floor classroom and stare at the room full of students all wearing wide-eyed expressions matching my own as I float on by.

I slap my hand over my face- er, mask when I disappear through the ceiling and hear the entire room blow up as the class flips out. I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry, so I decide to do neither for now and take a crack at stopping my skyward descent.

I will definitely hear about this later.

I finally come to a reeling stop a few meters above the roof. As if swimming in water and not floating through the air, I windmill my arms and kick my legs to right myself. I try to remember all those videos of astronauts navigating zero gravity; this is a lot harder than it looked on those. Then again, zero g is falling around the earth, whereas I’m… floating.

“Whoa,” I breathe, worn out. Whatever I’m doing, it’s a lot more tiring than it looks. “There we go.”

I unintentionally lean to the side, causing me to move in that direction. I try to course correct and drift around in a small circle. Okay, so, leaning apparently equals moving. Now I just need to figure out how to descend.

Only problem; I’m not quite sure how to go down.

The class below me seems to have calmed down finally, however there’s probably no learning going on down there right now. I don’t let myself think about the fact that I’m flying- or can tell what the class below me is up to- but it’s difficult. I attempt to focus on other things instead.

Like the view from up here. I can see the Nasty Burger sign, and the ops center looking like a UFO in the distance. The world looks different from above. I’m level with some birds and weird hallucination-y creatures flying above the houses near the school, which is kind of weird. It’s all weird, everything about this situation right now. Flight.

I shake my head. No, don’t think about it. Think about… going down. Yeah, think about gravity.

I look down at the roof of the school, those little rocks that I’d never seen up close before scattered all over the place. I never knew why they covered the top of the school in rocks; it’s always been a mystery to me. I think about touching my feet down on those.

Nothing happens.

I wave my arms in circles, spinning myself upside down again and kick my feet out, getting a little momentum. I feel my cheeks burn when I realize how stupid I must look, but continue swimming mid-air until my fingers brush the roof. I feel myself slowly start to float back up as my fingertips bump against the roof, rocks shifting under my hands. I realize with annoyance that the only thing I can grip to pull myself down is a bunch of loose rocks and turn right side up again.

I throw a rock I’d caught in my hand and watch it soar over the edge of the roof. I just barely hear it clack against the pavement somewhere below. I cross my arms and look around, a bit flustered. How am I supposed to get down? I just had to go and phase through stuff while uncontrollably floating up into the damn sky.

I breathe in deeply to calm myself. I sit on my knees in the air and rub my hands back and forth over my thighs, wincing when the action only sends pins and needles down my right leg, my left seeming hypersensitive compared to it. I bite my lip a little too hard and ball my hands into fists.

I take a couple more breaths, and then stare pointedly at the glass in front of my face, thinking over my options- er, one option, actually. I’ll just have to sit until I can get down. Or… change back?

At least my legs won’t fall asleep. Great job keeping a positive attitude, Fenton.

Scratch that. I need to get down now.

My single option almost visibly slips through my gloved fingers when I see the GAV round the corner well over the speed limit and barely keeping to the right side of the road. Dad must be driving.

A brief summary of all of mom and dad’s smaller projects, what they’re supposed to do, flashes through my mind as they screech to a halt in front of the school. Smaller, unimportant inventions that I can only see as weapons now. How did I ever see those as anything but a weapon?

Mom jumps out of the passenger side. I panic and press myself against the roof, trying to hide-

Wait a minute.

I’m back on the ground- er, roof? How- when did I-

Whatever, I can’t let my parents find me; they’ll think I’m an actual ghost.

Oh my god.

Horror fills up my chest as I realize- they’d never give up if they saw me. They’ve never even seen a ghost before, and if they see me I don’t know what they’ll do, but they won’t just let me go. There’s no way they’d let the first ghost they come in contact with just leave- if they don’t recognize me that is. Which they probably won’t with my face all covered up.

