Spectral Future

That turn of phrase used to confuse her incessantly, “looked like you’ve seen a ghost”, as if ghosts were real. That was when she was a child, before she understood that not everything other people said was literal; that it just meant being scared of something from your past. It was before she understood a lot of things.  

She’d been here, her hometown, for - a good while at the very least. Since “it” had happened time had become difficult to navigate, as did space. What was the meaning of miles or minutes when there was nowhere to go to and nothing to do? She desperately missed measurements. 

They had traveled together down to her parents' house. It was supposed to be just for a week. A small break from the endless work. She was just twenty-six, but by some miracle had gotten a job straight out of college and had missed every significant life event since then. Every Thanksgiving, Christmas, Arbor day, etc., something important had come up, and cancellations and apologies had to be made. Most of her friends and family didn't try after the first year, and she had been told several times that if she didn’t love the work so much, she would have been clinically depressed. 

“Maybe that’s what this is-”, she mused sullenly. She had never allowed herself to be sullen before

The trip was a favor to her boyfriend...or fiancé...or whatever he was now. She always said she was incredibly lucky to have him, anyone else would have left long ago. And sure, he was probably cheating on her, but that was not a thought that bothered her overly. She didn’t need loyalty. What she did need: a comforting warmth, a safe ear to bear grievances, a charismatic wit and smile, large firm hands that could comfort or arouse at a moment’s notice- that he lavished on her. And they understood each other. 

“I thought we understood each other” she considered her legs as she straightened the dewy grass. 

She had been thinking a lot recently, ever since “it” happened, she could no longer avoid thinking. Maybe her mother had been right all along, that her devotion to the job was just an avoidance technique. Maybe she should have gone to therapy, gotten some soft white tablets she took with food in the morning, that would scurry through her receptors and made her easier to deal with. But in the end, she dismissed that thought as she always did. Her brain wasn’t broken. It was merely more practical to focus on deadlines and the exciting and brave new future ahead than the dull melancholy of day-to-day existence. 

When she had been a child, she had spent an entire summer trying to make a time machine, all random electric bits and cardboard boxes and tree branches. It was somewhat impressive that it took her till late July to burn half of the garage down. She was grounded for the rest of that year, not so much because of the fire, but the fact she refused to apologize for it. “It’s science”, she argued, “Sacrifices must be made.”  

She had spent the remainder of that summer sketching out models in her room and imagining that the machine had worked, and she was in a time where we had figured everything out. There were flying cars and bright blue skies, and everything was peaceful. 

A month later she watched two of the tallest buildings she’d ever seen, billowing out with great blooms of smoke, and crumbling under their own weight. She realized that time-travel must not be possible, it clearly could not be. If she wanted that future, she had to be part of the making of it. 

And after years of working- she finally was. For four years, her dream had come true. Until “it” happened, and now she’s stuck in her childhood town, pacing down the same sidewalks she has since she was six. 

And there the bastard is, alive, smiling straight through her as he crutches his way down the street. 

The “accident” was shocking, sure, but so is so many new things. Death, for example.  

It was “accident” in quotations because she knows it wasn’t. He insisted on driving, just as he insisted putting their money together before they got married. And- she knows it’s not a competition, but she is sure that if it had been a true accident, he would be the one dead. That’s how she knew, of course, when she saw him in such stark corporeal, blood pumping through his shimmering blue veins instead of coagulating in some half-rate wooden bin. That the bastard must have planned it. Hell, the man had asthma and would whine about a cough for weeks on end, he wouldn’t get out of that accident with a goddamn broken ankle while she was dead unless he orchestrated the whole thing. 

It was after copious amounts of thought that she started remembering other parts of it. Him asking for a soda from the backseat, her taking the seatbelt off as she turned and leaned into the back, a sudden veering off the road- 

She isn’t sure if not remembering pain is a ghost or a brain thing, but either way, she’s grateful.  

Now she has nothing but her thoughts, and she can not change the past, but she can salvage the future. Or- his lack of one anyway. 

She has learned a lot about electricity since she was in that garage, fidgeting with cardboard. She has never believed in ghosts, she still doesn't; she is not a spirit, but simply existing on a higher frequency than before. Electronegativity - she is nothing more than the energy vibrating the telephone wire above her. But with no outside power-source, she could slowly feel herself fade. There was something she needed to try before she was not anymore. Because now: she was massless, she had the theories, and she had an engine that could be manipulated to reach relativistic speed. Sacrifices need to be made for science’s sake. 

Like she had always known, she wanted that future more than she wanted herself. 

INCIDENT REPORT: At 1630 hours on May the 31st an electrical fire started in the house of Mr. and Ms. Silias. The house we observed was unsalvageable, with only the garage remaining relatively unaffected. Mr. And Ms. Silias reported being at the supermarket at the time, but the fire did consume their recently deceased daughter’s fiancé, Max Moore. Ms. Silias informed us he was staying with them for their daughter’s funeral. Although the firefighters and our team both found that the fire was electrical in nature, the fire seemed to have ignited within Mr. Moore somehow. His remains were so thoroughly destroyed that no other clues could be found off him. More research is needed.