Phantasmagoria

Rating: PG
Status: Oneshot, finished
Summary: A ghost lives in the shell of a house. (An assignment from school; write about your favourite space.)

Phantasmagoria

It’s raining. But the only indication of it is the ceaseless clatter against the glass and wood windows that are now perpetually shut. It’s rare now, that wind enters the white-washed room, to play with the muslin curtains and air the place.

Once, the room rustled with the sound of papers being blown away. A wind chime sang its little tune, and there used to be brisk footsteps outside the corridor as the members of Parliament hurried to an early morning meeting. No longer. Now, it is an empty shell, and the only concession made to its former state as a house are the delicate curtains, forever still because every place in the house has been modified and air-conditioned.

You can still sit on the sill though, and pretend everything’s just fine; everything’s the way it was. It does not matter that outside the window, beyond the rain, things have changed. Old houses, as old as this one, have been torn down or changed, as this one has. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that the shell still remains. If you look hard enough into the space, you’ll realize that the ghosts have never really left.

You know this because somewhere, from the piano room across the hall perhaps, the second movement of the Appassionata still storms the house. You sit there in your little corner of the room, hugging your knees, and wonder if the music is really there. They’re beautiful and enraged notes, just the way you remember it from 1872. Surely they’re real. They sound just as real as the figure you see working at the suddenly corporeal desk. His head is bent down in work, a callused hand moving swiftly across white sheets of typewritten paper. You don’t know him, but there have been many like him in this room through the ages- you know this because you’ve been here since the beginning, a phantom spectre that these gentlemen always sense, but never quite see.

There will never be another like them now, though.

Old memories rush through you, one after the other in a frantic pace and you would have been choked breathless by their sheer volume if you only remembered how to breathe.

It is this that brings you, unwilling, back to two-thousand-and-eight, where horseless carriages dash past just outside the windows daily and where the vast open sky is now clouded by the skyscrapers that seem to propagate every single year.

You look at the room, still from the window sill. It is so silent. Too silent. You may gather your thoughts in a quiet place, but this is a silence that throttles everything. The music from the other room is gone. Downstairs, a couple of visitors laugh at a private joke as their feet sink soundlessly into the plush red carpet of the stairs, but it’s not enough to warm the place.

The air is hot, and heavy. It’s still raining. Angered, you push at the locked windows, rattling at the lock until it gives, and suddenly- a wisp of wind steals into the room, like a breath of life that has not been present in a very long time. Water drips through the opening, and onto the immaculate wooden flooring. You smile and nudge the window open a little wider. Later, a security guard will notice the opened window with a puzzled frown, but really, what does that matter?

Poltergeist

Rating: PG
Status: Oneshot, finished
Summary: He dreams of a life that he might have lived before.

Poltergeist

It had haunted him for ages now, this memory of walking down a cobblestone road with another beside him, and it drove him crazy, the way he's taken back to a century before, every single fucking time he closes his eyes.

The smell of saltwater is always far too apparent in the air, a sharp tang in the otherwise numbingly cold air. He breathes in the sea, as he walks down the road, hands tucked firmly into his pockets to keep his fingers from getting nipped. It's a cold, cold October evening, far colder than it had any right to be. Maybe it would snow. The thought amuses him, because who's heard of snow in October? The soonest snow comes is November. Maybe if they're lucky, the snow comes on his birthday- he likes snow. Pretty thing, really- snow.

The lamp flickers above them as they walk- and he turns his head, to look up into the eyes of his companion. They're a deep slate colour, and his face is both noble and stern. That's not the person he remembers though- he remembers an informal grin on thin lips, a sly smirk when he makes a mistake, unreadable looks over the top of a book and a mug of coffee. Yes, he remembers those expressions, all on this very same face.

He hears his companion say something, but he doesn't catch it despite the slow enunciation of the words. A distance away, men shout to each other as they dock their ships on the river. "What?" he says, to the man, and the man obliges by repeating his words.

He tries to read his lips, but the words elude him still.

"I can't hear you," he says, but shrugs it off and they walk on quietly down the row of buildings, sombre elegant things that flank the street left and right. They're huge and imposing. He likes them, even though they're like overgrown structures of metal and clay- his home back in the country was smaller, cozier, but he likes the houses here because they're a memory of so much more. He's done so much more in the city, gained so many more things. Yes, they have looked kindly upon him, a young man of no real significance to them.

They stop at a house, a small townhouse of dark red brick. His companion fumbles slightly with the keys, but he gets the door open, and he raises an eyebrow, as if to say, 'Are you coming in?'

He nods, raising a hand to the door and--

The door fades. He is not touching anything, and for a moment, he panics, and he feels like he's falling, from oh so high up, and-

He awoke, gasping for breath. It was that damned dream again. Fucking hell. His eyes adjusted to the dark after a bit, and he almost crumbled in relief to know that this was his room, his familiar, warm room. The old posters of Led Zeppelin still papered the wall on his right, and Axl Rose stared at him from above Led Zeppelin. The electronic piano stood silently in the corner, and his textbooks lay scattered across the desk that sat next to the piano. It was his room all right, thank god.

But... What was he dreaming about again though? He didn't remember all the details, he just had a vague sense of unease and the knowledge that it was something that had haunted him for ages. And it'd haunt him for ages and ages to come, he was sure of it.

In the dark of his room, he shivered, and he was so lost in his thoughts and trying to figure out what the hell was going on, that he didn't even notice that his cheeks felt itchy and dry, from the tear tracks that cut down his face.