Stuck

     The first breath was the hardest. They call the last breath ‘the death rattle’, but the first after dying is more than that, worse than that. The shock of it is only half the trouble. It’s like a small fire, or some sort of explosion, igniting in your chest. I saw a ghostkerbomb go off once, with a piercing white fire. It felt the way that bomb had looked. You want to cry out, but you haven’t really started breathing normally yet. When it had struck me I jolted upwards, out of the mud my body had sunken deeply in. The moonlight was patchy through the trees around me. I could only just see that I was still in the Haunted Woods, as I’d been....before. Whenever before was. At the time I thought ‘last night’ but since coming to my senses I realise I’ll never know how long it really was that I – or something that I was – had lain there in the dark and the mud.

      I sat there for hours, just staring at my hands. I’ve never been a particularly “desirable” colour. Not by conventional standards I suppose. Personally I’ve always felt the thrill of static electricity gave a pet a type of allure. I could walk past people and make their fur stand on end. It gave me presence in a room, a sort of magnetism.

      I had been Electric for as long as I could remember, and that rich blue was comforting to me. Even given the opportunity to change, as a young man I’d have stuck with it. I think it was my colour that gave me the affinity with lightening. Chasing storms was what I did best. The weather report never left me gloomy.

      That was all in the distant past; there I was staring at these mottled green hands of mine having just breathed my first, again, and I didn’t feel myself. This wasn’t me, but they were attached to me. They moved when I moved them, consciously. The moved a little when I didn’t think of it. They were just hands, like anyone else’s...inclined to clench into fists, four-fingered, just normal everyday hands. They were mottled, they were strangely soft, they were an unsettling green and they were mine.

      I stayed in that state of creeping nightmare until something touched me, something hidden in the leaves and mud. I felt smooth skin rub against my foot and I’d jumped back, dizzying myself hitting a tree trunk. A large deformed Greeble had emerged from a spot not far from where I was slumped. It gaped at me, as only the Mutant Greeble can, and settled in to watch. That latest shock at least seemed to have decided the matter of whether this body was mine, so I started looking around with more attention than I had previously given my surroundings. That part of the Woods I did not know. I usually only visited the town area, or certain high points during my storm observations. It takes a little trekking, but I never stray out of sight of the path in the Haunted Woods; that is just plain common sense. I was sitting in a muddy little clearing, in a purple-black wooded area. There was nothing distinctive to suggest a path I may have arrived there from. The trees boughed over the clearing in such a way that even the sky was an unlikely entry point. I concluded I could not have dropped, not without taking some of those thickly criss-crossed branches down with me. I have no recollection of what had happened that day, even now. I had come to this point - perhaps under my own steam, perhaps not – and I had been left, expired, in the filth.

      The Greeble stared intently. In this gloomy world I supposed I was the best entertainment. I stared back at it, slowly picking up a stick to prod it with. Its single eye seemed to expand to fill my vision as I watched. I didn’t mean to hurt it - really I didn’t - but I wondered if I could make it flinch. It was getting on my nerves. The yellow eye glistened in the soft light. As I stared and drew closer, it changed again. It seemed to be illuminated from within, shining with a dancing pale blue light. The blue was clouding out the yellow as I raised the stick higher.

      SNAP –

      The stick had broken in my hand, pinching the skin between my fingers. It should have hurt, but didn’t, which seemed even more upsetting. I had looked around and shrunk down as a fearsome face drew level with mine.

      “What is wrong with you?” She growled at me.

      “I don’t know!” I wailed, as I scooted backwards with my hands out in front of me.

      She sniffed and stood back. She still looked livid, and crossed her arms tightly. In better light I could see that she was a gelert with an ethereal glow and deep crimson eyes. I noticed her eyes grow a little duller as she continued to glare at me. I’m not as scared of her now that I can see her properly; I’ve seen her kind before. She was a ghost.

      “Where am I?” I asked. It seemed unlikely she had found me by chance; I supposed she must either know these strange woods well enough to help me, or had a part in putting me here in the first place.

      She ignored me and instead strides past to pick up the Greeble. I wondered briefly how she gripped the moist mass in hands that are still slightly see-through. The creature didn’t seem to mind being held, and it sat passively in her hands like a rubbery snowball. I pictured her hurling the thing into the woods, while the wind whistled through its gaping mouth, but she did no such thing. She held it close like a teddy bear and crooned softly to it.

