The Ghostwriter

I was woken by a sharp crack, a flood of green light and confused scream. 

“Julio!“ the man's voice resonated in what I realised was a very small chamber, causing my ears to ache. My head didn’t feel right, like my brain could fall out if I moved my head too fast. The yelling made it worse and I shut my eyes to stop my brain leaking through the sockets. The man heard himself and bought his voice down to a firm, but quieter, accusatory tone. “Why the hell… How the hell… What are you doing here?”

I cautiously opened my eyes. Feeling like my brain was secure, I slowly surveyed our shared box. A dozen green fairies seemed to stand to attention in a void around us. It was the green glow stick that the man had cracked, reflecting infinitely on the four dark walls of the box. I realised that the floor and ceiling were totally black still. The walls are metal, but the floor and ceiling are… felt? I thought. The man was stood against the corner, as far from me as possible, which was less than a foot. His hair was gelled or waxed in a wild style, perhaps intended to look like fire, but his sweat, or maybe excessive hair-gel, gave it more of a mossy seaweed quality. He was wrapped up in what I assumed to be motorcycle leathers before I saw the belt buckles glint in the green light and the sleeves that brushed the floor. A straitjacket, I wondered, am I trapped with a mad man? His eyes were fixed on me, glowing in the green light that I was now beginning to feel drowned in. Starting to panic, I continued my scan of our cell. Three of the walls were identically unmarked, but the fourth was framed in total blackness and had a large metal circle at its centre. This must be the door, I thought before ramming my shoulder into it. 

“No, no, no!” the man yelled, forgetting his volume - the pain this caused me was like being stabbed in the temple with a shard of ice. I clutched my head and curled into the corner. “I’m sorry,” the man said, returning to his quieter, still accusatory, tone, “if you hit the door too hard, you might damage the seal. When water starts coming in, we’ll need the door open all the way to get out. Now, how the hell did you get in here, Hulio? Actually, never mind. I made sure there was enough air in here in case something went wrong, but I didn’t expect that something to be sharing the air with another person. We need to get out fast.”

“Julio?” I asked - my voice was deep and rusty. It sounded a little like warping metal and felt like grinding stone. I didn’t recognise the name, but then I didn’t recognise anything. I had no idea who I was or why I was here. 

The man had pulled his sleeves up and was pulling at the felt on the ceiling. “Oh man,” he said, “this must be Tanya’s fault. I told her not to mess with my tricks. You were probably hidden in a secret wall - that’s obvious. I guess she wanted you to set off some tacky pyros down here that I would have refused and sent you, dressed as me, in case you were spotted.” He'd managed to pull the felt from the ceiling and was holding a silver key that he’d plucked from the roof. Not even sparing a glance, he dropped to the floor and started tugging at the second felt square. “But a compartment that small wouldn’t have much air at all and you must have been in there for the whole set up. Oxygen deprivation has messed with your head. I told her that if she didn’t leave the tricks to me, then someone would get hurt. I had assumed it would be me.” He tapped my foot. Shifting, I realised I must be stood on a second key. 

“You have some kind of amnesia.” He stood, a second key in his hand, and looked me in the eye again, and started to speak with excessive pomp and flare, "I am Oblivion, internationally acclaimed magician, and you, my friend, are Julio, my double. Tanya is my agent.” He planted his hand firmly on my shoulder, “you have been invaluable to me over the years - every good magician needs a double - so I am doubly motivated to get us out of here, healthy and alive. I think this might actually be a blessing.” He raised his arm as if to show me something in the distance. The lack of distance inside what I now realised to be a safe made this particularly cliched and pretentious. “Oblivion Saves Double From Agent’s Failed Plot!” He recited. “Okay, not the best headline, but that’s why I need an agent. Anyway, this was meant to be my big break, the fastest ever underwater safe escape, but I knew it wasn’t enough. We’re way past the fastest now anyway, but firing my agent after she endangers me and my double could be front-page news!”

