The room was huge, floored in black and white tiles and roofed in vaulting plasterwork dangled with glittering crystal chandeliers. Some of the pillared walls led to alcoves and other rooms, some were faced with mirrors polished to a perfect sheen. In the air hung the sound of a bubbling stream, and the smell and shadows of a forest glade. As most of the guests had descended the sweeping staircase to the floor they had gasped at the grandeur or remarked that there may have been tens of thousands of masqued dancers parading around the room. He did neither. The very moment he had passed through the doors he had seen her, and his eyes never left her as he descended to the floor and took her hand.

The fluorescent lighting and sterile linoleum of the fast food restaurant was neutral ground. They were a chain store, up and down the strip. Five hundred miles dotted liberally with the squat, square buildings selling sugar and fat and two hundred million people eager to stuff it down their throats. With replacement organs cheaper every day people were still fat, stupid and lazy, but it was harder and harder to die from those things and fast food was big business. Such big business that they had the best security of any public place, hence the neutral ground.

The fake vinyl seat was sticky as Falling Blossom slid into the booth. She was late; not late enough, it seemed, for she was still alone. The food in front of her nauseated her slightly, placing her squarely in a clear minority, but she busied herself with making a show of eating anyway, conscious of the domed cameras dotting the ceiling and not wanting to be forcefully ejected before her business here was done. She was so engrossed in her act for the cameras she did not notice the man walk in until she looked up from her color-a-dinosaur paper placemat. He saw her at the same moment, caught the grimace on her face, and adopted a haughty scowl as he sat down opposite her.

“You got some kind of a problem?” he growled.
“Only that I wanted to get through this without any problems and you show up here dressed like that.”
“Are you disrespecting my tribe?”
She slowly looked him up and down before answering, trying to decide whether there was any point in being tactful. In the end, she figured there wasn’t. “Pirate isn’t a tribe you fucking moron, learn some history. You couldn’t at least leave the parrot at home? Or the eyepatch?”
“I don’t have to listen to this.” He thumped his hands on the table and slid out of the booth. “You’re lucky there’s no way to get weapons into these places.”
“Actually,” she said, pushing the tray away and leaning back in the seat, her hands clearly visible, “you’re wrong. Across the board. I have three weapons on me right now and could cut you down before you take a step. More importantly, you do have to listen to this. Now sit the hell down.”

I love Bookfest.

Out of the endless white and grey, a speck appeared. It blossomed into a line and steadily grew until it seemed to tower above them. Peter had begun to wonder if they would ever reach it when the boat stopped with a dull clang and unseated him. He flailed for purchase and found himself holding something thin and flat. Their boat had struck the line, no longer as distant as they had thought.
“What is it?” asked Alice, clearly excited.
Peter leaned carefully over the side of the boat and, now no longer seen from side-on, the line resolved itself into a ladder stretching up into the sky.
“It’s our stop, I think,” he said.
He held the boat steady while Alice clambered over him, gave him a stern glance he assumed pertained to the skirt she was wearing, grasped a rung, and began to climb.

“She was born for the theatre. To tread the boards, skirting the crisp edge of the spotlight; to take them to places they could not fathom without her. And, somehow, the green cellophane would fade into sunlight through the branches, and the painted backdrops would dissolve, leaving the haze of mountains in the distance and the hint of a deep, secret smell on the air.”

~while, off camera, the big bad wolf lurks, and the sounds of the orchestra float up from beneath~

~ the street. The silhouette of the neck of a double bass is just visible through the storm drain~

“I just say what I see. Though I think you may be the only one who realises that the stories are real.”

As the stones fall away you can just see their opacity fade until they are deep rich translucent shades of sapphire, emerald and ruby; then, in an instant, they are lost in the darkness.
(the only answer there is…)

“No need for thanks. I have to provide a script for my leading lady. “

“I wish these damn lights would change,” I muttered. Looking in either direction there was nothing on the road save the regular circles of light thrown from the street lamps. The red glow cast over the dash changed to green and I was on the accelerator like a shot.
“Traditionally, you get two more wishes,” smiled my passenger.
I laughed. “So where do you know Rebbecca from, anyway?”
“I work for her now in the antique store.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that like?”
“It is… different. Have you decided on your second wish?”
I laughed again. “Sure, why not. I wish I had a million dollars.”
There was a popping sound and a heavy duffel bag dropped into my lap. I jumped, swerving the car and nearly hitting a billboard proclaiming ‘Bargains! Bargains! Bargains!’.
“And your third wish?”
“Shit,” I said. “I wish I’d realised you were a genie.”