      “Is that yours?” I asked. I thought I kept the tone of revulsion out of my voice, but her dagger stare says otherwise.

      “He is his own,” She announced, and set the creature down on a mud mound, like a king upon an ancient throne.

      “This is Wilhelm.” she said, as she began to walk away from me.

      “Why Wilhelm?” I asked, getting to my feet while trying to surreptitiously wipe mud off my hands.

      “Why does anything have a name? So it knows when others address it”. She replied, sounding bored.

      She raises an eyebrow and glances at my right hand. I looked down and saw that it now had three fingers. Feeling faintly woozy, clinging to a tree, I scanned the ground for something I didn’t want to see. She bent to grab something from the muck.

      “Here,” She said, holding up a mottled green digit. I made no move to grab it, and as she advanced on me I stumbled and fell back into the mud.

      It took some time for me to calm down. Eventually I started to feel myself again, and I can even hold the finger in my hand. I rolled it from palm to palm, watching it while it curled and uncurled on its own.

      “Do you think it’d reattach if we aligned it properly?” She asked, conversationally.

      “I don’t know if I want it to” I replied. The ghost was sitting beside me, and had grown more relaxed with me in the last hour. Her name was Francesca and she said she was extinct. She said it like it was a normal thing.

      “It’s more useful attached than not, I would think.” She said, leaning chin in hand.

      “Well...I’ve left it so long that it may not re-attach. And if time doesn’t matter, then I can still attach it later.” I slipped the finger into my pocket where it thankfully went still.

      “Suit yourself.” She shrugged.

      “Where are we?” I asked, turning to face her. I saw her lean back against a tree, gazing upwards. As her anger had lessened, her glow had shrunk down. When I first saw her it seemed to radiate a hand’s width from her body. As we sat still it was just a slight blurring at the edges of her skin.

      She sighed but didn’t respond.

      “You realise you’re dead, right?” She eventually offers.

      The finger in my pocket poked me sharply.

      “I guess I can’t fool myself”. I admit softly, as though I still intended to try.

      “No. You can’t.” She said flatly. “This is the place where people go when they come back.”

      “We’re coming and going?” I asked.

      “Is that supposed to be a joke or something? You need some practice. I’m sure you’ll find time.” She seemed bored again.

      “I mean, you’re talking about this like it’s official, something to be expected. Like this is all part of some process. Well I don’t see anything official about a pile of mud in a clearing in the woods.” I said, growing annoyed.

      “Well you wouldn’t. This place doesn’t happen to everyone.” She said promptly.

      I snarl, “Who does it happen to? Angry spirits with gross pets and storm reporters? That doesn’t make a lot of sense!”

      She stares at me dolefully and smiles a little. “This is after life...you thought it was going to make more sense than the first part?” I looked back at her, still feeling angry. Her own anger returned a little and she gave a snort at my petulant silence, and stood up.

      “Besides,” she added, “I’m not an ‘angry spirit’. I’m a normal, emotionally diverse person. You’re just unpleasant to be around”. She walked away.

      “Wait!” I cried out, scrabbling to my feet, “Don’t leave me here!”

      “I’d like to try.” She said firmly and strode off into the dark woods.

      I followed quickly, hoping not to lose sight of her. The woods turned from dabbled light to blackness in only three steps and I suddenly found myself grappling in the dark. I stretched my hands out as far as I could in front of me and stumbled onwards. I could hear her close by and I didn’t want to lose her now. Since waking, she seemed to be the only normality around. Of course that suggested it was normal for me to chase annoyed ghosts through black woods, and truth be told I had had little to do with any other people when I was alive. But at the time I felt the need to connect, if only to have someone treat this new state of being as okay. I broke through the blackness back into sudden light. The light was dappled, but still appeared blinding after perfect blackness I’d become lost in. Stumbling while my eyes tried to adjust, I immediately tripped over something, falling flat and getting a face full of mud. Through one uncovered eye I saw Francesca’s shoe, and a mud mound.

      “You tripped me” I said, surprised.

      “I was standing still, so you tripped yourself” Her glow had grown again, but I had the feeling that it wasn’t entirely directed at me.