Oblivion placed one key in a tiny hole in the door, disguised as a bolt. He turned it. Click. I suddenly felt an icy cold rush over me. “Wait,” I croaked. 

Oblivion looked up at me, his hand on the second key, “wait?” He asked, “we can’t wait.”

“Something feels very wrong.”

He turned the second key. Click. I remembered everything - icy water spraying into my face, the green glow beginning to dwindle and die in the overwhelming pressure, the security mechanism on the door kicking in. 

“Don’t open the door,” I said, trying to push Oblivion back. 

“It’s okay, Julio,” I bit my tongue at his words. He turned to me and rested a hand on my arm. “When the door unlocks, it will spring itself open. Hold your breath and shut your eyes. It will be very cold, so stay calm and hold your nose with your hand if you have to. When the water feels like it’s settled, you can open your eyes and we can swim up together. The safe will fill quickly, so you won’t have to wait long, and I’ll drag you up if I have to, okay?”

Oblivion turned to the metal circle on the door. It was the mechanism for opening the safe. Inside, it had no handles, so Oblivion had to grip it between his palms. His biceps began to look like they might burst through the straitjacket. 

“Stop!” I implored, “it’s the security mechanism. It’s going to drop a rod of metal into the hinge the moment that the cold water touches it.” I knew that he knew this - Oblivion would take every prop he used apart and put it back together again to be sure his tricks would work safely. 

“Come on, Julio, you know I wouldn’t leave that in.” The door creaked as the metal circle jumped a little. I stepped forward to stop him. I had run out of things to say to stop him. It had to be the truth. 

“Someone put it back,” I said. 

He stopped. “Are you telling me,” the resonance in the safe made his voice sound demonic, “that I’ve been murdered?”

“Yes.”

“If that’s so, and you know it, Julio,” venom began to seep into his words, “why would you come with me?"

“I’m not Julio.” Oblivion turned to me, his hands still on the metal circle. He studied my face. 

“What?” 

“You said it yourself, you didn’t account for two people when you checked there was enough air.” He looked back at the door. I could see calculations running through his head. 

“We should be unconscious,” he said, quietly. 

“Yes, but we’re not. At least, you're not.” He continued to stare at the door. “I’m not sure if I count as conscious or not, but I think you’ve worked out why you are.”

He looked up. Even in the dull green glow, I could see eyes were bloodshot and wet with tears. “Is it possible?” He asked. 

“It’s true,” I said, “I’m you.”

I, the living me, Oblivion, fell to the floor. He rested his back against the door. He smiled. Obviously, I understood, so I sat down and smiled with him. We didn’t want a big break for the money. It wasn’t for fame or women. Honestly, even a world-famous magician might not earn that much and cheap tricks in cheap bars can get you women, albeit potentially cheap women. We did it to live forever, to be remembered like Houdini, Mesmer, Rasputin. We were happy to die if it meant we could live in the annals of history. Now we’d been murdered and, to top it off, I was a ghost. Maybe I could only talk to myself, but maybe, if we were really lucky, we might be able to talk to someone else. A journalist, a lawyer, an investigator, someone who could find our murderer. We would be the magician who solved our own murder, the greatest trick of all time, and even though we couldn’t write our own story, we could find someone who would, a ghostwriter if you excuse the pun. 

Oblivion decided to open the door to trigger the security mechanism to make sure that he was murdered and it didn’t look like he passed out to fast to be murdered. I’m guessing he still didn’t quite believe he was talking to his own ghost. He did it slowly, however, so that it would lock shut, instead of slightly open - suffocation seemed less painful than drowning. Having been the one that drowned, I suspected he was right.

He passed out less than twenty minutes later. The first ten minutes or so was good. We discussed the physics, or metaphysics, or paraphysics, I’m not sure if there’s a word for it, of what had happened. A Christmas Carol taught us that ghosts can time travel, so long as it’s in a way that’s poignant to their own life, and I practised passing through objects while we talked. It was difficult, but I managed to pass my hand through one of the small squares of felt before I watched myself die. 

