And we've reached the final chapter. Thank you for the reviews/favourites/follows.
Christmas: The Future.
This time around Alison is twenty-nine, and Ghost-Mona taunts her about her aging.
("Is that a wrinkle?"
Mona looks a bit smug at the annoyance, because as a ghost she hasn't aged a day, still looks every bit the eighteen-year-old she was in death. It's her immortality)
She's become used to this now, used to being a ghost watching herself.
And okay, she wasn't watching herself when she had her solitary Christmas and visited at her mother's grave with flowers, but she's watching this scene play out and she really can't decide which is sadder, this or her homecoming Christmas.
So she shoves her hands in the pockets of her jeans and watches Future-Ali sweep around a room like she owns it, even though it's obvious that she doesn't.
(Bland wallpaper, desk and bed and ensuite and through the open door a hallway lined with doors, and she doesn't pause to think about all the other matching rooms. Instead she clicks the door shut, gets to work)
A planner lies open on the desk and she edges closer knowing she won't disturb Future-Ali, knows that she is completely invisible. There's a work function on tonight, the twentieth, but there are no plans to meet with friends or family. Dismayed for the first time since Mona showed up, she leafs through to see what her life holds in store.
An asterisk in mid-June denotes Dad, and she recognizes it as the same way she marks the date of her mother's death. There's no detail in her contacts list that she recognizes: the names are all a mystery to her, no listing of Jason or anyone at all from Rosewood.
She whirls, frantic, tries to ignore Mona's smirk in the background. There's a phone, two actually. One seems to be a work phone, because once she sets it down Future-Ali makes a call that discusses business, deadlines and articles and stories.
(So she's a journalist? Not surprising)
The other phone is emptier, a few vital contacts though she still doesn't know the names. Friends, maybe, or colleagues, she doesn't care to find out. The inbox is bare, just a few perfunctory messages from which she infers her relationships.
Disappointed now, she steps back to by Mona who watches as Future-Ali unzips a dress from a garment bag, steps into the red silk and grapples with the long zip at the back. There's no-one to help her, no-one to praise her appearance or offer her anything.
Her spirits fall just a little more.
Beside her, Mona is picking at her nail polish.
The woman before them twists up her hair, swipes on makeup with the air of someone who doesn't want to be here and collects things into a little clutch purse, locks the door and strides down the hall.
Side-by-side, the ghost girls follow, each wanting to see this for their own reasons.
It's a lovely event. The room is grand and carefully decorated, no doubt by someone who specializes in Christmas decoration. The food looks good, a perfectly-prepared banquet laid out on tables that span a wall and she's reminded of her own Christmas sandwich dinner. Her future self circulates the room, but her younger self sees how people sometimes step away from her, close a circle in such a way that she's edged out just a bit. She begins the evening with a cocktail in her hand and a faintly hopeful smile on her face, but soon enough the hope becomes poison because people still don't want to know her.
Maybe she's some kind of toxin.
She's beginning to choke on her emotions just a bit and Mona smiles, the kind of smile that promises her just a bit more misery.
Somehow, they whip forward in time, maybe Mona is using some ghostly juju, and the calendar flutters onto the twenty-fifth. They watch silently as Future-Ali wakes in her hotel bed, alone, and doesn't reach for an alarm.
(There was no alarm to wake her, no reason for her to be up early)
And now she gets it, kind of.
They watch as Future-Ali slowly gets dressed, moving around the room with the ease of someone who has become very at home here, and does her makeup. One hand is kept on the personal cell phone, but the only call is on the work one.
(Her boss likes her, likes how she can wrangle all sorts of obscure details from a person, and she's never explained all the years of practice she has. No sense in making herself seem like a sociopath again)
She remembers the lack of family, and delves through the phones and planner for CeCe. Maybe she can induce her future self to call CeCe, maybe it'll be okay.
In the planner, she halts at another asterisk. The month blurs in front of her, she doesn't see it, because beside it, in Future-Ali's cursive is a CeCe, and she chokes up all over again. She's pleading now, would be if there was any oxygen in her lungs, but Mona is merciless and so they shuffle off to watch her future self again.
This is the track she is on: eating Christmas dinner alone in a hotel dining room, forgotten by those she called friends and her family either dead or not in contact. She watches, forgetting Mona's presence for once, as a jolly staffer dressed as an elf speaks into the microphone, but doesn't listen. Instead, she watches him and decides his smile is too bright, too fixed.
He doesn't want to be here, celebrating Christmas with the hotel's temporary residents. She looks at him, his goofy tie and the wedding band he fidgets with, and realizes he probably has a family waiting for him at home. It seems her future self comes to the same realization, because as everyone is applauding politely (scattered tables half-empty) she drops her napkin on the table and flees.
Moments later she returns, makeup refreshed and Alison is sure that there's a bottle of eye-drops in her bag just for the purpose of removing redness. Even so, it doesn't stop her from picking at the ham and bread and vegetables, doesn't stop her from glancing around just once for someone to engage in conversation. It fails though because everyone else is intent on their plates, even if they're not actually eating.
It's the strategy, she realizes, to be so interested in dinner that everyone else around is just a bystander. Everyone here is alone, and the jolly elf has left.
This time when she drops her napkin on the table, she returns to the security of her room, opens her laptop to find an empty inbox and closes it just as quickly. Alison and Mona watch as she starts to dial room service, but the phone falls from her hand. She makes no effort to pick it up, because right now it would take a Christmas miracle to turn this day around.
Mona offers no sympathy, but for once the teasing is dimmed and she is somber, matter-of-fact.
She says nothing, but she doesn't really need to. Her task is done: she has made Alison understand the path she is on.
The rest is up to Alison.
