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

and it should bother me but it doesn’t.

Before I’ve gotten the chance to pass out or just enjoy not moving, I feel my stomach bounce into my throat again and I wheeze before twisting my arms under my chest so I puke anywhere but on myself. It probably doesn’t even matter at this point, though.

Offhandedly, I wonder if ectoplasm is like bleach, in the sense that I shouldn’t throw it up ‘cause it already did enough damage on the way down, you know? With how my luck is today, that’s exactly how it works.

“…ny? Danny, oh shit, oh my god you’re-” I barely catch whoever it is sob. Their voice is almost entirely overshadowed by my own breathing and what sounds like running tap water full blast. “Danny…? Ca… can you hear me?”

It takes a moment for me to process that. I nod, stopping myself from wiping off my mouth and rubbing more ectoplasm onto my face. It’d be useless anyway; I gasp in a quick breath before I vomit again. My jaw is really starting to hurt.

“That’s you, right? You’re- you can’t be- oh my god.” It’s Sam, I decide.

They swore. Despite the dirty jokes and, well, everything, Tucker never actually swears. It’s Sam who does it, though it’s more to rebel against her overbearing parents than anything. Her voice sounds as weird as they look right now, like she’s talking to me with a can on a string. I have to do a double take to make sure she’s still in the same room as me and not just yelling down from the kitchen.

I’m overwhelmed by that feeling again, like a cold, fluttering fire in my chest and a detached sort of fear, like watching a horror movie. It’s making the hairs that aren’t plastered down onto my skin rise, giving me anxiety. Then, oddly, it just clicks.

It is fear, just not… mine.

“I just- I didn’t mean- I swear I-” Sam stumbles with her words, but her talking is lifting the fog from my brain. I can’t tell if that’s good or bad, because now the numb is turning to pins and needles, and the static is turning to burning. The nerves in my right leg are still pleasantly nonexistent though. “I didn’t notice it, I swear-”

I stare down at the floor, blinking at the radioactive-looking vomit, Sam’s voice becoming garbled noise again behind the roaring in my ears. I wish I could hear her because that secondhand fear on top of the pain is making my vision go dark around the edges and I could really use something else to focus on.

I throw up again. A small part in the back of my mind cringes hard and reminds me that I’m the one who’s gonna have to clean that up; cleaning the lab is my chore after all.

I cough, noticing that behind the nausea-inducing ectoplasm, I can taste iron. I blink more ectoplasm out of my eyes, feeling the chill liquid drip down my cheeks, and try to focus my eyes on the ground in front of me. It doesn’t work and all I can manage to see is green.

Closing my eyes, I focus on breathing again and calming myself down. Don’t think about the taste, don’t think about the pain or the almost tangible fear in the atmosphere or anything. Just calming breaths.

I inhale, then exhale. My mouth dries up so I try to slow it down. It feels awkward, like my lungs don’t know what they’re supposed to do anymore, but I keep bringing in air.

As I concentrate on my breathing, I don’t notice Tucker come back, not until a towel drapes over my head. I hadn’t even realized he had left, but now that he’s back I notice that the feeling of fear in the air had been less for the last minute. Now it feels doubled; I feel like I could suffocate in it.

Unfolding my hands, palms stinging and joints stiff, I reach up to grab it. I pull my eyelids open when it’s no longer there, but on the ground under me. I take it with a shaky, green stained hand and just… touch it to my face. I would groan, but I barely have the energy to wipe my face down, so I settle for a huff and lean into my hand, dragging the towel across my eyelids.

After rubbing it over the general area of my eyes a couple of times, I let the towel drop to the floor with my hand and stare at Tucker’s now slightly clearer feet, my eyes half lidded.

I feel like I’m gonna pass out, but I’m too sick to my stomach. So I just sit, my legs kind of tucked underneath me in a sort of awkward but comfortable way, with one hand in my lap and the other twisted in the towel on the floor in front of me. No one says anything, probably because of the huge Oh Shit moment we all just witnessed firsthand.

“…Danny?” Tucker? It’s definitely Tucker who says it. It came from in front of me, so yeah, Tuck. The roar in my ears has turned to a crackling noise, like eating Poprocks and soda at the same time. It’s obnoxiously loud.

I can’t pull up enough energy to speak, so I give a small nod. I don’t even think they notice.

“…you’re-” He starts but breaks off.

There’s a thickness in the air; hesitation from all three of us, apprehension from the two of them. I try to look up but my head swims so I continue to stare at Tucker’s shoes.

“You…” He stutters, then blurts out, “This is crazy oh my god- we just killed- y-you’re a ghost.”

I can almost feel the “…?” above my head, in a little cartoony speech bubble.

