Lost Girl
lostgurl@psishadows.net Linda was on the PSNet too, she was Cat443 and had gotten Ria hooked up, even getting her the PC to use. Linda was at least 18, but she lived a few doors away and was like a big sister. She was also a psychic herself, but not like the ones on TV, she was always finishing people's sentences for them and was always getting "feelings" about stuff. After a while Ria got used to it, then she got interested. Linda taught Ria all about everything from astrology, deja vu, and mind reading to out-of-body experiences and seances, but it was the out-of-body or astral travel that Ria pegged on. This, she thought, she could do. She had played with lucid dreaming for a while, but never really liked the idea of controlling dreams - dreams were meant to be free. She felt like a person's soul should be free too. Ria started reading everything she could find on out-of-body experiences. She raided the local library, the school library, anything she could find on the net. Finally she was ready to try it. One morning after breakfast, Ria didn't go to school. She locked the door, and closed all the curtains, went in her room and closed the door. She carefully made her bed, got completely undressed and stood in front of her mirror, memorizing her face and body. Then she unplugged her phone and turned off her light. She laid down on top of her bed, crossed her hands on her chest, closed her eyes, and forced herself to relax. Ria started at her head and her toes at the same time, imagining a red-golden soul overlaying her physical body. She gently lifted up her soul, causing her body to become dead weight. Ria could feel her soul rising to the top of her feet, legs, head, and shoulders, but not from her chest. Her soul seemed to cling to her heart and lungs. She relaxed and mentally massaged her soul around her heart and lungs, as if she could gently lift it from the last part of her physical body. Ria remotely noticed her arms falling by her sides and could feel her soul slowly lifting, but in a tilting manner still holding to her head. She relaxed another wave through her soul/body and felt the beginning of separation, like a tear drop being lifted from the cheek on which it had been born... The next thing she knew she was crying and embracing herself on her bed, curled into a fetal position. She felt like she had done something really dirty and cruel to someone she loved, and she would never do that again. After a while she got up, walked back to her mirror, gave herself a hug. Then she kissed her mirror, and stopped, checking to make sure she didn't look any different. Ria slipped on some sweat pants and a T and made herself a peanut butter and jelly. Halfway through her sandwich she started getting really excited. She had done it! Well, practically - more than anyone else she knew, she couldn't wait to tell Linda and Cindy (DZ1 went to school with Ria). Ria moved her PB&J to her book on the couch and read and reread the section she had already memorized on how astral travel should be done. She already knew she was about to try again. It wasn't even 9:00 yet, she had 10,11,12, + 5, 8 hours by herself. Ria went back to her room, closed the door and got undressed again. This time she laid her arms by her side. Ria didn't think of her body or her soul - she opened a void above herself and leapt into it! Ria rolled over and looked down on her body sinking away below her. She was at the same height as a bird flying around her apartment; the wind was cold, blowing through her, but giving the impression of cold rather than the bitter sharpness which she should be feeling. She could float around, more like a thought than a bird, slipping from one place to another a quick as her imagination. She slid back into the air of her bedroom and looked at herself lying on the bed. Ria couldn't tell if she was breathing lightly or not, but she knew she was ok, and was afraid to get too close to the magnetic pull of her body. She let herself float back out through the roof again. When Ria thought about going by her school, she simply dipped down and over and she was there above it. She hesitated, no one could see her, she was sure, but - she was naked. She went around to the girl's locker room at the back of the school. She stepped down onto the ground like a swimmer under water and slipped forward through the closed door into the empty locker room. Coach Thatcher was in the office on the phone. Ria did a slow float over to the office, looked down through herself at the gym floor and then stepped up to her coach's open door - no reaction. She was invisible! Her coach continued not to see her - it was as good as dreaming it, but she could feel the reality like one hand on her body and a sensation of wrongness edging against her like a dangerous guilt. Ria got up her nerve and stepped through the closed gym door into the open hall! She was standing naked in the hallway of her school, invisible like a ghost, it was a nervous thrill that made her a little giddy. Then the bell rang, kids burst out of all the doors and started running right at her. She jumped up to the ceiling and looked around to see if anyone could see her, but it was like watching a movie - she didn't exist here. After a moment Ria saw Cindy coming down the hall towards her. Ria lit on the ground right in front of her. "Cindy!" Cindy walked right into her and stopped. "Ohmygod - Ria?" It was almost a whisper. Ria couldn't respond - she was overwhelmed by Cindy's body, by Cindy's soul. Her body was an irresistible magnet, but Cindy's soul was in the way, her body was saturated with it, keeping her out like a rubber band guardrail... "Ohmygod - I think something bad has just happened to Ria" Cindy started walking again. Ria fell down hungry, thirsty, she couldn't breath, and her heart felt like it had been stopped. She began to feel dizzy and lost, the world suddenly started turning dark as she rushed back to her room in the back of the apartment. Ria saw her body on the floor upside down, everything looked deserately wrong. She rushed into her body - grabbed the bones and the heart and the mind, wrapped up the lungs, put on the legs and arms, but they just didn't adhere. She was no longer attached. She couldn't get back in! The world had gone dark grey and silent long before Ria's mother came into the apartment. It was late afternoon. Ria hung tenuously to her body which had already begun to stiffen and discolor. Time started again when Ria heard her mother screaming and crying. Then there was the panic, the phone calls, Linda came