The first memories came to Dean in non-sequential flashes, a vague childhood memory . . . an intense sexual encounter . . . a point of view image of someone walking down a hall, maybe at a school or business . . . a spider . . . some TV show . . . then they coalesced into a visual story, mostly going too fast for Dean to follow. 374Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAq5kNtGtx4
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Dean's vision cooled then slowed as his outlook focused on a woman driving a car. He was hovering close, appearing to be over her left shoulder, yet he was far enough away to see her face, it was Autumn. He felt his life force swoop into her body as if he was possessing her. Suddenly his outlook was different.
He was the Ghost Girl. Autumn was driving a white midsized sedan down a steeply inclined highway in a downpour. The rain fell faster than the wipers could clean off the water. It must have been summer, the windshield foggy from the AC. Autumn veered across the line slightly, her eyes filled with a sudden white light, from the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. Autumn over-corrected and swerved, skidding onto the shoulder, only there was not much of a shoulder to skid onto.
Time slowed, almost stopping, as the front tires slipped on wet grass, extending the skid off the road and down a steep embankment. It seemed to be the start of a minor accident, but gravity took the liberty of changing, Autumn felt its force from the passenger side of the car.
Then time returned in full force, then fast- forwarded as the car, completely out of control, rolled over and over, and was also bouncing. She was not wearing a seatbelt and she plunged through the safety glass, and blacked out briefly. She awoke in a patch of tall wet grass, and stood up, saying out loud, "At least I'm alive." Then she looked at her bloody leg.
Autumn bled out looking up through giant raindrops at bursts of lightening.
Dean was still coming from Autumn's perspective. Her eyesight faded to black. There was a unanticipated suction from behind, then she fell, or moreso, was yanked into a tunnel of chromatic lights blurred by a haze of pure white. Autumn appeared, Dean jetted up so they were face to face, then came to an abrupt stop. GG said, shaking her index finger between them, "Sorry, but there's only so much I can show ya." Everything switched to solid black except for Autumn, who seemed to come into an all-embracing clarity.
GG continued, "I did have a taste of the afterlife, but like some people who've nearly crossed through, I was told that it wasn't my time. . . . So I figured I'd wake up in a hospital bed, but I was an earthbound ghost that haunted the field I died in. I was confused, whoever runs the afterlife sure the fuck doesn't explain a thing, I figured out that I was a ghost because of stuff I saw on TV.
" It took a while, but I realized that work on this world takes place on many levels, you, of course, can only see what the living, natural folk see. You do have many purposes, divine and supernatural, but you can't see past your own eyesight until you're dead. But here is how I found out I could greater my reason for being earthbound."
The scene shifted, and what looked like a map in a video game or a science fiction movie took the substance of everything. There were several worlds in orbit of a dark star with a fiery ring around it. Dean's voided consciousness realized it was a black hole, he found space interesting enough to know that planets could indeed orbit a black hole, but what was different about this visage was that the planets revolved around the star in the same orbit, but they were synchronized in speed, so it did not seem that collision would be feasible. He did not see all of them, but the orbs seemed familiar, one was blue and wet looking like Earth, another was a reddish desert like Mars, one was a ball of fire and volcanic, like the moon Io-- Dean's outsider visuals then washed into some more patchy images.
Water was everywhere . . . murky water . . . wait, there were some muddy banks, but still no visible surface . . . roots grew out randomly, and dead trees and seagrass floated aimlessly with no noticeable origin . . . there was a half mile wide patch of sandy beach surrounded by ocean on both sides . . . not the same place . . . there was a wind swept desert plain with dust the color of rust, and no protection in sight . . . then the horror of a mountain range made completely of volcanoes . . . then it all reverted to the vivid tunnel, this time Dean could see GG's whole figure in her usual skimpy uniform. Even death did not diminish her sexiness, or Dean's aroused reaction to her.
"I think you should know me better"
Dean's outlook changed back to Autumn's eyes. Looking at her hands, it was obvious she was a small child, playing near a spirea hedgerow. Then things rolled back slightly, before she was born.There was a darkness nothing much else, just dark matter and cold emptiness. The Ghost Girl swam . . . until a kind of Big Bang brought her into this world. But that was the essence of Autumn Elsewhere's existence . . . Just dark, cold, and space.