I sprint to the far side of the roof and peer over the edge. No one’s around; everyone’s in class. I could just fly down if I could find a way to control it, meet back up with Sam and Tuck, pretend everything’s perfectly normal if- or when- I run into my parents.

I can feel excitement and anticipation buzzing in the air, crawling up into my chest, and decide I don’t really have time for thinking about it, or daydreaming about acting as if things are alright. I jump up once, but am disappointed to find my feet hitting the rocks. My ankle gives and I almost fall over. I get my balance, and then jump again. No dice.

Come on, come on cold spot. I shut my eyes and focus everything on that thing.

Pulling mentally at that cold energy in my chest, trying to duplicate that feeling I felt just a minute ago, I jump once more and cry out in delight when I don’t fall back down, but start going up as if Earth’s gravity isn’t strong enough all of a sudden.

Before I can float higher, I reach down, grab the edge of the roof, and propel myself over the edge. My stomach drops out from under me and I make a prolonged whining noise, shocked at the nerve- or really, lack of thought that went into that action.

Trying not to freak out, I do a somersault so I’m rightside-up and float down from the momentum of tossing myself at the ground. I tap the brick wall every time I start to slow down. It takes a couple minutes, but I reach the ground, let out a breath as I plant my feet firmly in the grass, and look around.

Okay, now that I’m finally grounded again, I can… I can…

I’m not sure, I just didn’t want to be on the roof, in all honesty. Now that I’m on the ground, though, I feel even more vulnerable. At least on the roof it’d be about a hundred times harder to get caught chilling like… this.

A little part of me is telling me to flee up. In no specific direction, just go up.

Humans don’t look up. Like an intrusive thought, a little voice in the back of my head urges me. They won’t see me there.

I look up at some birds flying by; I suppose I can see the point of that. Even if someone did see me, they would assume they were seeing some kind of bird or something. But I’m dealing with my parents, who totally would see a UFO and go, “Oh jeez, that’s probably a ghost!”. At least dad would.

I make my way around the edge of the school, ducking under windows when I come across them. I don’t know where Sam and Tucker ran off to- if they even left the janitor’s closet- and I don’t think my cell phone is in this hazmat, so I might have to just ditch school all together.

Oh jeez, I’m gonna be in so much trouble later. On top of this… weirdness, I’m going to get detention and be grounded, all on my second week of high school.

I cut through the football field, gliding a little more than half the time, and hide under the bleachers. It smells like cigarette smoke but no one seems to be around so I just stand there, shaking my hands and worrying over what I’m going to do.

Last night it took me over an hour to change back, this time it could take even longer. Who knows, maybe I won’t even change back this time. Maybe this time it’s permanent.

I shut my eyes tight and focus on taking all the cold in my body and bundling it back up into that ball in my center. I just want to try to handle that first, and then I’ll agonize over whether or not I’m-

I curl and uncurl my fingers repeatedly, take deep breaths, do anything to direct all of my concentration on changing back, and not whether or not I can. For all I know, there’s a really simple way to do it and I just have to figure it out. I’m probably worrying over nothing.

I pace the length of the bleachers a few times, slipping up whenever my feet decide they no longer feel like being solid. I stop in my original spot and rub the place where the cold is, urging it to just let me take a break from this, because the longer I’m- I’m a ghost the longer I have time to think about how this is apparently real.

I sigh in relief when I feel my body warm slightly, the cold retreating back into its little cocoon in my chest. My skin tingles as that light sparks over my body, leaving regular, old me. I check myself over to make sure I’m not glowing or floating or anything before leaving the shade of the bleachers. I stroll back over to the school as casually as a fourteen year old can when they’re chilling in the druggie’s hideout during school hours.

The GAV is still parked at the front of the school with one tire up on the curb, but my parents are nowhere to be seen. Despite no longer being a ghost, I put a large distance between myself and the GAV as I hunch my shoulders and hurry towards the front doors. I head inside and nonchalantly make my way back towards the closet where I’d left my friends.