It felt pretty good talking to myself. We had a lot in common and shared a few of our favourite memories. It’s odd that, despite being the same person, his oxygen-deprived brain started to pick up on things that I really had to work to remember. I’d always told people that I took up magic at university, to pay for pints at the end of the week, but Oblivion reminded me of my uncle at my fifth birthday. He performed a magic show for me and my friends in my back garden. After a bunch of mundane card tricks and making the family cat disappear, his finale was sawing my Dad in half. Everyone was a little tired of the same old tricks until Dad began to scream and writhe in the tacky magic box. Mum cried out his name and began to run over, crying, but my uncle had a wicked grin on his face and only sped up. Blood was dripping faster and faster from the box that Dad laid in. A red pool began to build and flow towards my feet. The other children began to cry, but I kept watching in unbridled fascination. This only seemed to spur my uncle on. Finally, his saw jerked as if cutting through the last piece of Dad, then dropped to the floor with a rough, scraping clink. There was a devastating silence, accented with the whimpers of a child, muffled against their father’s chest. Then my uncle and Dad burst into laugher. They bellowed out laughter for minutes and minutes. Even as Dad clambered out of half the magic box, fake blood covering his jeans, they could not stop laughing. Mum managed to calm the parents down and even managed to get a little sympathy. She was, of course, a great thespian and masterminded the whole thing.

I never really remembered that day - at least not in detail. But Oblivion rattled that off like he was five again, boasting about his crazy family in the playground. That was where our love for magic really came from - the clash of fiction and reality in front of our eyes, the joy in the laughter, the raw emotion in the children and their parents. 

Oblivion was taking more and more deep breaths as he spoke. The story of my uncle was the last coherent thing he said. After that, he was confused. He started to ask who I was and how he got there. He began to think he was imprisoned for scamming people or that a trick had simply gone wrong. Although this wasn’t far from the truth, it was clear that lack of oxygen was causing panic. He began to breath deeper and deeper, faster and faster. I could see green specs of light reflecting off of his clammy skin. He tried running into the door, but he would just slump against it. He’d forgotten that the security system had locked him in and began whimpering. It sounded like he was trying to call for help, but he didn’t have the strength to make a noise. Finally, his eyes shut, and rhythmic pumping of his chest began to whither. 

As silence finally fell on my life, I began to wonder. I had drowned. It was twenty horrific seconds - you don’t get dropped underwater in a locked safe without looking up what happens when you drown. It had felt like my lungs were being simultaneously frozen and torn apart, but it only lasted twenty seconds. I had just watched myself fall into a crazed panic and I wondered if I’d made the right call to let the door shut. At that moment, I guess I died, because the memory of the last hour snapped into my mind from his perspective. It felt like a flash grenade had gone off in the safe. It turns out that worse than drowning or suffocating is both. 

Passing through the wall of a safe is much harder than passing through felt. I didn’t get very far before I started to feel the safe tremor. I worried that I was moving on - remarkably, where to hadn’t crossed my mind until now, but this concern was superseded by the fear that no one would hear my story. 

After about a minute, clinging to my dead body in an attempt to anchor myself to this plane of existence, there was a high-pitched grinding noise coming from the door. The green glow was eventually confused by the blinding orange glow of sparks pouring in from the door frame. I realised that I wasn’t moving on, but that the safe had been pulled up. I imagined the rescue team trying to saw their way into the safe, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people looking on from behind a flimsy metal fence. I bet they all thought it was part of the trick - the door would open and the safe would be empty. Then I would appear, ten feet above them, on a platform in the middle of the crowd. That was essentially how I had planned the trick to end. 

Instead, they finally cut through the hinges, after wasting over an hour around the rest of the safe, and the door began to fall away.

I wasn’t blinded by light. The crew had taken so long that the Sun had sunk below the city skyline. I simply looked out at a crowd in horrified silence. Tanya cried out my name, people covered their mouths, then there was silence, save for the sound of a child, crying into their father’s chest.