Desperate times meant desperate measures.
He had, of course, no idea what he was doing, no idea how one went about possessing someone else but he assumed occupying the same space was the ticket. As the youngsters debated back and forth on who to reach out to, he jumped on top of Madam K, feeling more than a little foolish. He felt even more silly when he fell right through her.
He gave it another couple of tries, attempted to back into her, then attempted to sit on her lap, but had no more luck with these approaches. Meanwhile, the argument about who to summon next had somehow reached its conclusion with Tommy's emphatic delivery of the two words "Paul Walker" at which point everybody stopped arguing and made ooohhh noises and even Sophie joined in and he could sense that this was not because she, or really any of her friends, thought that Madam K could actually contact this Paul Walker but simply that, if someone did have such an ability, this would be a very interesting person to get in touch with.
He gave up on trying to possess the woman and moved over to his daughter.
He concentrated as hard as he could which he found, having had so much practice concentrating on not being himself for so long, was very hard indeed.
The noise and laughter of the room around them died away and for him in that moment it was only him and his Sophie and the words he had to tell her.
"Hello, Sophie. It's Dad here. Madam Kondazian was actually right about me being somewhere nice and warm and pleasant because I'm here in this warm little room or caravan or whatever it is and I'm with you and that's the nicest and most pleasant place there is. Usually though, I'm out and about. You wouldn't believe the things I've seen and the things I've been, Soph. Do you know I was a dog chasing its own tail and then I was the tail and then I was the feeling of teeth biting down on tail which was quite painful but also absolutely brilliant?"
Sophie's eyes moved about the room, and sometimes she smiled but she wasn't talking, wasn't throwing abuse at the poor medium, and he told himself that maybe, just maybe, she was listening. If he, when you got right down to it, no longer had eyes with which to see or a mouth with which to speak yet was still here looking at his daughter and speaking to her then perhaps there were ways for her to listen to him that didn't involve her ears.
He was getting off track with the whole dog thing.
"I'm sorry to hear Mum hasn't been doing very well. I'll look in on her soon and I promise to look in on you too from now on. I'm sorry I haven't been around. Those last days were a bit blurry and when it ended...when I ended...it was all a bit like I'd fallen asleep and then I was in a dream and you know what it's like when you're in a dream and you can't quite remember who you're meant to be or at least where you're meant to be. But it's no excuse, deep down, I knew I was running, that I didn't want to wake up from my dream. You see, I felt so guilty for leaving you and your Mum and so afraid for you both and so sad that I had lost you or rather that you had lost me and...well, it was easier not to wake up. I forgot who you were and who I was and of course that was the biggest mistake of my li...my biggest mistake ever because you and your Mum are the two things, the two people, in this world or any world that I should never have forgotten."
He stopped, unsure of whether to tell his daughter this next bit. In the background he vaguely registered Madam K imparting some message from a Mr Paul Walker about the future of a movie franchise that she/he insisted on calling Fast and Ferocious while the teens tried to shout her down with a mixture of corrections and additional questions.
In for a penny, in for a pound, he supposed and to his daughter (and wasn't it good to think those two words again...my daughter), this girl of contrasts and conflict, he had a long-standing debt.
"I think the problem was that the times I'd even start to remember, times like this, the very first thing I'd remember was the very last thing I said before I went away from you and your Mum and...you see, Sophie, the last thing I ever said was "Please just let me go". I don't even know who was there or if I said it out loud but that was it. And when I remembered saying that and even caught so much as a glimpse of a memory of you and Maggie, I would think "how could a man who loved both of you say something like that?" See, I thought I had chosen to leave you but now I remember everything and of course that's nonsense! I would never choose to leave my girls. It's just that I was getting sicker and sicker and I, all three of us and the doctors and everybody, had fought so hard but it wasn't working and the pain was so terrible and I just wanted it to stop."500Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAtNqOelr11
