Phantom by Retifer M. (debian ebook reader .txt) 📖

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,