Looking at herself in the mirror Autumn was barely a wisp of smoke. Cute, elfin, and as pale as that same smoke, the Ghost Girl lived in her own world . . . In a separate reality ... she had imaginary friends; but to the Dean element, they seemed to be almost physical as if they lived in another universe, one that did not quite synchronize with our own. The sun sprinkled down on the green, green grass . . . from the Big Bang of birth that created Autumn Elsewhere, into something less than spectacular. She had a really quiet childhood . . . Playing by the spirea bushes, with a train on the tracks up on a steep hill behind her. The train noise was hellish, awesome, and damn loud . . . But it almost had a musical rhythm . . . But then again, it was all rush and explosions of diesel smoke . . . A leviathan compared to her tiny frame.That train line overwhelmed her childhood. She lived on a stinking, dying planet in a universe ruled by entropy . . . Negativity was to be expected.
Despite her lonely, weird childhood spent to the backdrop of freight trains, Autumn was cheerily dark . . . She went Goth at an early age, only to stand out negatively in her small town, she was onto that even before it was a recognizable movement and hung out with the only other Goth in town, her friend Dee Dee, spending most of their time driving around and listening to cassettes. Dee Dee drove like James Bond; she would make her friends shit their pants as she maneuvered with hair-splitting precision . . . doing a E-brake 360 degree spin for no particular reason . . . she drove her little tan Chevy Chevette like 007 drove an Aston Martin. Up and down the winding, deadly, highway 275 between Council Bluffs and Glenwood the girls would fly, dodging deer and killing cats and raccoons . . . The smell of dead skunks hovered in the valleys . . . Dee Dee would get her passenger to there destination, alive, no matter what the cost in gasoline or fear.
Absolutely like James Bond.
Then true danger took command of Autumn's world. Groups of girls were drawn together due to the boredom that small towns invoke, and decide to take refuge from the realities that overshadowed the dreamtime world of their childhood. She joined a tribe of misfit girls who wanted to be a gang but had no nerve to do so. They called themselves The Dead Clan.
There was the wisp of smoke, Autumn, lost in the middle of the Dead Clan. Then there was Dee Dee, short, blonde to the bone, and as full-figured as a Bond girl would have been. Another original friend of the first two was Persephone, raven haired and olive skin, also more athletically built than the other374Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7AFWzfte13
two. Persephone was quick-witted and made scathing, but funny smart-assed remarks, and374Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6VPdyzIrDb
she was never deeply serious.
When the drugs came to call then Meagan came a-calling too. Meagan was the first to do cocaine and experiment sexually, with her chest as a weapon the boys could not resist. Meagan's hair was dyed a million shades of whatever color she never quite washed in right, her ears had ten hoops pierced through the cartilage, and she had a stud through her left nostril long before body piercing became vogue. An there was also Meagan's friend Demi a heavyset girl often shunned and bullied because of her weight. Demi sought refuge with the group of outcasts who were more accepting of differences. then there was Diamond, whose beauty was in the rough and quite underdeveloped (only to grow up to be more stunning than her other friends). Marijuana was the first drug to enter the Dead Clan's world. Sweet, subtle green smoke made Autumn hallucinate, but it was always the same imaginary friends that whispered to her in the language of the dead.
Death hovered near the beings of dark matter, but that never mattered . . .
Apparently there was little else in life that mattered to Autumn, but the scene shifted briefly to an intense sexual experience, Dean could tell that she was not all that into it. Then seeing a video camera through her eyes, he could see that she was doing a porn scene, probably amateur, since the camera was cheap. Then for some reason, she replayed her death one more time.
"I found the Ghostworld. I can't explain how to a living. But that was how I found out how to leave that field and even invade your dreams. You'd be smart to come with Rune to the Ghostworld, to see for yourself, but even though I haven't seen them, angels and demons exist, so I'm warning you . . . be cautious."
"And, yes, my real last name is Elsewhere."
Dean flew over to the Ghost Girl, at a speed it seemed they would crash into each other but he stopped, softly, in an impossible way, for his lips to meet hers with a very brushing kiss. Then Dean flew back into his body at home, on his corner of the pentagram, the red candle blew out simultaneously.
Rune reacted matronly, putting her forearm on Dean's head, as if a vision might cause a fever. "You OK?" She asked.
"Uh . . . " Dean was basically speechless.
Standing in the corner of the staircase, the Ghost Girl stood in a flowing white dress, Dean assumed that he alone could see her. 374Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY2fdDRtcYt
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