[February 14, 2043]

Ellie was quiet for a long time, an unfamiliar expression on her face. Around the booth where she and Cal were sitting, the burger joint was beginning to make preparations for closing. A server was going around tables with a dustpan. Another was wiping the windows. It seemed the place wasn't successful enough to have cleaning robots handle such tasks.

"Fucking hell, dude," she said at last, rubbing her nose with her palms. "You told Bridget and Mel all of that?"

"An abridged version," replied Cal. His voice was raspy from talking for so long. "I skipped over the worst of the abuse."

Cal said this so matter-of-factly that Ellie could barely believe it. He checked his watch.

"We've overshot the hour," he said. "I guess Bridget probably just ended up making dinner by herself. I need to thank her for all she does. I always forget to make it clear how grateful I am."

"That woman… Freya… she never…" Ellie drifted off, realizing that it was impossible for her to ask the question.

Cal seemed to understand.

"No," he responded, gently. "She was the type to always play with her food, never anything more."

Ellie covered her face with her hands. "I feel like such a jackass, now. I was so casually braggadocious earlier when I was telling you about my past. 'Look at my cool parents, look at how popular I was, I was an astronaut by the way!' Shit."

"You don't have to apologize for anything." Despite his wistful expression, the corner of Cal's mouth twitched as Ellie admonished herself. "Seriously. I enjoyed hearing about your past. Your parents sounded like good people, from how you described them."

"Yeah," Ellie dropped her hands, trying to grin back, but the expression was forced. Her typical easy smile had lost its energy. "And after…"

"And after?" Cal turned his dark eyes upward at the ceiling and fixed his hair, which was beginning to fall in front of his face. "Nothing. Darkness. Freya gains full control over a person once they give her two things: love and consent. I had given both over willingly to her a long time ago, so I was essentially at the whim of whatever she wanted to do with me."

"That's!— " Ellie had to control her flaring temper, an anger directed at this malevolent being she had never met. "That… wasn't consent. It was coercion. You were a child. No, it was something much worse-"

"Let's not fight over definitions." There was an edge in Cal's voice that seemed to suggest he had no desire to dive too deeply into the technicalities of what precisely had happened to him. "That's not a theatre that Freya exists within. There's no point trying to apply morality to what happened. She is only interested in one thing, following another, following another. The content of those events doesn't matter at all to her. I was just the collateral of that line of thought. I don't even really judge her for it."

"I do," said Ellie, instantly. "She's a monster."

"It's…" Cal bit his lip in self-irritation. "It's not that simple. She's a fantastically egotistic existence. She had no concerns beyond her goals and her own amusement. She's an aspect of time, El. Time is selfish and completely rigid. There's no point in trying to change its essential properties."

Ellie's eyes were annoyed. "Why are you defending her? She tortured you."

Cal didn't answer immediately, and when he did, a hint of shame was in his voice. "I don't know. She did. And also, for years of my life, she was the only person I could talk to, who was my friend. Her motivations didn't matter to me at the time. I was just glad that someone would listen to what I had to say, and who seemed to take an interest in me."

"It was all manipulation."

"It was everything to me." Cal's eyes flashed. "I'm aware of the contradiction. That doesn't make my feelings any less straightforward. Sorry."

There was an awkward silence at the table.

"What happened then, exactly?" Ellie asked, finally. "After Freya left?"

"As I said, she had my love and consent, meaning she could do whatever she wanted with me," Cal coughed into his arm. His head felt hot and hazy. "In this case, she wanted to teach me a lesson. I guess to show me what she is able to do — or to make clear what life without her could be like. So she cut off my eyesight. I wasn't blind, per se. It was more like being closed off in total darkness. I couldn't see anything, not even a hand in front of my face."

Ellie shook her head. "I don't understand."

"She owns me, in other words," Cal said. "And her power gives her full domain over all she owns as long as our bond persists. If she wants, she can alter my perception or even my physical body. Remember when I told you about the day my parents died? She didn't stop time exactly; rather, time stopped for me. Making me lose my ability to see light is quite simple in comparison."

Ellie's eyes were widening, finally understanding the implication of Cal's words. "Holy shit, dude. What are you saying? That Freya can do-"

"Anything," replied Cal, shortly. "Anything she wants with me. But don't worry. She's at most a nuisance to those whom she holds no sway over. She'll pull out some party tricks, threaten, and rattle the cage, but if you ever see her, Ellie, please understand that there is nothing she can do to you if you don't allow her to."