      I looked around to see what she was staring at and it finally twigged - the mud mound is the same mud throne. We had walked around in a circle. I had thought I had walked straight, but in the dark it must have been possible to get turned around. Wilhelm loomed into view a foot from my face. I still don’t see how such a lumpy creature could lean so smoothly around a tree, but he managed it. He gaped at me, mocking my confusion.

      Francesca picked him up and sighed, sitting him in her lap as she sought to find the least muddy perch in the clearing.

      “Since you seem to be slow, I’ll fill you in. We can’t leave the clearing. We’re stuck here.”

      “Stuck?” I asked, getting to my knees.

      “Yes, stuck. We can’t leave. I wonder if being a zombie means your brains rot? That would explain why you are so stupid”. She patiently replied.

      “But...how are we stuck?” I asked, ignoring her other comment go for the moment.

      “We can’t leave. We cannot get away from this physical place, to another physical place,” she said, gesturing vaguely away to the right, “I guess your brains have to be at least a little rotten - at the very least on the edges. Like how your skin is not great, but you don’t completely fall apart at the muscles and ligaments. Maybe memory for words like stuck is kept in the edge of the brain.” She said calmly, while stroking Wilhelm above the eye. He made no movement in response but issued from some unknown orifice a weird croaking whine. I assumed this was some sort of bizarre purring, and again felt mildly revolted and wished she would drop him.

      “How do you know it’s a rule: We Cannot Leave?” I asked, attempting to gain some sort of control of the situation to distract myself from sudden worries about my brain oozing vocabulary.

      “Because,” she replied, “I’ve been here for years.”

      “I never thought I’d see another person,” Francesca explained. We had hauled a log into the centre of the clearing, where the light was better, and were sitting on it. Wilhelm sat in the middle, staring at me.

      During out attempt to set up this seating space, he had made to snatch my loose finger hiding in my pocket. His twenty foot long tongue had overshot into the trees and as a result was lying limply in a pile in the mud. He had made no move to return it to his mouth. My finger was prodding me constantly, but I tried to ignore it.

      “Out here, you don’t see the ones that came before you. All I had before I realised I was alone with Wilhelm was a fading light and stars, in the shape of a person. My theory is the afterlife isn’t infinite, so we can’t all fit. Some people go away altogether, and others...get stuck. Ones like us get stuck.” She said, watching Wilhelm. I looked down and saw his tongue had shrunk by a foot. He was retracting it when I wasn’t looking.

      “So we fill slots out here?” I asked, trying to picture people on display. What would be included? Statistics, a birthday, a name, a hobby? What kind of information makes a person a person?

      “Yeah. Out here, and elsewhere I think. I don’t really know but I get a feeling. Not every undead legend comes from the Haunted Woods, so why would this be the only place?”

      “I’ve seen ghosts before. They’re out in the world...” I supplied. I noticed from the corner of my eye that Wilhelm had inflated slightly, and was making a soft squeaky noise like someone rubbing a balloon. I edged back a little.

      “But they’ve been somewhere like here before. I’m sure of it. I never asked when I was, you know, alive...but I’m sure of it.” She said, looking at me this time. I see the certainty in her face.

      I thought back to my time in the world. It was starting to feel like those memories belonged to someone else, someone slightly more stupid, despite their clear advantage over my current brain matter. I had seen ghosts and they seemed like everyone else. Francesca interrupted my thoughts.

      “Painting can’t just be a thing that happens. One state to another might not make such a difference when it’s Spotted and Speckled but this is Life and Death,” Francesca said, watching me closely, “They had to feel what we feel here, even if it was just a moment. This lost space.”

      I remembered a bomb going off in my chest, and a gust of breath.

      “I guess I never thought about it” I said slowly. I glanced down at my feet, and saw only half of the tongue, draped a little over the toe of my shoe. I kick it off, peeking at Francesca while I did, but she was looking away and appeared not to notice.

      “What went wrong with us? Why is this so...dramatic?” I asked, waving my hands.

      “I have another theory,” she said, softly, “That we were not meant to die. That we were destined for something else and then this happened to us, and we aren’t able to transition because of who we are”. She seemed thoughtful, her eyes staring off into the trees above.

      “Us? Special? Stuck for some unknown reason?” I said, laughing a little at the absurdity of it all.

      “What’s in a name?” She whispered.

