The small black-haired girl carefully positions her dollies and stuffed animals around a small table she pours imaginary tea and makes conversation with her guests, but all the time the child can't relax. Heart-rate accelerated and movements tense, the young girl hastily looks around her every so often. Ever since the first few times she can't relax. It could happen again and she had no way of knowing when...or when he was watching.
Since she about five years old, from time to time a ghost would visit her. It wasn't a ghost in the most traditional sense though, it didn't look like a floating white sheet with eye holes, nor was it accompanied by ominous music. The appearance of Jackie Burkhardt's ghost was decidedly mor human. Despite his physical form varying from solid to translucent, it was always that of a young man in some kind of uniform with unmanageable hair and a strange, shiny "H" in the middle of his forehead. The spirit always appeared surprised, and possibly embarrassed, and moved its mouth as if it was talking; whether to her or someone she couldn't see she didn't know.
Eight years old now, Jackie felt that she could never really relax in her own bedroom. On a few occasions she thought she saw this entity appear in her room for just a few seconds and look at her with an eye-roll before disappearing again.
She had never told her parents about "H-man" as she called him in her head, but she had come very close a few times. Somehow she felt her parents would not believe her or understand; this was not a normal thing. Most of the time she was able to convince herself that H-man was created from her imagination or a recurring dream, but other times like this, she knew that he was real.
Despite her anxiety, Jackie played well into the afternoon with no incidents and went to bed in the evening thinking only of normal things like ponies, pretty dresses, and how handsome that Kelso boy was.
When Jackie awoke it was pitch dark and she rubbed her eyes wondering what had awoken her. All of her toys and belongings were in place and she couldn't hear anything unusual. Then she saw it. Mr. Carrot Cruncher, her stuffed pink bunny, had fallen off the shelf.
She got out of bed and walked over to pick him up, setting him back in his proper place.
"If you keep falling like this Mr. Carrot Cruncher I will make you sit with the ugly piglet twins; I will have no choice!" Jackie chastised the bunny and turned to go back to bed, but when she turned around she felt paralyzed as H-man stood before her, his countenance irritated as he appeared and faded rhythmically. The apparition glared at her only briefly before looking away.
"Holly" He said almost casually, "Whatever your deranged and senile computer mind has come up with isn't working."
Jackie was frozen to the spot. H-man had never spoken before. His voice sounded funny to her but she wasn't positive why. She stared with large eyes while he gave the appearance of trying to look anywhere but at her, relenting once to give her false smile that was almost a sneer.
"Are you a ghost?" Jackie blurted, curiosity overcoming fear for a moment.
"N-I well, that is to say..." The man struggled with his response and paused as if he had heard something. "Yes. Yes indeedy. A ghost. Exactly."
For some reason Jackie found this response made her relax a little. "Oh...so are you like evil or something?"
"Evil? No!" H-man said dramatically, shaking his head and continuing to look around impatiently as if waiting for something.
"Then why do you keep coming to my room and scaring me?"
The man's mouth went agape and slowly closed
Jackie blinked at her ghost, thinking all is crazy facial expressions would have been rather funny if he wasn't haunting her.
"Because I am your...Fairy...God-ghost?" The man phrased the words into a question that it seemed pained him to ask.
"That isn't a real thing!" The confused young Burkhardt huffed.
"And how would you know? Here I am, popping and out of your life to protect you and all you can do is shout; completely ungrateful. Unbelievable."
Jackie wasn't sure what to think, but she wasn't afraid anymore. She walked up to the weird ghost man and tried to touch him but her fingers brushed through only air, and his form went out of focus for a moment.
"Do you mind? That's very rude young lady." H-man shook a finger at her, clearly taken aback. "No respect for the dead."
Jackie giggled, covering her mouth.
H-man did not look amused, turning away from her to sneer at her tea party setup. "Get me out of here Kryten." He said quietly in an almost sing-song voice. "If you don't get me back in the next five seconds I am going to find your favorite groinal attachment and use it on you like a cat of nine tails."
"Who is Kryten?" Jackie asked, although everything he had said confused her.
"He's a servant, but the kind who doesn't know his place and annoys everyone around him with his inflated sense of self worth."
"I have servants too!" Jackie said brightly, glad to find something she had in common with the man.
"Of course you do." The ghost muttered, bitterness in his voice.
"Since you are here to protect me, could you check my closet for monsters?"
The man sighed loudly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Fine. Open the doors and I'll look."
"Thank you! My nanny forgot to check earlier."
Jackie approached her closet cautiously, throwing open the doors and jumping back.
The ghost-man seemed to inspect her entire closet, his hands clasped behind his back. "Nope. No monsters in here! Apart from some jumpers and frocks that are equally frightening in appearance to monsters, everything is tickety-boo!"