That is utterly ridiculous. After dragging myself out of that portal, I know I’m not dead. If I had just died, I would not feel like someone short-circuited my brain and tried to drown me in refrigerated Ooze Toobz. Plus, if I was dead, I’d either be pleasantly nonexistent or… I don’t know, doing whatever ghosts do. Haunting. Spooking?

I wouldn’t have thrown up that much, that’s for sure. Do ghosts even have insides? Maybe when you die you like, puke them all up.

I laugh morbidly- or try; I can’t do much of anything right now. It comes out as a particularly rough breath instead of anything near a laugh, and I think they take that as me about to throw up again ‘cause Tucker scoots back bit. I’m still breathing; dead people don’t do that. They don’t hurt this much.

Definitely… probably not dead.

“Whaah-?” I manage to say on an exhale.

“Dude…”

“Tucker.”

“Sorry.”

I don’t have time to decipher whatever they’re saying to each other before my stomach launches itself into my throat; I hunch over and am once again spewing my guts.

“Oh jeez. You okay?”

“He’s-” Sam’s voice hitches. “Look at him, Tucker, I don’t think he’s okay.”

“It’s a standard question Sam. I know he’s not okay!”

I shake my head but I don’t think they notice because I hardly did and I was the one who did it. I steel myself, take a deep breath, and cough out some words, finally.

“Not… okay…”

The bickering instantly stops and after a second I feel a towel on me again, but this time whoever it is does the work. They scrub my hair and work down from there and I let them, because there’s no way in hell I’m sitting here covered head to toe in ectoplasm and refusing help. That and I don’t really have a choice.

Also it kinda feels nice.

I feel their hands shake against me through the towel as they clean off the ectoplasm, hear their unsteady breathing close to me.

I force my eyes open- I didn’t even realize I closed them again- and see Tucker crouched in front of me, lip worked between his teeth, furiously scrubbing against the neck of my hazmat, I’m guessing so he can take the thing off me. He looks like he might start crying or hyperventilating at any second.

“Danny?” He stops and leans in to look me in the eye deliberately, like he has to really think about it. Or maybe it’s just me; anything past Tucker is a mess of colour and oddly shaped shadows.

I furrow my brow at the glare on his glasses and then I can’t see him because I go cross-eyed. Breathing suddenly doesn’t seem that important as the cold burning in my chest turns to real burning, suddenly spreading like wildfire to every inch of my body.

Tucker lets out a choked jumble of incoherent noises and grabs me as the room turns sideways. My ears pop and my eyes slide closed for a moment, dots of light dancing across the back of my eyelids. There’s a scuffle near my head, a few words that I can’t understand.

I blink. Tuck is several feet away, tentatively moving closer. My cheek, slimy and sticky, is pressed against the cold basement floor, soothing compared to the sudden blazing heat.

Tucker reaches out, fingers hovering over me, a look of… relief on his face? My breath rasps in my throat and I take my arm out from its scrunched position under me to push myself back, only succeeding on half propping myself up on an elbow.

Tuck reaches out but backs up again when I whine. I push myself back up onto my hands and dip my head, almost retching on my arms. I want to ask why he’d be happy all of a sudden, but can’t so I focus on trying to stop being sick.

“What was that?” It’s Sam, I can tell because that is her voice, in the same room instead of a million miles away behind a wall of white noise.

“I-I don’t know.”

I cough to the side until the remaining grossness is out of my throat as Tucker continues taking a stab at getting my hazmat off. Towel over his hand so as not to touch any ectoplasm, he scrubs at the zipper.

This time the zipper gives and it slides off of me easily. I feel someone hook their arms under mine, lift me to the side- though the proper word would be drag- and lay me on my back on the cool floor away from the mess of ectoplasm and vomit.

It feels good, the cold settling my stomach down momentarily. They continue scrubbing my head with a towel, and I let myself tune in to whatever they’re saying.

“I don’t know!”

“How is he still alive!?”

“Stop asking!”

“I’m just kind of freaking out here, okay!?”

“Freak out quieter then!”

“I can’t! My best friend just fell into a death trap and was a ghost for a minute!” That is definitely Tucker. “So-or-ry if I can’t exactly keep calm!”

“He’s my friend too, you know! And he wasn’t a ghost- it must’ve just been some side effect or something…” A sigh. “Look, just help me out over here, okay? We need to get this off his leg somehow.”

“Fine, okay… fine…” There’s a small pause before Tucker asks, voice dripping with anxiety, “Are you sure this is what we’re supposed to do?”

“Not really, but I don’t think we should just leave it either.”

“It… it’s stuck to his pants though.”

“I know.”

“It’s burned.”

“I know.”

Tuck whimpers. “This is why I hate hospitals.”

“You hate hospitals for a billion reasons, Tucker.” She doesn’t put as much into her tone as she usually would’ve, only sounding kind of defeated and scared.

Whoever is massaging my head is an angel sent straight from the heavens. I let my eyes drift up and spot Sam over me. At the look on her face I