      Francesca and I were relaxing on the log as we watched Wilhelm chase my finger through the mud. Despite having only two joints, the finger was very nimble, and was keeping well ahead. This wouldn’t have made a difference if Wilhelm had better control of his tongue, but no matter how much he tried, it kept flying out of control. At one point, at the clearing’s edge, we saw the tongue disappear into the dark and flick back into the clearing opposite us. I asked Francesca if she’d seen this demonstration of the circular nature of our space before, and she replied that when she had first witnessed it she’d hoped there were more Mutant Greebles around. I felt slightly better to have found a positive side to our little stuck space.

      “I’m sorry I called you an angry spirit” I said, still watching my finger, as it ascended the mud throne, creating deep gouges in the slippery sides.

      “You don’t think I’m a spirit?” She asked.

      “I don’t think you’re just a manifestation of anger, imprinting on the world, is what I mean. I guess.” I said awkwardly.

      “No,” she said chin in hand again, “I’m also smart and charming.”

      We sat in silence a while.

      “I was a storm reporter, back in the world. I was Electric.” I said. It was weighing on my mind that I could remember less of that life. I knew those facts, but they only felt like facts rather than truth, or an identity.

      “I was a war veteran, had a book trophy and I was painted Maraquan.” She said casually.

      “Oh. Do you miss it?” I replied.

      “The past is past. Now we’re both here, and you’re falling apart and I have Wilhelm” she chirped with a strange tone, watching Wilhelm overshoot the throne and entangle his tongue in the treetops.

      “You’re not happy with Wilhelm?” I asked, as I watched Wilhelm slowly rise up on his back legs, tongue still caught above our heads.

      “Of course I’m happy with him, but he has sort of dominated my life since I came here,” she said, watching him and smiling slightly, “I used to be a different person too.”

      Wilhelm gently lost touch with the ground, and hung suspended by his tongue. It rippled as we watch him draw it in, lifting him into the treetops achingly slowly.

      “So...did this happen as soon as you woke?” I asked, gesturing at her faint glow. She smiled at it and nodded.

      “It’s all part of being dead”.

      I looked at my feet and saw my finger creep onto my shoe, where it sat, the nail facing upwards at me like an adoring Warf. I had a strong urge to pat it, but decided that patting a finger using its still attached brethren was slightly too strange for me.

      Overhead, Wilhelm became wedged in a lattice of branches. After a moment he began to emit the sound of a deflating balloon and began to decrease in size. Francesca smiled fondly at him. I reached down to pat my finger.

      We had carried on this way for an uncertain amount of time. Although there was little in our surroundings to influence us, and our memories of life outside the stuck world were patchy, we got along very well. We had endless conversation that wound through the day like a pleasant walk in the woods. I stopped feeling wrong in my body. It was like having a family again, although for the life of me I could not remember the one I must have had before. It was peaceful, it was perfect. One day, it was gone.

      I felt a strange presence, like someone was watching me.

      In my mind, a spotlight had come on over my head. I felt an itching on my skin, a sort of scrutiny from the world at large.

      “What’s happening to me?” I kept asking Francesca, growing more and more panicked.

      “It’s okay,” she said again and again, trying to soothe me, “This happens sometimes, it’s no big deal. We’re safe here. Nothing can hurt us.”

      It was almost pain, this building pressure of being watched. Francesca was worried; I could see the tightness around her eyes despite how calm she sounded. Wilhelm refused to go near me - something I would have relished before - but this time it made me feel contaminated. As suddenly as it started, the watching stopped. I breathed a sigh of relief, and Francesca smiled. We laughed, shakily.

      That was the last time I saw her.

      There was whiteness, and I saw a shadow reaching for me in that frozen moment. It was too late to do anything, I had transcended. I was back in Neopia once more, a smiling family of strangers around me, and I have never felt so alone.

      I repeat her name, as often as I can. Francesca. I whisper it at night, I name my endless succession of zapped to nowhere petpets after her. I wonder where they go. I wonder if Wilhelm ever finds them in the mud.

      Sometimes, when I say her name, I feel her close by. I have a sense of trees, and mud, and dappled light. I’m waiting for her here, in this world that I’m a stranger in. I stare at my mottled hands and I can see her glow over mine.

      We’re all stuck waiting somewhere. We never knew we were waiting to be found.

The End.