over, her mother had failed to dress her in a gown, Linda got it done, both - all three of them - were crying hysterically. The ambulance ride to the morgue was sickening with panic and disorientation. Ria didn't know where she was - how to get home, she wanted to stay with her mother and Linda, but was afraid to let go of her body - and then it was over and she was alone with her corpse. Ria stayed with her body. She had dispared of reclaiming it, but was unable to leave. No autopsy had been done, so she waited. Ria thought about being thirteen. She thought about Cindy and wondered what had happened. It was unfair, she hadn't died! What a mess! She stayed with her body when they moved it again. At the funeral home, she drifted around the room as the mortitians did their work. Ria was unable to make her presense known, and when she nerved herself to try to touch one of the workers, it was like trying to touch the air. There was no magnetic pull, no soul she could touch and feel - they were cold, unreal. She stayed with her body. - - - - Ria began getting tired. It was hard to concentrate, she felt weak. It wasn't exactly like being sleepy, but the kind of drain that comes with a long lonley vigil, a hoplessness mixed with apathetic boredom. Finally they laid her body in a coffin and took it into a viewing room. Her mother came by herself, Ria tried desperatly to make herself known. She shouted, moved through her, even tried to move her corpse around, but it was no use. She was a far away as the mortitians had been. Her father came. She had been with her father for a week 3 months ago, but he was as blind and deaf as her mother. Then Linda came, Linda could tell she was there! Linda was looking right at Ria when she said something incoherent to Ria's mother. Then she looked at Ria's corpse and touched her waxy cheek, Ria came up behind her. "Linda" Linda jumped and spun around, not sure why, somthing had spooked her..." "Linda it's me, Ria, tell me you can hear me, you're looking right at me!" "Linda!..." Linda started crying profusely, excused herself and dashed out. Ria couldn't decide to leave her body quick enough to go with her, but it didn't matter - Cindy came in. Cindy - Cindy with her living body and soul. Cindy who had caused this mess. She came in with her parents and older brother. As Ria walked up to her Cindy slowed down. Ria could feel Cindy feeling her presense, she stepped right up to her face. "CINDY!" Cindy screamed. Ria jumped into her body, capturing it, fighting the soul grown around the bones and tissues, making way for her own soul to attach to life once more, regardless of Cindy's well being, regardless of whatever the cost was to her. It was like eating, drinking, and sleeping all at once, it was like plunging into a cool pool on a hot summer day. She could barely hear a wimper from Cindy as she subsided into a nagging itch. She looked around. The world had sound and color. Cindy's mother and father were trying to calm her down. She was Cindy. Cindy was gone. She shoved past her new parents and walked to the open casket. She rubbed her new arms and her face, feeling their warmth and solidity while she looked at herself, dead, in a casket. Ria looked at her mother. She knew her mother saw Cindy, not her daughter walking towards her. "Mrs. Cassiday, Ria's gone to a better place, and... I'm sorry I screamed." and then she passed out. - - - - Ria woke up in Cindy's bed. The body was burning with fever, soaked in sweat. It didn't seem to be working. Cindy was sick, real sick. Ria got up, walked down the hall and Mom came running. "Darling! You need to get back in bed! What do you want honey?" "...water. I need some water?" "Oh, honey, you were just up, try to get some sleep and I'll bring you some more water." just up? She let herself be returned to bed. She closed her eyes to the fever and felt somewhere in her head the ragings of a crowded out soul. She knew Cindy had been keeping her down, asleep and sick while She lived! She kicked at the voice that she knew was Cindy, and somehow knew she had caused her pain. Cindy's mother brought the water, without too much additional fuss and finally left again. Ria waited in bed for a little more time to go by... Cindy was there, moving around in the back of her head, more scared then angry - she wouldn't be a problem anymore. Ria could tell she was way too weak to put up any kind of a fight. Enough waiting, Ria had to get online. She silently got out of bed and carefully closed the door. Ria walked over to Cindy's computer and started it up - hoping the noise wouldn't bring Mother Hen back into the room. She couldn't believe how sick Cindy was, and wondered what she had missed since the funeral home. - - - - Ria woke in a hospital bed. She cursed herself for loosing time again! She had checked e-mail, she had sent a note to Linda, she had tried on some of Cindy's clothes, then Cindy's mom had put her back in bed. It was Cindy's body that was making her so tired, she could just barley feel Cindy in the back of her head, too. She was as weak as her body. She woke up again. They were operating on her, on Cindy. Suddenly Ria realized she had slipped out of the body and was watching from above! She softly settled back into the body, realizing too late that the body was a sleep trap. - - - - Linda walked into her apartment. It had been a bad day at work, a long day. Her place was a mess. She added today's junk mail to the pile of unopened junk mail on the floor by her chair. She ratted around in her fridge, trying to decide between tea or coke and pouring an OJ instead. She went to her bed room, changed out of her work clothes and turned on the PC. Then she checked mail.
Ria woke up in the dark. Pitch black, and she knew what had happened. She had clung to a dying body, and it had died. There was nothing to hold on to and Cindy was gone - just gone. Ria didn't know why she had slept so much while she was with Cindy, or why she had slept on after her death, but she was awake now. She floated herself up and stepped out onto Cindy's grave. A fresh coldness down her spine reminded her of the very real death of her friend. Well Ria had survived - even if Cindy hadn't.
She could feel the hunger, the need for new life to attach to. Now Ria knew she had to find somone else, someone who, like Cindy, had a living soul and body. Not one of the empty phatoms like her mother and father, or the morticians. She knew Linda was the first person she had to find, after that? Linda would know what to do...
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