Ghost hunting in the dark was your idea and now we’re lost. At least I found this cool, um, book? Tome? Nothing bad could possibly come from this.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 1st Generation
Characters: Jaela Shiroshinrei
Race: Human – Meta – Fire
Age: 94, physically about 24
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 868 words
 

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I don’t understand the fascination certain people seem to have with all things ghosts. Maybe it’s because of the few instances of ghosts we’ve had to deal with that were less than friendly. Maybe it’s because I have bigger things to deal with than ghosts, it’s hard to tell.

Now, it’s not that I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m more than aware that they are real and I’m sure I’ve had more than just the one or two encounters with them, but they weren’t worth the memory that could have been attached to them. In a way, I guess that this is how I feel about ghosts. Unless one comes into my life and makes a huge pest or problem of itself, I’m not going to pay it much mind and once it is gone, it’ll be gone from my mind, like a lot of things, really.

I’ve become rather good, or so I tell myself, at being able to mostly keep, in my life, the things that make me smile. Now, I haven’t managed to remove all bad things from my life, but there’s a lot more good than bad here and that’s how I want it. So no, I’m not going to go out at night to hunt ghosts, even if someone asks me to.

For one thing, I like to sleep. I spent so many years waking up at the crack of dawn and going to bed late so that I could appreciate every single moment the day had to offer me that I’ve lived a long while of my life on too little sleep. That, I’d say since the youngest had left the nest, was something that changed. I still wake up early. I still go to bed late, but it’s not half as early as it used to be. Sleeping in every so often is a delightful thing that I had never had before in my life, and it feels very, very nice.

For another, I’ve spent enough time out and about in the dark to know better than to head out to hunt something that I might not be able to see. This was something I’ve done with Naela when we were so, so much younger and I don’t need a repeat of that again in my life. At the very least, the things we hunted could eventually be found. Ghosts, well ghosts are something else entirely.

Of the things in life I never expected to give a try since they started to be a bit more common only some years before the world crawled to its end, were these things called podcasts. They were these audio files that, depending on the person, could either be about some random subject and people would just talk about it. With some others, they were serialized audio stories they would tell.

At this point in our lives, there is, of course, no new content on that particular front. I don’t think that anyone has picked that particular thing back up but it’s all right. There is so much that has been archived into the system that if someone were to want to listen to it all, they’d have years filled with it all.

I move from one series to another, settling down every day or so to listen to an episode or two, depending on the length of them. I tend to stick more to the story-like ones because I find it interesting to hear these stories and try to wrap my mind around how these people imagined their stories would pan out. A lot of what I’ve listened to so far really was interesting. Some of it was a little strange but still enough to keep my attention.

My most recent discovery is one that I’m not sure I’ll be listening through to the end. From the little information paragraph that was given about the podcast, it spoke of adventure, ghosts, discovering new things and places and, really, it did sound as though it might have been story-based but, from the first episode onward—I’ve listened to three, figuring maybe the first one or so would be them introducing themselves and whatnot—it hasn’t been story-like.

It has been told a bit like a story, like something written just for the podcast but as it turns out, the whole thing is told by a pair of friends who seem to go out and explore things in the dark and, well hey, if they come across some of these things that do go bump in the night, they’d just have to deal, right? Right. The very first one was about how they’d gone ghost hunting at night and how it had been the idea of one of them and not the other. They got lost at some point, found some book and just, they lost me a little way in.

I did listen through to it but couldn’t remember much more than that. It didn’t have the flow of the others so far. The constant wandering away from the main subject, the pause for chuckling or giggling as they remembered things, it just hasn’t been enough to really keep my attention. I’ve tried, though.

Need I remind you that I’m the only thing keeping you out of jail? Knock it off.

 
Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Erisia – Rockbourne Dome
Characters: Agathe Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 39
Current residence: Rockbourne Dome, Erisia
Final Word Count: 788 words
 

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Most of them are in that new place now. It seems a little frightening to think that if things don’t work out, though I feel as though they will, I will never see any of them ever again. Each of them stopped by to see me before they went. It wasn’t always a stop by the house, I’m sure that, to some, this might have looked quite a bit suspicious.

Child visits parents at home and then promptly seems to disappear. More at seven.

Hm. I suppose this made me smile; I certainly do need it currently. What’s left in me right now is nervous energy. I worry about these children of mine, even though most of them weren’t mine and none of them are children anymore. They’ll always be mine and will always be children in my eyes. I know better, but as the woman and mother who did most of the work raising them, I cannot help but feel that way.

I’ve had nightmares recently, since they first started slipping away to Peculiar, possibly never to return again other than for brief, sneaking visits into the underground. Not that they truly would have to sneak, I know of people who live underground, so it wouldn’t be all that far-fetched that they have found a place to call their own if they do come around.

I’ve made my peace with the idea that there were always some chances that I might not make it into Peculiar. I think that I’d be all right living out the rest of my life here; it’s where I’ve been all of my life and while it wasn’t always wonderful, it’s not so terrible either so I know that if we were unable to leave, I would manage to make it. That doesn’t keep me from the fact that I do want to go, and I do want to have a chance at this strange new life that awaits me out there. This new place that awaits both of us and the rest of our not-so-little brood, their partners and the others.

The nightmares, though, they leave me waking up in cold sweat, wondering where I’ve gone done and asking myself so many questions. My sisters and Andrea have been gone from my life for years, but this doesn’t change the fact that they were in my life far longer than they have been out of it and, at times, memories of their presence surface.

A bit like this particular nightmare.

One of the things I’ve not truly mentioned to anyone was that, not long after Andrea had taken the four of us as his wives, I tried to run off. I barely managed to do more than pack up a few changes of clothes and sneak to the door that he was there, waiting for me. I still remember the ugly look in his eyes. I still remember the hatred in his voice as he told me that he’d only married me because I was part of the lot and because, well, he couldn’t let that good-for-nothing idiot he knew I wanted in my life have me.

It was a single little threat he told me that kept me from any other attempts. A little threat that let me know he would go very much so out of his way to make sure that if I ever angered him this way again, he would make sure the two of us would end up behind bars and that, for a long, long time. If that were to happen, I would have at least known why, but poor Erland would have been clueless as to those reasons and I certainly couldn’t ever do that to him, so I behaved. I allowed him into my bed whenever he wanted. I gave him the children he wanted even though the pregnancies were difficult, I behaved indeed.

The nightmare was a mixture of that memory along with other little threatening snippets from him. I really don’t know what triggered that particular part of my life to resurface, I mean, other than the fact that it feels as though we’re sneaking away in the way I’d tried to do so many years ago.

The main difference, at this point, and I know this, is that he’s dead. He’s dead, my sisters are dead, and I’ve been out and about so little recently that I don’t know that anyone would really think twice if I were to disappear. This is what is left to do for the few of us still left here. We have to figure out the easiest way to make our disappearance look genuine. We’ll get to it, though.