"That's why she went for a kid?"

"That's why she went for a kid." Cal crossed his legs, keeping one eye on the restaurant staff around them, ready to vacate in case he and Ellie would be asked to leave. "Someone too stupid to know better."

"Don't talk like that."

He shrugged.

"How long did she take away light?" asked Ellie, apprehensively.

Cal shrugged again. "A few days, maybe? Just long enough so that my adoptive parents wouldn't think to check on me, to see if I was alright — they were obligated every now and again to make sure I was still alive. But I think I have to stress that to me it felt far longer." He stopped for a second, trying to find a new thought. "I… learned at university that, according to the laws of physics, time cannot be dilated by darkness."

Ellie nodded, remembering her own education at the academy she had attended with the rest of the junior cosmonauts. "Yes, correct. Time dilation is a really important concept to understand when you want to travel the universe and the void of space, for sure, and it has nothing to do with photonic propagation." Ellie's voice became taut with concentration, as if it were slipping into a mode that she hadn't had the opportunity to make use of for a long time. "Generally speaking, light is a constant, not a variable. If you want to bend space-time, you need to take advantage of its geometry, boss. You need to stretch it or compress it, make it fast, make it slow. Like playing with putty. The surest way to do that is with gravity. In my time, that's a scientific concept that's more or less held true for over three thousand years. That Einstein was a smart cookie, no doubt."

"That's incorrect."

Cal's voice was rather harsh, and it made Ellie break from her explanation to look at him. "What?"

He continued in the same tone. "Let's consider a scenario. You crouch at one side of a carpeted rectangular room, and slowly roll a marble across the floor until it hits the opposing wall and makes a noise. Repeat this experiment twice. The first time the photons are alive. You can see everything, the room, the walls, the marble itself as it rolls over the carpet away from you, and you track its movement with your eyes until it makes contact with the opposing end of the room. The second time, you are in pitch darkness. You still make an identical movement, the marble rolls away from you, but this time you have no visual confirmation of its whereabouts: how fast it is going, how far it is away from you, how far it still has left to go until touching the opposite wall. All you can do is strain your ears for the sound of a click, of the marble connecting with the wall. Until you hear that click, it's purgatory. The anticipation and uncertainty elongate the seconds. You swear it's taking longer this time. And it is."

Cal snapped his fingers, sardonically. "Voila. I've disproved general relativity with two marbles and a light switch. Clearly, Einstein needed to think about his conclusions for a little longer. Light is the dictator of time, not gravity."

Ellie leaned back in her seat. She wasn't used to Cal taking in such a casual, obviously ironic tone, and it made her uneasy for a reason she couldn't quite describe — like she was watching Cal in a state of inebriation. "I know you're joking, but you're talking about psychology, the mental state of the brain, not actual physical phenomena. The brain losing its rhythm and losing track of the passage of time. But that's all perception. Try it with a clock — any old oscillation calculator. Those suckers will tick away just fine whether they are in a bright room or a dark room, as long as they are unaffected by gravity or velocity."

"And yet," Cal said softly. "If I were to tell you that those few days in the darkness lasted longer than the entirety of my life up until that point, would you believe me? That in that quiet, dark place, while I thrashed about, my throat bound by an invisible thread, choking, urinating, defecating, seeing nothing, knowing not why it had begun nor if it would ever end — would you believe me if I told you that it lasted half a century, at the very least? Not in perception, but in reality? That decades passed like that? What would you say then?"

Ellie stared at Cal's neutral expression and felt like tears were coming to her eyes, but she blinked, and the compulsion was gone. Realizing that Ellie wasn't responding, Cal continued to speak. "Everything in my life has been so surreal since then. Freya was a known factor; without her, everything turned upside down. First, a year-and-a-half ago, the sister I hadn't seen in years kicked down the door to my room and physically pulled me out, as if she were possessed by some force — you should have seen the look on her face, it was an expression beyond determination. I live with her, and she cuts my hair, and teaches me how to cook, and tries to make me a human being again, as opposed to what I was: a wild organism existing within its own stench and mess. Then I moved to Otter Manor. And I meet you. And Mel, and Ram, and Aina, and Roxy, and Bridget. I even have a friend at school who understands me without me ever needing to explain myself, because he's a natural sort of person, who doesn't need to overthink himself into anxiety in order to stimulate even the smallest action. And my classes are interesting. And the days are light and warm. And I think…"

He swallowed heavily, rubbing his eyes. "And I think that it's beyond far-fetched. That this is a ridiculous scenario — living among ghosts and princesses and vampires — a scenario my desperate, dying brain has engineered for itself, and in reality, I'm in that dark room, still, as I will be forever. Every time I go to sleep, I wonder if this will be the day I wake up from this dream, and return to cold reality."

