I'm starting to think I should link all your prompts for a week together again: poisonous and disappearance are easy to join up, and they'll go well with the before and the after too... Maybe next week :)
Poisonous They stood, not exactly together since only one of them was solid, but at least looking like they were in each other’s company. William pushed the doors open with his good arm and shuffled through, looking increasingly pained, and it was noticeable that he twisted his whole body to release the door he was holding. Collins thought that maybe the pain from the bite was spreading. Tony looked at the machine; a short, wiry man in old clothes observing technology that looked as though it was decades newer than he was. Finally, he shrugged, and slapped the side of the Device with an open palm. He never touched the machine; instead his hand came to a stop about an inch above its surface, and there was a bell-like chime, something that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in a church. “Nice,” he said, his face lighting up with a genuine smile. “I heard that they were musical, you know.” He looked over at his prisoners. “They also say that you hear music as the Light dawns, but I guess you won’t be telling anyone about that. Since it’s also poisonous and all. Enjoy the show!” He bounded across the room and through the doors, and then paused to lock the doors. The snick of the lock turning seemed unnaturally loud to Collins, and he abandoned caution and went quickly to the doors. Tony was already through the second set, and Collins heard the click of the lock there as well. He shook the doors, and though they wobbled a little they were properly hung on their hinges and felt solid. Collins shook them again, feeling helpless, and then turned back. The Inspectral was walking towards him, and with a sudden sickness in his stomach he realised that the Inspectral wasn’t trapped. “You should go,” he said, the words tasting bitter in his mouth. “Find Ethel, maybe even find Adams. William isn’t going to get very far, and Timothy took the ghost-gun. You’ve got good chances of dealing with them.” The Inspectral nodded, then stopped at the doors. “What is it?” asked Collins after a few seconds. “I’m trapped, there’s no way through those doors.” “So am I,” said the Inspectral, softly. The chill of his presence raised goosebumps on Collins’s arms. “The Device is already producing Radiance, it seems. I’m more solid than I used to be.” “What?” “The Radiance… I wish they’d taught you this in schools, you know? It’s not the easiest thing to talk about. The Radiance didn’t create ghosts, it just gave us more form, more …substance, if you like. I’ve talked to some of the others about it, though that was in the beginning. No-one really wants to talk it about now. Hah, we didn’t then, but it seemed like we needed to. But some of us had more memories than others of what it was like before, and after we were… I don’t know, somehow real. More real than we had been. We were still ghosts – still mostly ghosts, but we were a bigger part of the world. We could do more things. Some could do more than others, some were more solid than others. You wouldn’t even know some ghosts were actually ghosts; they were practically solid. That caused problems. But… the Radiance gives solidity to ghosts, and it changes living things. There’s a suspicion that they people who got destroyed were somehow used up to give solidity to other things. That’s a physicists view of things, of course: nothing is created or destroyed, just transformed.” “You can’t walk through the walls?” Collins was listening but it was confusing. He’d know next to nothing about ghosts to start with, and now there seemed to be even more that no-one had told him. “Not while the Device is on.”
2 comments:
I'm starting to think I should link all your prompts for a week together again: poisonous and disappearance are easy to join up, and they'll go well with the before and the after too... Maybe next week :)
Poisonous
They stood, not exactly together since only one of them was solid, but at least looking like they were in each other’s company. William pushed the doors open with his good arm and shuffled through, looking increasingly pained, and it was noticeable that he twisted his whole body to release the door he was holding. Collins thought that maybe the pain from the bite was spreading.
Tony looked at the machine; a short, wiry man in old clothes observing technology that looked as though it was decades newer than he was. Finally, he shrugged, and slapped the side of the Device with an open palm. He never touched the machine; instead his hand came to a stop about an inch above its surface, and there was a bell-like chime, something that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in a church.
“Nice,” he said, his face lighting up with a genuine smile. “I heard that they were musical, you know.” He looked over at his prisoners. “They also say that you hear music as the Light dawns, but I guess you won’t be telling anyone about that. Since it’s also poisonous and all. Enjoy the show!”
He bounded across the room and through the doors, and then paused to lock the doors. The snick of the lock turning seemed unnaturally loud to Collins, and he abandoned caution and went quickly to the doors. Tony was already through the second set, and Collins heard the click of the lock there as well. He shook the doors, and though they wobbled a little they were properly hung on their hinges and felt solid. Collins shook them again, feeling helpless, and then turned back. The Inspectral was walking towards him, and with a sudden sickness in his stomach he realised that the Inspectral wasn’t trapped.
“You should go,” he said, the words tasting bitter in his mouth. “Find Ethel, maybe even find Adams. William isn’t going to get very far, and Timothy took the ghost-gun. You’ve got good chances of dealing with them.”
The Inspectral nodded, then stopped at the doors.
“What is it?” asked Collins after a few seconds. “I’m trapped, there’s no way through those doors.”
“So am I,” said the Inspectral, softly. The chill of his presence raised goosebumps on Collins’s arms. “The Device is already producing Radiance, it seems. I’m more solid than I used to be.”
“What?”
“The Radiance… I wish they’d taught you this in schools, you know? It’s not the easiest thing to talk about. The Radiance didn’t create ghosts, it just gave us more form, more …substance, if you like. I’ve talked to some of the others about it, though that was in the beginning. No-one really wants to talk it about now. Hah, we didn’t then, but it seemed like we needed to. But some of us had more memories than others of what it was like before, and after we were… I don’t know, somehow real. More real than we had been. We were still ghosts – still mostly ghosts, but we were a bigger part of the world. We could do more things. Some could do more than others, some were more solid than others. You wouldn’t even know some ghosts were actually ghosts; they were practically solid. That caused problems. But… the Radiance gives solidity to ghosts, and it changes living things. There’s a suspicion that they people who got destroyed were somehow used up to give solidity to other things. That’s a physicists view of things, of course: nothing is created or destroyed, just transformed.”
“You can’t walk through the walls?” Collins was listening but it was confusing. He’d know next to nothing about ghosts to start with, and now there seemed to be even more that no-one had told him.
“Not while the Device is on.”
Greg - well, I could certainly bring that prompt around again. But if you're going to do it anyway, I'll just keep on trucking for now.
Well, that's an unexpected turn. And now you've got me worrying about the Inspectral making it out of there! Jeez.
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