Jackie laughed. "You're funny. I like you. What's your name? My name is Jackie Burkhardt, in case you didn't know." Jackie curtsied in her nightdress, beaming at her new supernatural friend.
The ghost-man contorted his face a little but then formed his as if to speak. Before Jackie heard any of his words however, he vanished.
The young Burkhardt girl eventually went back to her bed and crawled under the covers, after trying to make get a response from her new friend visually or verbally for about half an hour. Jackie didn't feel scared anymore but now she felt kind of sad. Her parents were often very busy and it could get very lonely in that big house with only herself to play with. It would have been nice to have someone else for tea. Still, Jackie thought as she dozed off, this didn't mean she would never see him again. He was her Fairy God-ghost after all.
Rimmer snapped most unpleasantly back into his own reality, the other pathetic specimens that made up the Red Dwarf crew all gathered around him. He had never known that a Hologram could feel nauseous but he sure did. Rimmer tried to calm himself and readjust to the bright lighting of his and Lister's quarters.
"How ya feel man?" Lister asked in his irritatingly calm voice. The Cat lay on Rimmer's bunk watching him like he was an amusing skit, and Kryten stood by Lister, quite clearly in Concern Mode.
"Fantastic obviously." Rimmer stumbled and sat at the table. "Did it work Holly? Am I done phasing in and out of different points in time and space now? I don't know if my light-bee can handle much more."
Lister and Kryten exchanged a grim and knowing look.
"Well the good news is I have stopped you from jumping around from on point in spacetime to the next like like a kangaroo on cocaine."
Rimmer hated when Kryten and Holly beat around the bush, which they did very often. "Well what is the bad news then?" Arnold tried to swallow the dread that was building inside him.
"Well the thing is we can't seem to control the glitch that keeps popping you into Earth's Wisconsin in the 21st century. I was able to stabilize the signal so that you can maintain yourself in one present but unfortunately the damage done to the Hologram Simulation Suite has created an error that requires you to stay in the Wisconsin location. Somehow wires were crossed and your physical form can no longer be maintained on the ship." Holly looked graver than usually, her eyes kept looking down.
"What are you saying?"
It was Lister not Holly that responded. "It means Rimmer, that if you stay here your light-bee will fail. If we don't send you back to that timeline, you won't be able to survive as a Hologram."
Rimmer was completely stunned. "My choices are Hologram death or eternity trapped with that snooty little American girl?"
"Not eternity sir. We will all continue to work our very hardest to resolve this issue while you are gone. I am sure we will have you back on Red Dwarf in no time." Kryten was proud of himself because the last part was one of his more successful attempts at lying. "But you are failing rapidly. We will need to send you back in under ten minutes to ensure a safe transfer. Right now Holly is putting up an active buffer against the glitch that she will only be able to maintain a short time."
"Thanks for the bunk, buddy! I can store some of my least favorite accessories here!" The Cat added.
Rimmer looked around briefly at his crew mates. He didn't really know what he felt. Not sadness surely, but intense frustration. He could never catch a break. His cowardice as usual was winning however. No amount of bossy little girls was worse than ceasing to exist. At least, he hoped not.
With a jolt Rimmer was once again in that familiar bedroom. He groaned. This time he couldn't speak with the crew at all, he wasn't phasing in and out at all. he was truly stuck here. He grimaced as he looked around. The room was even worse than he remembered. The colors had become puke-ishly vibrant and now there were garish 1970's pop culture posters and ABBA records. Arnold slowly realized that this could not be the same year that he had left from, which wasn't altogether surprising as when he was phasing he kept phasing forward in time. A high feminine voice snapped him out of his reverie and he looked around to see a teenage girly with large eyes and shining wavy hair leap from her bed.
"H-man? Fairy God-ghost?"
Rimmer merely nodded, trying to smile pleasantly, completely at a loss for what to do with himself as it dawned on him that this was the teenage version of the child who had always been in the room before.
Jackie crossed her arms, her eyes boring into him in anger. "Where have you been? You said you were my protector and then you never came back! You have. So much. Explaining. To do." The attractive teen was feeling all the combined anger at her parent's neglect and her ghost-protector's abandonment all at once. As she watched him became flustered and flare his nostrils she felt less angry though...for some insane reasons she was happy to see her ghost, even if this meant she truly was nuts.
Author's Note: If you haven't watched both That 70's Show and Red Dwarf this might be a little confusing. This strange little tale was an idea that popped into my head that I couldn't get rid of so hopefully someone reads and enjoys it. I just knew I had to get it published on Halloween. Thank you for reading! Please if you would like me to write anymore stories about these two drop a review or favorite. Happy Halloween all!