Ellie grasped his hand, and he looked at her. "This is real," she said, her eyes glowing with resilience. "I'm real. All of us are real. And the affection that we've shown you, and that we've received from you… That's real, too. Don't doubt it for a moment. Not a second. Otherwise, it really will be like you're still there."

"Yeah," he said, shortly, and then pulled his hand away. "I suppose it's one thing to know that and another to know it. Sorry, I'm shaking. I feel all raw. But Ellie… I've never really recovered from my time in that darkness… I mean… You know that, don't you?"

Ellie didn't react, because to do so would be to confirm his words, but even this inaction served as a suitable answer.

"I can still barely eat, after living for years in the preliminary stages of malnutrition. Sis tried to fatten me up when I was living with her, but it didn't really take. I can barely touch anyone, because when I do, I remember how it felt to touch her." He shuddered. "I guess something broke in me emotionally when I was in there, like the isolation permanently rewrote my brain or something. Nothing comes easy anymore. Not laughter or anger or sadness. I just swim around in the vagueness of my emotions."

He shook his head bitterly. "I'm just an archetype. The preliminary sketch of a person who used to exist."

Ellie found his hand again, holding it tightly so that this time he couldn't pull away easily. "Stop. You're a practical person, and you know that's not true. You know that since you've lived in the manor with all of us, you've changed. You know that. Don't deny it. It would be the same as denying our friendship."

Cal didn't respond, and when he began speaking again, it was about something else entirely, though he didn't pull away from Ellie's hand this time. "The worst part is that all of it meant nothing to her. She broke my life, and felt no particular way about it. Like she didn't even understand the damage and pain she had given me. And her resurfacing like this, years after she abandoned me, it also means nothing. It's a compulsion born out of boredom at best." He bit his lip, pensively, and adjusted a bit of long dark hair that had fallen in front of his eyes. "I think there's a certain pull toward mythologizing the people who destroy us. It's a little bit of comfort to imagine that the act of destruction itself simultaneously indicates a meaningful relationship, even if it was a negative one. It's terrible to imagine the person responsible did so out of spite, or anger, or irrationality, but it's far, far worse to accept that they likely did so out of tepid cruelty or passive indifference. Because then it all means nothing, and all the suffering you've sustained means nothing, too. There's no lesson in it. There's no positive you can take away from any of it. You simply met the wrong person at the wrong time."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Cal was looking at Ellie, as if trying to memorize the lines of her face, and he grasped her wrist, as if for support. "Can I say something fucked up?"

Her brown eyes widened for a moment, but then she nodded.

"Okay," said Cal. "That night we were together, before the new year. When you got on top of me. We were on the bed and you touched my thigh. At that moment, I wasn't thinking about you at all. I was thinking about how it felt when Freya did the same thing, all those years ago."

Ellie's face paled. "Oh stars, Cal, I didn't even-"

He squeezed her wrist comfortingly and then withdrew his hand from hers. "It's not an indictment. I'm not saying anything else beyond what I said. It's just how it was. That's what those years with her did to me."

Cal closed his eyes for a long moment, then looked around the burger joint, at the servers who were beginning to throw apprehensive glances at the booth where he and Ellie were sitting. "They'll be closing in five minutes, I think. I said even more than I intended to say. Thank you for listening."

"Of course, dude," said Ellie, blinking. "But I don't want to just end things like this without-"

"Ellinova," said Cal, gently. "I think I've gone as far as I can today. I don't want to keep speaking about all this. But I'm okay. For now, I'm okay."

Ellie narrowed her eyes. "You're okay?"

He nodded weakly. "Yeah. I think I just want to go home right now."

"Alright." Ellie got up and offered Cal her hand for the third time, which he took as he pulled himself to his feet. "Let's go home."

Cal and Ellie arrived back at Otter Manor late. The bus home had been delayed due to Shining Hope Guardian fighting Beetle Boss on the designated route, which meant they had ended up walking home together in the fading dusk. No words had been exchanged, but there was no discomfort. For that evening, there was simply nothing further to discuss.

When the pair finally entered the entrance hall of Otter Manor, Ellie immediately bounced up the staircase with a nonchalant "gotta poop!", leaving Cal alone in the room. No sooner had the sound of her footsteps faded away than Cal heard another sound from his right, and turned to see Aina poke her head out of the living room, blinking her green eyes rapidly as they adjusted to the light.

