by Jenica Saren
So, maybe making a promise to myself wasn't the best idea I'd ever had, but it was the best I could think of. It's not exactly motivating to say "maybe" in a pep talk, even to yourself.
Taking a deep, calming breath, I tried to pull my focus to the task at hand. The time for inner idle chit-chat was over and the time for magickal action was on the rise.
Closing my eyes, I recalled my grandmother's voice repeating the incantation and drilling it into my head.
"Spirit of the Earth, Spirit of the Seas, Spirit of the Skies, Spirit of the Flames, Spirit of All That Be: I ask that you grant me courage, strength, resilience, and power to do the things that my will asks of me," I chanted almost robotically. It was like stiffly reading the words off of a teleprompter in my brain, but with really bad eyesight. "I thank you now for anything you're able to offer me in this journey that I find myself ready to embark upon. With harm to none, my will be done. Blessed be."
As I finished up the opening words to the ritual, the white candle that I held tightly flared to life with a brilliant blue flame. Was that supposed to happen? Was it supposed to be blue? I had no time to ponder it.
Shutting my eyes, I took several deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling the spicy and sweet aroma of the burning herbs around the room. "Guardians of the veil, protectors of life after living, I beg that you grant me entrance to your realm to converse with the souls of my departed ancestors."
What sounded like the dull sound of echoing thunder boomed around the concrete walls of the basement, sending a chill up my spine that I hoped was actually a good omen and not a deadly one.
Several soothing and smoke-filled breaths later, I imagined a small silver thread and envisioned that it lead through a small portal that resembled an illuminated, glowing mirror. Once I had a hold on the thread, I gave one sharp tug in my mind and waited for what my grandmother had described as the sound of a small bell. Once I heard it chime, I breathed out a heavy sigh of relief.
I was as good as in.
But this was where the ritual got tricky. Following the thread meant passing through the veil itself, which would allow me entrance as I had asked. The veil had responded and allowed me entry, but that didn't mean that I was strong enough on my own to make it through. There was always the solid chance that I wouldn't make it. That one big chance.
And that was the nice way of saying that my soul would be torn to shreds and thrust into the nether for all eternity.
Shoving the horrifying thought from my mind, I grabbed onto the thread before I could overthink anything and allowed myself to be pulled through the veil. The pain was unlike anything I had ever imagined.
Instantly, I knew that I'd made a mistake.
A Fortnight or Something After I Kind of Died
There were perks to being dead.
Okay, to be fair, I wasn’t actually dead. Or maybe I was, I couldn't be sure. I'd never been dead before. Anyway, back to the perks.
One was that if I focused, I could still do corporeal things, but it took a whole shit ton of energy out of me. I could touch people. I could appear if I wanted to. I could go on living life as usual, to an extent.
There were also huge cons to the whole "not living" thing, too.
One of those many, many downsides was that I couldn't eat. No sandwiches for this girl, no matter how badly I wanted them. Also, I couldn't go back to my house because of the warding that was around the Syntyche land. That probably sucked the most. I didn't even have a way of telling anyone that my body was probably lying around somewhere in my basement rotting.
All of those movies about ghosts and spirits lied when they portrayed the dead being able to manipulate cell phones and shit, too, which was an even bigger bummer because I really wanted to see Whitney and probably cry a whole bunch. I fucked up and I knew it, but that didn't make the pill any easier to swallow, especially when I was more alone than I had ever felt in my entire life.
I wanted my mom, my grandma, my best friend. Hell, I'd just about give my right arm just to talk to Marcia's obnoxious ass again.
Another of those downsides was that I wasn't on the other side of the veil, I hadn't moved on, so there was no way for me to find my family or see if they were on the other side in the first place. I was just stuck. And I couldn't wander for too long, either, which was something I'd definitely never known before.
After a certain point, my energy depleted and I felt - and looked - as though I were both fading and rotting. It was pretty fucking gross, if I was totally honest.
Well, when that happened I usually had two options: I could either let myself deteriorate and feel like crap until it happened and I faded into the great unknown, or I could just sort of hitch a ride in someone else's body.
It's not really how it sounds, I wasn't possessing anyone or anything like that, as fun as that would be. It felt entirely too invasive to me and I couldn't help thinking that I wouldn't appreciate it if someone did it to me when my feet actually touched the ground.
Wow, that floating girl joke was suddenly biting me in the ass so hard.
Unfortunately for me, today seemed to be one of those days that I needed a quick recharge or extra life, however you wanted to look at it. That meant I needed to just kind of jump into someone's subconscious. It still made things a little weird, but I'd managed to help a couple people out of sticky situations by pretending to be the angel or devil on their shoulder. So, act of kindness out of necessity? Maybe? I wasn't just going to hang out in someone's head and let them mess shit up.
Seriously, I couldn't fathom how some people let themselves say and do some of the shit they did. It was stupidity on a whole other level.
Was I that stupid in life?
The rational part of my brain was screaming yes, since I was obviously stupid enough to get myself stuck in this weird in-between plane of existence. However, the more emotional and female side of me was saying I was certainly never that stupid in life. Just really unlucky, mostly in the footwork department.