“You’re late,” she said. She kicked a bucket towards him. “Start bailing.”
Peter took a minute to absorb his surroundings. He sat in the bow of a small rowboat of unpainted, untreated wood. From what he could see the hull wasn’t even caulked. The horizon was a straight, unbroken line on all sides: grey above, white below. There was light to see by, but no bright spot in the sky to indicate where the sun might be hidden. Indeed, at first at seemed there was nothing at all except the boat and its two passengers. The other passenger was rowing, though it was hard to tell whether it was having any effect. It was the girl again.

“Why am I dreaming about you again?” he asked.
“You’re not,” she said.
“Oh?”
“I’m dreaming about you.”
“Ah,” Peter nodded. “No, wait, what?”
“Never mind that. Start bailing.”
“In a minute,” he said, picking up the bucket as a conciliatory measure. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
She looked herself over in mock examination, lifting first one leg then the other, but keeping up her hands on the oars. “Yes, you’re right, it is me.”
“No, I mean it’s you. Ashlyn. From yesterday. I thought you said your name was Alice.”
“I thought you said your name was Peter?”
“It is, here.” He hadn’t meant to say it, but once he had he realised it felt true.
“There you go, then. Now start bailing, unless you want us to sink.”
He frowned, but hefted the bucket anyway and started ladling mounds of pure white snow into the boat.

“So you hunt ghosts, then?” I asked.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he replied.
“That is,” I admitted, “refreshingly frank for a person running a business called ‘GhostAway’.”
He laughed. “It’s not exactly my usual spiel, no, but I’m not going to lie to an old friend.”
“So it’s a hoax?” I looked around the lavishly appointed office, before adding “A well-paying hoax?”
“Well-paying, yes. Hoax, no. It’s a matter of semantics.”

“So you ‘hunt’ ‘ghosts’, then?” I repeated, this time making the quotes in the air with my hands.
“‘Yes’,” he smiled. “Mass curves spacetime, right? It creates spheres that decay with distance. The phenomena has a lot of parallels: magnetism, sound, you get the idea. The theory goes that any type of energy creates a corresponding spherical disturbance, and that these distortions are present in all dimensions.”
“Bubbles in the aether.”
“Bubbles in the aether, right. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that events of high emotional significance are in a sense emotionally ‘massive’. Emotion is a form of energy, or at least a manifestation of one. Emotions cause bubbles. Usually just small ones, but sometimes…”
“Sometimes not,” I supplied.
“Sometimes not. I’m sure you’ve felt it before. Memories tied to a certain place, or smell, or time of year. Memories that are hard to get away from; memories that have gravity.”
“Ghosts are memories with gravity?”
“Yes. So much gravity that they have an effect on other people.”
“Okay, so let’s say I buy that ghosts are a manifestation of curved spacetime, how exactly would you go about hunting something like that?”
“Panel-beating.”

He loved rain that he didn’t have to be out in. This is not to say he only enjoyed rain from behind windows or under rooftops. Getting wet because there was no other choice in getting from A to B was irksome; sitting cold and wet in an office all day because of a forgotten umbrella was downright unpleasant; being in the rain because that was where you wanted to be, however, was glorious.

For being out and about in, he liked rain at dusk the best. The dusk and the rain conspired to pull the world in close around him, and everyone else was busy rushing on their way. Sometimes it felt like a blanket wrapped around. Sometimes it felt like swimming in the air, in the world, drinking it in. For being inside in, he liked night rain the best. It was the second best thing he knew to fall asleep to.

They sat. Close, but not touching. Not speaking; not in words. They could each feel the other’s warmth, smell the scent of the other’s skin, and that was enough, for now. They breathed in time: one in, one out; one out, one in.

The din of the world was muted; its pace was slowed. It faded away at the edges, indistinct. Their touch felt more from the air in the small space between them than from the grass beneath them. Nothing outside their little sphere was as important as anything inside it.

For now, this was the one thing that couldn’t wait.