"Welcome back, Cal," she said, yawning. Her red hair was somewhat flat on one side, like she had been lying on it, and he could hear the sound of the television coming from behind her. "Bridget just left, if you're looking for her. She wanted to pick up some teabags from the convenience store. We ran out of the Luvinian brew we had been saving."

"Mmm," Cal grunted in acknowledgement, following Aina back into the living room. The lights were off, but the television was playing an old rubber-hose cartoon, and he sat down beside Aina on the couch. "Please tell Bridget 'thank you' for handling dinner today — or actually, I'll tell her myself."

"Okay," Aina said, tucking her knees to her chest as she watched the television. She was wearing her beautiful white nightgown that she occasionally ate breakfast in, its lace hem folded against her ankles as she rested her bare feet against the couch cushion. "Why were you late, anyway? It was kinda of lonely with just me and Bridget. She made some simple soup, Luvinian-style, with lots of potatoes and leeks. I wanted to eat with Mel, but that silly spirit has been in her room all day."

Cal watched the cartoon distractedly, light playing across his face in the dark room. "It must be hard for her to watch people eat dinner without being able to actually have food herself. I understand her wanting to avoid such reminders, if possible."

"I suppose that makes sense. Well reasoned, peasant." Aina turned her head to look at Cal directly for the first time, trying to read his ambiguous expression. He was sitting on the far end of the couch on the opposite side from her to accommodate her legs — if she wanted, she could poke his arm with her toes. "Are you alright, Cal? You seem even more aloof than you usually are."

"Just a lot on my mind." His dark eyes found Aina, a quiet intensity in them. "Thank you for asking. You know… you've gotten a lot better at reading the emotions of people, princess. You've changed a lot since you first came here."

Aina flinched and quickly looked back at the television. For some reason, a blush was coming over her face; something about the tone of Cal's voice or the look in his dark eyes had stirred something in her chest. "O-oh, really? Well, as a princess of Luvinia, it is axiomatic that I would thrive in any environment! Give me but a few months and I shall become the emotional core of this household as well as its most admired member."

"Yeah, yeah," Cal was smiling, actually smiling, not the practiced polite smirk that he typically wore in similar situations. Then, he nudged his head at the screen. "What's this one about?"

Aina gulped, hoping that the low lighting was hiding the red blush that refused to leave her cheeks. "It's a classical entry to this medium: Harry the Horse. He is a loyal steed that is crossing the old American West in order to reunite with his old master, who left to fight in a war. It's a tough journey, however, he's a very intelligent animal — like my dear Ezekiel and Sean — and moreover, his body is constructed of clay, which allows him to transform into many shapes and overcome whatever challenges he may come across."

"You like these cartoons, don't you?" said Cal, thoughtfully. "I always see you watching that one with the dog who can transform into a girl."

"Yes! Magical Canine Poppy!" Aina beamed, leaning forward excitedly on the couch to discuss the topic. "It's an absolute delight. We must catch the latest episode together. Bridget always promises to watch with me, but she becomes distracted by something every time we attempt it. Or worse, she'll try to discuss some real-world topic with me as the episode is playing! It's ridiculous!"

Then she stopped, realizing that in her passion, she hadn't answered Cal's original question. "But… I suppose it's interesting to me as a measure of effort. I once had Ram explain to me the process of making animation — those comic books she likes are sometimes adapted into cartoons — and it, from what I can tell, is an extremely time-consuming process. See, look!" She gestured at the screen, where Harry was stretching out his horse body to an impossible length in order to cross a chasm he had come across, like a long strip of warm taffy. "Every action you see must be hand-drawn by a real person. Apparently, many technologies in your world now allow the process to be somewhat automated, but these are episodes that were created over a hundred years ago, in the 1920s and 30s. Every frame is unique and handcrafted. I suppose I find that impressive. It also ignites my curiosity."

"Your curiosity?"

"Yes." There was a somewhat wistful expression on Aina's face as she watched the cartoon. "I wonder what it's like to put that much effort into something."

With that, they both fell silent for a number of minutes, and they simply watched Harry the Horse. Then Cal stood up. "I'm going to clean this room for a bit, give it a once-over. Is that alright with you?"

Aina blinked, her green eyes confused. "Clean? I thought you cleaned the whole first floor only two days ago. I saw you with the vacuum."