I run into them when I turn a corner not even half way there.

“Ah!” Tucker gasps jumping backwards into Sam. I react similarly. “Danny! Where have you been?”

“Oh, well,” I rub the back of my neck, no resistance from a hood this time. “I was kind of stuck for a while…” I look awkwardly up at the ceiling briefly. “I hid out by the bleachers ‘til I, uh, changed back…?” I don’t try to hide the uncertainty in my voice.

“You’ve been missing for like, an hour!”

“Well, actually, it’s only been like, twenty-five minutes, ‘bout forty if we’re going off the late bell-” Tucker tries to say, blinking at his phone in his hand, but Sam bulldozes over him.

“Your parents came in earlier and are looking for you,” She says. “Something about a family emergency?”

I let out a breath. Of course that’s the reason they’re here.    “Yeah, I saw them drive up…”

“We told them you were feeling sick and disappeared around lunch.” Tuck slides his finger across his phone’s screen, stares for a second, and then continues. “You should probably call them.” He looks back at me, wincing. “Sorry by the way; we didn’t know what to tell them when we ran into them. Our excuse was kind of lame.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Just tell them you were feeling sick, went outside and lost track of time.” Sam offers with a confidence I really wish I had.

“Thanks, guys.” I say before pulling out my phone and immediately realizing that my parents don’t have cell phones.

My shoulders drop and I roll my eyes, putting my phone away. “They don’t have phones with them… whatever, I’ll just go to the office.” I turn to go to my locker to get my stuff. “See you guys later, I guess. Sorry for making you skip class.”

“You didn’t make us do anything.”

Sam agrees. “Yeah, we chose to stay. We’re involved in this too, Danny.” Then she adds, as if just remembering it, “Make sure to ask about ghosts when you can.”

“Yeah, yeah. See you later.”

Tucker shoves his hands, along with his phone, into his pockets and leans towards me as I start to go. “And call us, later; we’re talking about this!”

I smile at him, trying to make it seem genuine, and hoping the open-ended answer satisfies him. It does; I can feel it behind my ribcage. It takes everything in my power not to rub that spot.

We wave goodbye and after retrieving my backpack from my locker I go to the front office. As soon as I walk in the secretary sees me and picks up a landline, clicking four numbers excruciatingly slowly as she starts scolding me, of all things.

I ignore her, not having the energy to deal with more than my parents. I half listen to what she says when I hear her mention them, who are apparently with Mr. Lancer in his next class’s room, discussing things- aka, me skipping class.

The secretary is cut off by Lancer picking up on the other end. Without the secretary talking to me, I take a seat in one of the scratchy old office chairs. When my parents come into the front office a couple minutes later, decked out in their brightly coloured hazmats and disappointment, and demand answers, I give them the excuse Sam had told me to.

“I… was feeling gross, so I went to get some air and… lost… track… of time?” My hand itches to pick at the back of my head and I’m sure they’re going to call me out on my sort-of-lie, but to my surprise they take it.

Mom takes my chin and studies my face while dad signs me out. “Mmm, you are looking a little pale. We just need to get your sister and then you can go home and rest for a bit, okay?”

I nod and keep a neutral expression. Why are they even here?

They sign Jazz out too and we go home. My mom drives this time knowing that dad’s driving would probably make someone in the car sick, even if we were all completely healthy. Though I suppose none of us are actually sick, I’m mostly pretending now, but still.

When we get home my parents bounce excitedly up the front steps, concern for me being sick an afterthought now. I suddenly have a feeling I might know why they picked us up early today. I bite my lip when they lead us into the kitchen, but don’t sit us down at the table.

“Danny, sweetie,” Mom starts, “Don’t worry about not checking in on the portal while we were gone. It’s a shame that none of us were here, but…” I can tell she’s trying not to be giddy over this, but if she was I wouldn’t blame her; they’ve been working on this for like, twenty years.

