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From my vantage point I look for any moving shadows, but they are always twigs or bushes, not even a stray cat. When I hear a rustling, I turn one-hundred-eighty degrees, but it’s just a chocolate wrapper carried around by the ecstatic wind, which seems to enjoy the empty streets. I wait and keep looking. They must be somewhere. On a bus that might arrive any moment. Behind one of those lit windows. The problem is, I never see a silhouette passing by, not even once, and I’ve been looking for hours.
There are voices, actually mumblings and whispers. Sometimes they sound like those old people who’ve lost all their teeth, but there are those who are quite sinister, like a vindictive lover or a school bully. And they all shouldn’t be here.
As I do another three hundred sixty, I avoid the next lamppost in my line of sight. It cracks like electricity, totally inhuman, and my mind cannot let go of it, even when I don’t look.
Finally, I catch it – the movement, but I instantly regret it. The figure is greyish-white with a slight shimmering to its edges. Its face is like a melted wax mask – no wonders, it is so inarticulate. It streamlines past me like a tattered cloak, turning its grin towards me at the very last moment. Its lips moves and I second-guess rather than hear or lipread what it says – the world is ours. Right away, there is a flurry of more spectres, and the whole area seems to glow with radiation.
The electric-like cracking grows louder, and I realise it’s not just the other lamppost – it’s much closer to home. It’s me, sitting inside this glass case on top of an iron post – a human soul inside a modernist Jack-o’-Lantern. Was it the explosion on the atomic power plant they reported in the morning that ruptured the wall between the two worlds on this All-Saints Day? Judging by their glow, it could very well be. But it doesn’t explain how these ghosts locked us, people, in these bulbs like genies in lamps.
As if having read my mind, another ghost arrives at my vantage point. They are younger and less decomposed, but for the missing left part of the skull. Their Victorian suit is almost impeccable, though. “Good,” their words explode out of hole where left cheek is supposed to be. “You’ll be my valet.” They unscrew the top part of the lamppost and carry my glass prison as a fancy container as they soar onwards.
Written by Nadya Mercik
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The Hall Of Fathers
I brush the non-existing dust off the skirt of my pink tulle dress and scratch my left wrist. My small, glittering shoe finally crosses the line. The scanner in the floor reads my approach and the tall doors of riveted, lacquered wood spread open. I enter the Hall of Fathers.
Graffiti Ghost
I arrive in the street cramped with huge lit signs of various shops and restaurants. There is a wrapper stuck to the sole of my trekking boot already. My shoulders ache – the trip from the airport included a lot of walking. A smell of hot bibimbap comes from the nearest door, enticing me to go in, take off my backpack – which is heavy with everything I own – and order a bottle of soju on top of everything.
The Shifting Tattoo
I feel it before I manage to see it and almost drop the coffee cup into the sink. I could nearly mistake it for the scald of the too hot water if it didn’t run up my forearm instead of down. It is rather precise as well, like tiny piranhas biting their way along the thin paths, very artistically. And when I look down – there it is. Or better say isn’t. Parts of my tattoo gone, vanished without a trace.
Ye and I…
The crack on the glass of the observation deck was branching fast, turning into a cave painting. Panic seized my heart, and my legs wouldn’t move to reach for the alarm button. There I was, glued to the floor in my customary observer’s position, knowing what awaited me and yet doing nothing to prevent it, to save myself.
Through The Hole
I can feel the layers of threads, but behind them the outer envelope is rock-hard. Each time I try to get through, my thin legs are sucked into the silk of the cocoon. Each time I pull back in horror, scared they would get trapped inside. Yet I cannot stop. It gets more and more cramped in here, and the air is stale, sparse. My new body wraps around me too tightly.
Karma On Pause
Yrid was escorted down the long white corridor by a lovely blonde-haired man. His features looked even more perfect when she tried to put her own face next to his in her mind’s eye – the aligned symmetry, the enhanced colours of the irises, the glow of the smoothest skin she’d ever seen. Not that she was very much surprised – every publicity material about Karma Inc. mentioned the high clinic standards, not only when it came to R&D and equipment, but the whole aesthetics.
Hobble Forward
I tense the muscles in my right foot and half-hop, half-skitter forward. Quick pause, then repeat. After a few steps I get the rhythm and the speed, and manage to climb the ramp with only a little bit of help from my wings, which too are clipped. This is an extra measure, because I am attached to a kid – they don’t want to traumatise her by having to use the disintegrating button. I have a few words to say about that, but my programming blocks them.
Phantom Heist
The things are finally quiet, and I glide down the corridors to the Egyptian room. I feel a bit nervous, so at one point I stop minding the cabinets and the walls and simply go through them. The benefits of being a ghost!
#FFA500
Their skin was a terrible orange colour. Still. If they could, they would peel it off and dump into the nearest trash bin.
Tricky Treat
Tamarak took the last vial off the distillation set and held the result to the light. Apart from a few tiniest sediment granules, it was perfect. Their alchemy wasn’t so much different to his chef’s duties after all. He poured the deflavoured, re-constituted, magicalised blood into the cupcake cream, stirred thoroughly and scooped a portion to decorate the bases.
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