"That's right," Cal said. "I want to do so again. Then I'll watch a few more episodes with you."

"Alright, I don't mind."

Aina found herself saying these words automatically. However, there was an inclination in the back of her mind to probe a little deeper into Cal's behavior, but she realized the thought filled her with trepidation. To act too interested or concerned would clash with the noble perception she wanted Cal to have of her, and yet not to ask at all also made her feel like she was being cowardly in some way. Eventually, she acquiesced to her emotions and let him carry on with his work without further inquiry.

No sooner had Cal opened the door to room 01 than Mel's voice rang out.

"Welcome back! Whoa, you look super tired." The ghost was hanging upside-down, midair, above his head, leafing through a novel. Her short black hair hung freely from her scalp, and she wore a warm smile of greeting. "I heard you come back a while ago. What held you up?"

"I talked with Aina for a bit." Cal felt completely drained in every limb, and he fell face-first onto his bed, passing through Mel's transparent body as he landed on the covers. "Then, I cleaned a little."

"Weirdo. You're so serious but so dorky." Mel snorted to herself with amusement. She was still looking at her book, but she extended one arm down from where she was suspended and poked the back of Cal's head as he spoke face-first on his pillow. "Didn't you clean just a little bit ago? You're so strangely particular about keeping things tidy. What, are you one of those people who straightens up their home because it feels like it gives them control?"

"Something like that," Cal moved his head to dodge the incessant poking of Mel's finger against the crown of his skull, though he still didn't flip over onto his back. "It's not my fault that everyone in this place besides Bridget doesn't clean up after themselves."

"Hey!" Her indignant response was a little louder than it needed to be, and Cal winced into his pillow. "I'm plenty neat! And not corporeal, in case you haven't noticed. It's hard for me to cause too much of a mess even if I wanted to."

"You dumped out that bag of old CDs that I got for you on my bed and just left them there."

"Oh my God! That was like a month ago, and I already apologized for it! Chill about it, won't you?" Suddenly, Mel's voice dropped and took on a tender note. "Hey, look at me, please. I want to see your face. I haven't seen you since this morning."

Slowly, a little begrudgingly, Cal turned over on his back. Mel had flipped over too in the air, so now they were face-to-face, close enough that he could count the freckles on her pale nose. Her blue eyes were narrowed with happiness, but there was a little uncertainty in them as well.

"You look tired," she said again, stretching out a hand tentatively, as if she wanted to touch his hair but was scared to ask for permission.

"I am tired," Cal said simply. "I think I might go to sleep soon. You can stay up with your book, if you want."

"You talked with Ellie today? About what we talked about last night?"

"Yeah."

Mel pursed her lip a little, in a pouting sort of way. "I'm not sure. It feels like you're being dishonest with me about something."

"I'm not." Cal grimaced. "I'm just worn out from talking for so long about myself. You understand me well enough to know I don't like doing that. I'm much more suited to playing the background role. Being the wallpaper in other people's stories. I don't want the spotlight on myself."

Mel smiled widely, a little ironically, and leaned even closer to Cal. "You say that, but I know that at opportune moments, you like to show off a little." Then she frowned suddenly, a new thought occurring to her, and she drifted a little higher, towards the ceiling, her white sundress fluttering around her. "You told me everything you could. You made that clear. But I suppose I want to know even more, despite it trampling on your feelings a little."

Cal frowned, too. "Why?"

Mel self-consciously picked at her earlobe, swaying her head side to side slowly. "It makes it easier for me. The more I know about you, the less distance there is between us, the more it becomes easier for me to talk about myself, my experiences, my emotions, my past. I want nothing to be a secret. That's the sort of relationship I want, you, who are bound to me for a million years." She flashed a wide smile. "I'm a little selfish, I guess. I don't want to share your imperfections with anyone else."

He stared at her for a moment, pondering the words. "Okay. Do you want to see something really special? Something you can brag about?"

Her eyes lit up, and she nodded furiously. "Yes!"

"Hold on," Cal groaned as he rose his aching, protesting muscles from the bed once again. He crossed the room, sat down at the desk, and beckoned to the ghost. "Come over here."

Mel floated across to where Cal was sitting, positioning her horizontal body next to him, her head sticking out over his shoulder like she was peering over the side of a cliff. "What's up?"