As I wandered around the park, meandering about and searching for someone to hitch a ride with, I couldn't help but succumb to the almost devastating sense of loneliness that occasionally reared its hideous head. That was another way I knew I wasn't actually dead; I couldn't see any other ghosts mulling about.
What little I did know about spirits that lingered in the between, was that they could interact with one another, but I'd seen a grand total of zero since I'd "died" and that brought my level of conversational interaction to a whopping zero. So, yeah, maybe that gave me a free pass to sulk a little bit and wallow in self-pity a lot.
But only when I wasn't, you know, deteriorating. Because that sucked.
So, remembering that I needed to hitchhike my way to a better, healthier, less dead ghost thing, I squared my shoulders and squashed down any lingering sense of internal devastation. I had people's brains to sleep in, dammit.
Several hours later, I found myself still wandering about, only now finding myself trailing alongside people on the darkening sidewalks as they contemplated which bars and clubs sounded more fun to them. The sun was setting and it was setting me on edge that I'd still found no one to sort of inhabit for a while.
Well, that wasn't exactly true.
I'd found a couple of people who seemed to have their barriers low enough to hop in, but their thoughts made me want to actually kill myself all over again. Depressed people were one thing, but then there were some who were essentially energy vampires. The ones who sapped every ounce of your energy and happiness with their constant negativity and whining. Trust me when I say that I can handle boosting up someone in a rut any time, I was always willing to lend a hand to those who needed it. But some people just liked to be miserable for the sake of being miserable.
And, in turn, that made everyone around - or in - them feel like shit.
So, I'd chosen to politely decline their not-extended non-invitation and move on until I found someone else.
Usually, when it was this
late and people were simple mulling about, at peace with their lives and pretty damn intoxicated, it was easy enough to jump in, since their barriers were automatically lowered. Tonight, however, everyone seemed to be especially resistant to outside forces and energies. Like ghosts. It was odd to see, given the fact that it was never this way, not once in my two weeks of being dead-not-dead.
Sighing in frustration and kicking at a rock, I focused hard enough that it skittered a short ways before knocking into a tall, grumpy-looking woman's apparently expensive shoes if her shrill shriek was anything to judge by. Which, it was. According to her, whoever kicked a rock at her shoes was going to pay for a new pair. Heh.
In your dreams, stuck up twat.
Ignoring the still fuming C-U-Next-Tuesday, I moved on through the crowd, thinking that maybe it would be fun and perk me up a bit to hang out in one of the bars. Still being a month away from being twenty-one, I'd never actually been inside a bar - not that I was goody-goody or anything, but I just didn't see the point in hanging around a shit tonne of alcohol that I couldn't legally touch.
But hey, people watching was way more fun when you couldn't be caught staring.
Sliding inside this bar that really looked like the kind of place a twenty-year-old blonde girl shouldn't be, I took a quick inventory of the barflies. Mostly, it was rugged and scary looking older men, but there were also a few women scattered about in various fashions. Some were dressed to the nines, some were decked out in leather that shouldn't have been allowed out in public, and some were in just plain street clothes.
Aside from the motley mix of people in the crowded bar, it seemed like a very relaxing place. Then again, it was hard to pick up on the atmosphere when you couldn't feel it. Leisurely, I moved through the crowd, trying to be careful not to touch anyone and freak them out with that weird paranoid chill that seemed to happen when I came into contact with a living soul. While I'd done some good, I'd also kind of blown up a few potential hook-ups and relationships.
Sceptics weren't kidding when they said that humans were easily manipulated. Not that I was doing it on purpose, since I hadn't known my touch made people paranoid. That was all a lot of trial and error. Mostly error.
With that said, manoeuvring through the crowd and not touching everyone when you're incorporeal was a lot harder than it sounded. I'd ended up backing into a really terrifying beast of a man who whirled around and decked the guy behind him. Oopsie. Lucky for the other people in the bar, I managed through the rest of the crowd without another incident. Sucked for that one guy's face, though, so I supposed if I was physical, I would and should have apologised.
Once at the bar, I took a seat on one of the barstools and looked up and down the bar at everyone seated there. Some were all alone, seeming to drink away their sadness and bitterness, but many were in groups and conversed among themselves about everything ranging from sports to fashion shows - that was a group of really mean-looking guys, so you can imagine my surprise at the conversational topic of choice. Then again, who was I to judge? I was dead, after all.
Or not dead.
If I ever encountered another soul in this bizarre purgatory I was stuck in, I'd really have to clear up that whole dilemma because I was really confused...
As the living chatted and enjoyed their lives, I pretended that maybe I was part of the groups. In life, I hadn't been particularly social, it just wasn't my thing. But there was something about being untouchable that seemed to lift the anxiety and nervousness right off my shoulders. People conversed, talking about everything under the sun and bouncing from topic to topic, all while I listened in and pretended they were including me in these broad discussions. I nodded and shook my head at the most ridiculous things and laughed as loud as I wanted to without being stared at weirdly. When I contributed to the conversations, no one really responded, but that was okay because they were all laughing for no reason anyway, drunk out of their minds.