I blink, hopefully looking as confused as I would have been had I not already known what she was talking about.

“Well, since we haven’t worked on the portal since last week we decided to monitor it today while working on some other projects of ours-”

“The Specter Speeder,” Dad chimes in.

“-and when we checked on it we found that the portal had activated and appears fully functional at the moment! Isn’t that amazing?”

“I threw a mug in it!” Dad adds, helpfully. Mom nods along with this animatedly, and I can tell she wants to say every reason why that’s so thrilling.

“You pulled us out of school because your hot-tub turned on by itself?” Jazz complains, monotone. “I know this is a big achievement for you guys- and I’m happy for you, really-“

I snort behind her and turn it into a fake cough.

“-but couldn’t you have just told us when we got home?”

“What are you talking about, Jazzy-pants?” Dad grins largely. “We thought we could get you two to help us run some experiments, just like old times! Check out what’s in there!”

“Wait, so,” I backtrack. “Your portal is working? Like, actually a portal into another dimension?” I knew it changed, was glowing and stuff, but- it’s working?

“Yep!” Dad stands proudly and throws open the door to the basement. “We were gonna run some tests right now!” When Jazz and I stare stupidly at him he includes, “With you helping of course! We didn’t want to leave you two out of this!”

“We finally have the opportunity to obtain fresh and large samples of pure ectoplasm!” Mom tacks on. “This could lead to huge discoveries- including that of real manifested ghosts! We actually have access to an unlimited supply to study in-depth! No more nitpicking our projects!”

I smile awkwardly.

“Look, mom, dad,” Jazz folds her arms across her chest. “This is great, it’s a big step in… your field of science, but I have classes, and Danny’s social life is clearly lacking without you barging into Casper High and embarrassing him in front of his peers.”

Jazz starts off on one of her psychology rants about my low mental health and how their crazy obsession somehow worsens that- I’m not exactly denying anything; I’m got on Dash’s Top Ten Best Nerds to Bully list for a reason. I block her voice out, throwing my backpack into the front hall and pull out my cell to look busy.

I look back up at my name.

“…Danny is an impressionable child and it’s not right for you to force these kinds of things on him. You should try to talk to him about school more.”

I clear my throat to interrupt her but she bowls right over me. What she’s saying doesn’t even make any sense, though in her defense my brain is probably filling in the blanks of what I’m blocking out with weird stuff she would say.

I look at mom, dad being the one taking the brunt of Jazz’s lecture, and smile sympathetically. “Can I come down later? This is cool but… I kinda wanna sleep right now.” Then I say quickly, “I’m still not feeling too great.”

“Of course, honey.” She places her hand on my forehead and frowns. “You still feel cold; why don’t you take that nice hot bath now?” When I shrug, mom holds my face in her hands. “Alright, I’ll come wake you up around dinner time. You can even stay home tomorrow if you’re still not feeling well, okay?”

I can hear to silent “-and you can help us run experiments!”

“Okay.”

“You can get Tucker to bring over your homework.”

“A’ight.” I leave the kitchen, grab my bag, and run up the stairs.

This day turned out better than expected. I smile genuinely. At last, the comfort of sleep is at my fingertips.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 29.10.2017

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Widmung:
DP rewrite, because I got bored while on vacation without internet (July 2016). Also posted to AO3 by the same name, & maybe FF.net at some point in the future. A great majority of the stuff that happens in this had a ton of research put into it, but this is a fanfiction, so there's bound to be mistakes - this is my disclaimer. 'Phantom' has been rearranged & edited A Lot, & only the most recent chapters were made to actually be chapters so everything up until chapter 12 is probably awkwardly organized. one more thing: there's a lot of HCs & stuff - ghostspeak being one of them (i used Cordria's GhostSpeak which you can find on her tumblr, & in the future i may mix in a bit of Esperanto & Trigedasleng). I also squeezed in at the last moment GhostFiish's sideways portal - AKA, the hot-tub portal, because i really like the idea.