Cal opened his computer, which he seldom used, and opened the system's hard drive to scroll through files. "When my parents died in the accident, it took a long time for the administrators to parse and sort through all their belongings. I was the heir, but I was underage, and my parents still had a lot of legally sensitive documents from their respective workplaces stored around the home. There was a lot of gray area in terms of who got to see what and who had access to the property, and various things had to be determined by me, by my adoptive parents, and even my parents' employers. We had a very big house — the process took years." He took a breath, opening a particular file which launched an MP4 video. "My point being: a lot of personal material fell through the cracks. The property technically still belongs to me, but it's been cleared out, more or less. Two years or so after the accident, I got an email on my school account from one of my dad's old coworkers. The company had confiscated one of my dad's work laptops that they contractually owned, but it seemed like my dad had downloaded a lot of personal material onto it, too. Thousands of files. Turns out most of it was episodes of television he had illegally downloaded from shady Internet sites, but he also had this."

Cal clicked play. "This was a video that my maternal aunt Beatrice filmed. She died a few weeks after she recorded this. She had been sick for a long time."

The video showed a family seated around a long, gorgeously carved oak table. There was a man, a woman, and a little boy who was wearing a cowboy hat in the middle. Balloons were drifting towards the ceiling, where streamers of three different colors (red, yellow, green) were hanging. There was a distortion in the audio, like the camera that had been recording it had been adjusted to an incorrect setting, so the voices and laughter of the family and the person who was holding the camera crackled as it exited the laptop's external speakers. The video was also unsteady: it bobbed up and down, like the scene was taking place on a fishing ship, and it made the subject of the video, the family, seem blurry and unfocused. There was a marker in the corner of the frame, written out in neon text. It said pascalbdaybarbara.mp4, and underneath: February 11, 2027.

"Holy shit," Mel breathed, her eyes wide with shock. "Is that…?"

"My fourth birthday. That's me in the middle." Cal said, tonelessly. He was looking at the video like he didn't recognize it at all, the brown light of the images reflecting in his dark eyes. "I guess I had a phase where I was really into cowboys, but I don't remember that in the slightest. I also don't remember my aunt — as horrible as that is to say. I think this was the single time she visited the house. That was a special day. It was the only birthday all three of us: my dad, my mom, and me… the only time all of us were together. No birthday before. No birthday after."

"Is that your mother?" Mel asked, her voice almost in a whisper, leaning closer to the MP4, which, according to the bar at the bottom of the screen, had now elapsed more than half its duration. "She's absolutely gorgeous. And that's you? You're smiling and laughing. I've never seen… look at you."

"I was especially excited because I hadn't seen my mother for months at that time," said Cal. The man, the woman, and the person behind the camera had all begun to sing "Happy Birthday" out of unison, though the little boy seated between his parents was still bouncing up and down with excitement, a wide smile on his face. "So, sorry to break the illusion, but while I was sincerely happy that day, it was also a little performative. I was determined to be the perfect, joyous child. To have a lot of fun with my parents. I made sure to be on my best behavior. I thought they would both want to spend more time with me if I did that… shit."

He wiped his eyes.

Mel peered at him and then said in an incredulous voice: "Are you crying?"

"A little," he admitted. "Fuck. I've seen this so many times, so why?-"

He felt a small pressure on his back. Mel's arms were wrapped around him, hugging him from behind. The video on the laptop sputtered to a halt.

"It's been a tough few days," Cal admitted softly, accepting the hug without protest. "They were pretty bad parents, I guess. But I have a ridiculous notion that if they were alive today, we could have talked everything out, and come to a sort of understanding. But it's too late. They're…"

"Already ghosts," whispered Mel, her mouth by his ear.

"Already ghosts," Cal repeated. "And I'm still here."

"You're with me. And everyone else."

"Yeah."

"Want to go to bed now? I'll turn off the lights for you."

"Thank you. You can read a little more, though, if you want."

"I can do that in the entry hall."

"Oh… yeah, that's right." Call allowed himself to be led back to the bed.

Mel went back to the laptop and took one last look at the final, hazy image of the Bourdet family captured by the video, their smiles and laughter frozen forever in time. There were no faces she recognized, not even Cal's. It was the last gasp of a life and world that had long vanished, leaving only blurry memories to signify it had ever existed at all.

Gently, Mel closed the laptop, went over by the door to the room, and switched off the lights. As always, the curtains of the window had been left ajar to allow a little trickle of moonlight to enter the room, to break up the darkness.

"That day, when you first met me, a spirit… what did you think?"

Mel's voice was hushed, almost conspiratorial.

"I suppose I thought…" Cal croaked. "I suppose I thought… 'Of course, that's how it will be.'"

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