It was fun, I'll admit. For a moment or five, my loneliness ebbed away, my desperation at the very back of my mind, and my anxious thoughts tucked away, tail between their legs. Maybe it was crazy to be happy about not being seen or heard, but it felt good to just be myself for a short while and not have to worry about getting any strange looks or being shoved out.
Maybe that meant I was sexually a voyeur. It wouldn't surprise me at this point.
However, it was mildly depressing that I had to, you know, sort of die-not-die to start learning anything about myself. Now, if only I had someone to share those realisations with.
Sighing, I turned my attention away from my group of unwitting friends and searched the bar for someone with a lower barrier than the rest. Everyone has a natural barrier, just like everyone possesses at least minuscule amounts of magick power. That's just how it was. Some people, depending on their mood or the amount of magick they had, could have stronger, fuller barriers. The stronger they were, the harder it was for things like me to get in, which sucked big ones, since I really needed to recharge for a little while.
Down toward the end of the bar was a young woman, maybe early twenties, but definitely old enough to drink. She was sipping on her drink with a kind of laser focus as a guy behind her chatted endlessly. Her barriers were about halfway down, probably because she was irritable, so I figured I could knock out two birds with one stone; I could recharge in her subconscious while also giving her the nudge to tell that douche to go fuck himself with a hot curling iron. Wow, that went dark really fast.
Anyway, as I watched the creepy guy edge closer and prepare to touch her, I readied myself by going to float on top of the bar and getting ready to lunge. Unfortunately for my very unathletic ass, jumping into someone seemed to require a solid running start. I never liked running. Or jogging. Or moving. Steeling myself and rolling my shoulders pointlessly, I crouched down and got ready to pounce.
Three.
Two.
One.
On the count of one, I started for the girl. I was about three feet away from her when a tall, muscular man leaned over the bar.
I was left without time to slow down or stop, my moment carrying me forward even without any actual weight behind me. The laws of physics would have some explaining to do one day, but that day wouldn't be today.
Not being able to stop in time, I tumbled forward and fucking tripped into the body of a man who was assuredly not my target.
Shit.
Breakfast with The Guy Whose Brain I’m in
For the first time in two damn weeks, I had a headache. A fucking headache. As a dead-not-dead person.
If that wasn't karma being a bitch, I didn't know what was.
Somehow, the force of tumbling into this guy seemed to have knocked my metaphysical ass unconscious for a pretty good amount of time, since it was light outside from what I could see from my host's closed eyelids. Let me tell you, being in a sleeping person's head is the weirdest fucking thing. Of course, I had the option to meander around in their dreams or something, but that felt like I was invading their personal space.
I mentally snorted. Like literally setting up camp in people's heads wasn't invading their personal space. But at least I didn't try to move things around or listen in on too many of their thoughts. Some were shouted so loudly that I couldn't help it, but I damn well tried to keep that boundary line in place. Being a good person was so fucking boring.
As I mentally rubbed my head, since that was a bit of an impossibility when I was inside someone - no body or form - and was also weird as hell, I tried to think about why, exactly, my head would even hurt. I remembered running into him, in the most literal of senses, and then it all just kind of faded away, much to my annoyance. The best I could think was that his barriers were especially strong, at least at ninety per cent to cause something like this.
That would mean bad news for me, though, because the last person I'd encountered with a barrier that high had been an unidentified magickal race.
Members of the Syntyche coven were
well versed in the varying species of magickal beings all over this realm and many others, but I was still learning. Most didn't learn until well into their thirties or forties, so I didn't feel too bad about not knowing what he was. I did suspect he was a gargoyle, though, however presumptuous that was.
As I pondered my own thoughts, the person I was squatting in stirred in his sleep, his eyelids fluttering before shutting again against the bright sunlight streaming from the far side of the room.
I feel you, my dude. I thought to myself, careful not to let the thoughts project and mingle with his own. I hate mornings, too. The sun is bright, the birds are singing, the sun is bright. Did I say that part already? Oh well, it's an important part of the whole morning thing.
I'd gotten pretty used to talking to myself out of sheer boredom over the past couple of weeks, after spending the first few days all but screaming at everyone I came across and having complete meltdowns. After all of that though, totally smooth sailing. No one could say I didn't adapt well.
Bored out of my mind, just sitting in this guy's head while he slept off his alcohol, twiddling my thumbs, I contemplated just jumping out for a bit. I'd have to find a new host if his barriers were that strong, but it sure as hell beat just waiting for him to wake up. Hell, I didn't even really know what he looked like. The instance in which I saw him, the brief period of time in which I caught a glimpse before falling into him, was not enough for me to discern any facial features. If I was stuck inside the Hunchback of Notre Dame, I was going to be having some words with my namesake.
After debating for a while, I decided that it was probably best that I hop right on out of mystery man and go find someone less sleepy. I mentally stretched my limbs and cracked my non-existent knuckles and moved to jump out, Blues Clues style.
Only, I didn't.
And I couldn't.
Perplexed, I tried again, but it was like I was anchored to that one particular spot inside of this random guy. Weird... Thinking maybe I was just being my usual lazy self subconsciously, I tried again, with more determination. It didn't exactly produce the result I was expecting.