Soon enough I was left to my thoughts, which soon escalated to some strange mixture of racing thoughts and dissociation.
‘I should try to ground myself.’ I stated internally hoping to break through the haze that seemed to disconnect my mind from my body.
‘My name is Orion. I am.. wait how old am I?’
’11.’
‘No, I am an adult.’
’15?’
‘Not even close, I’m in my twenties, right? Thirties?’
‘I vaguely remember having a sixtieth birthday but there’s no way I am that old… maybe that was a dream.’
‘I think we have a problem.’ κ
‘this isn’t a problem.’
‘are you sure?’ κ
“There’s definitely worse things than not knowing how old we are.”
‘My name is Orion. I am old enough to drink alcoholic beverages? Yeah that makes sense or at least as close as I’m getting for now. I am on my way home from work. The weather is pretty clear today.’
‘Let’s start with some facts. Hmm.. let’s see..
Today is January 7th, year 52, whoops, I mean year 53.
From what I am told I died in an accident on December 31st and completely missed enjoying my own birthday.
Yesterday was the 6th, I feel like it was a holiday or something…’
I pulled out my phone and searched to see what it was.
‘So, it’s the celebration of the Lucidians first major contact with Earth. It’s also that holiday were people take down Christmas tree’s and stuff I think.’ I tapped Lucidians which was hyperlinked to another page. ‘I should probably make sure I have a general knowledge about this’ I paused trying to justify my urge to get lost in the pages of the internet encyclopedia and distract myself from what I was supposed to be doing. Not that I was really supposed to do anything; but it sure did feel like I had tasks waiting for me.
‘Lucidians are native or decedents from Lucid...’ I skimmed the page then tapped Lucid.
‘Of Earth’s three moons, only two of them were inhabited by life Lucid and □□□□, the font’s not loading again. ...which now comprise approximately one third and one fourth of the current population. There rest of the population consists of humans which are a third and the remaining classify themselves as non-human or other.’ I paused internally.
‘Now that I think about it, what am I considered now?’
‘??????’ My feet seemed to jerk to a halt.
‘something feels off’
‘why did my legs stop moving?’
I looked up and around, I seemed to be in the right place, but I couldn’t recognize it. It was taking too long for me to process. I probably stood there for a good five or ten minutes before I could even bring myself to move.
“Wait a second.” I squinted my eyes trying to focus on anything I could. “Where’d my house go?” I looked around but all I could really see was the foundation of where my house was supposed to be. When I walked ‘inside’, faint outlines and static like remnants of my house flickered in my vision. Parts of the house still cast shadows on the tree next to it, but slowly those remnants began to dissolve away with everything else. It resembled almost perfectly the static up on the surface. “Well, I wanted to do some remodeling… But I think this is a bit drastic.”
I was afraid that I would be angry, but I ended up not feeling anything at all. I laid down on my back and looked up at the sky. I let out a small laugh. “a sky light would be nice actually.” I reached out at the sky noting the outline of my own hand, it seemed so different and yet so familiar. If nothing else I did look a lot healthier then I was beginning to look before, so I tried not to let it bother me.
A distant voice cut the silence, “This seems to be the area most affected.” I looked over to see the hazy outline of a person seeming to rise from the ground. “Hey,” they said looking at me. “Are you alright?”
“Not really…” I started. “My house disappeared… There’s a ghost coming out of the ground.” I sat up. “But I’ll be fine”
“I fail to see this ghost you mentioned.” They clearly had no self-awareness of how bizarre phasing through the ground was but I wasn’t about to point it out. “You’re supposed to be dead!” She yelled at me.
“I know.” Back to the lab it is then.
“But you’re alive!”
“I am aware of that fact.” I feel like I’ve had enough for one day. I took the sort cut to the lab.
“But you’re supposed to be dead!”
“You said that already.” I sighed swiping my key card at the back entrance.
“The entire dimensional strata of this sector is falling apart because of you! Are you listening to me!?” She continued to yell at me all the way to Freyaa’s office. “You need to exist elsewhere! You aren’t supposed to be stuck here! Why aren’t you talking!?”
“I didn’t cause this you know.” I pointed to Freyaa who was about to own up to her mistakes whether she liked it or not. “Please redirect your anger here.”
“YOU!” The Ethereal being yelled.
Shiro walked up next to me after hearing the commotion. “Who’s the ghost?” He asked.
“I dunno.” I replied flatly.
“THIS IS YOUR FAULT!” The ghost girl screamed at Freyaa.
“WHAT!?” Freyaa screamed back pulling out a knife, “HOW DARE YOU QUESTION ME!”
She tossed the knife which phased through the girl and hit me square in the forehead. “Freyaa… Got out the knives.” I slowly tried to remove the knife from my forehead and motioned for Shiro to follow me out of the room. ‘Freyaa can handle this on her own, it would be much safer for us to get out of here.’ I whispered to him and he nodded in agreement.
“Where are we going now?” He questioned clearly happy to be in my company once more.
“Library.” I managed to spit out as I pressed against the wound on my forehead which closed just as quickly as my neck had healed. It didn’t seem to work well for superficial injuries but anything that would’ve killed me seems to heal almost instantaneously. ‘that paper cut I got before cleared up too. Neat.’
Comments (2)
See all