Wondering what the buzzing in Ryan's head was awhile back? Read on to find out!
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Ryan sat slumped in a corner of the main room and glowered at the floor. He thought absentmindedly that he had never spent so much time out of his basement cell since his death as he was now. He still thought the girl could help him, no matter what she said or thought.
If she would only stay here long enough for me to talk to her he thought bitterly. He couldn't believe he was angry because a woman wouldn't stay around long enough to talk, either. It was as if his old childhood enemy had started handing out sweets.
He settled himself further into the wall and toppled out backwards onto the lawn outside. Cursing to himself, he almost started brushing himself off, then remembered he was dead and it didn't matter.
"I HATE being dead!" he screamed to no one. The words sounded so funny in his own ears, he began laughing at the absurdity of it.
He growled in annoyance, and walked back into the asylum, wondering where the hell the girl was.
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Half an hour later, he was still glaring at everything and nothing, fighting his spirit's urge to disappear again into the ether. The drilling noise was back, and it was boring into his non- existent skull worse than ever. An unfamiliar presence was behind it... was this more torment? More hell in a purgatory that was never going to end?
Ryan screamed and clawed at his own head, his nails scraping and screeching against the rusty iron cage, and suddenly, he was back in the netherworld, watching himself be led down into the basement for the first time as a young man of only 19.
But he was not alone.
The girl stood beside him.
"You again?! How did you do that?" he demanded. If everybody started doing this, he thought he just might kill himself over and over, no matter how long it took.
"I didn't know I could do this... I guess I can." she said, her voice more echoey than before.
"Wonderful. Splendid. fabulous.. Now can you GET OUT?!" he screamed at her. She flinched, and watched what was going on around them. The doctors threw the past Ryan into the cell, where the only light came fom a lamp on the wall and the only warm bed was a pile of hay on the floor.
He didn't want her to see his pathetic past, his feeble attempts to push the doctors away, but he was powerless to make her stop seeing. He couldn't bring himself to kill a living spirit, as she was now. Even to him, it didn't seem right. He feared he might be put to some worse punishment than purgatory, even though he never believed in god when he was alive. His belief was, if god existed, how could he watch his creations wallow in filth and poverty and be so brutally mistreated and do nothing? Faith had always been a foreign word to Ryan.
"Wow... What did you do to make them so mad?" she asked, watching as the doctors forcefully restrained him and shoved his arms into the straitjacket.
Ryan folded his arms and growled.
"I attacked a nurse. She was asking for it. Miserable slut." he spat. He turned his memories back to the previous day. There was the nurse, slim waist and pretty hips swaying provocitavely beneath her neat pinafore skirt. The past Ryan watched her with his eyes, like a predator on the African Savannah. He leapt on the nurse and began ripping her dress off, slashing her throat with his long nails as he did so. The girl beside the spirit Ryan watched it all, watched as the doctors grabbed him by the back of the neck and forced him down, watched as the nurse struggled to get up, but suddenly died on the floor. Ryan smiled with grim satisfaction at seeing it all again, then with broiling hatred at the doctors that had spoiled his fun.
"What was that for?" asked the girl beside him.
"Did you see how she was wiggling her stupid hips and just asking for it?! She was the easiest whore on the entire male wing!" he screamed, pointing one torn finger at the dead woman on the floor.
"Funny, they didn't have male doctors on the male wing and female on the female wing..." the girl mused, staring at the scene with her head cocked gently to one side.
Ryan gave a rusty sort of chuckle.
"They did. After this little incident." he said.
The scene changed again, and this time, the Ryan in the past had shorter hair and less cuts on his face. It was from before the attack on the nurse, shortly after he admitted himself. He guessed he was 19 or 20, and it felt foolish to think he had ever looked that young.
His younger self snuck up behind a young female staff and rubbed provocatively against her lower body, and she slapped him. The younger Ryan went into a rage, slashing and clawing at the girl's face until all that remained was a blood-streaked, gore-flecked skull.
"NO ONE hits me," he snarled, as an explanation.
The girl snickered silently behind him and he whirled around and glared at her.
"What's so funny?" he demanded.
"Nothing... it's just... these days, if a guy wants something to rub against, he get's a prostitute, or a rubber blow up doll," she giggled. Ryan stared at her incredulously. Him? Get a whore, like his mother?? Preposterous!!!
"What's a blow up doll?" he asked curiously.
"Nothing," and the girl said no more on the subject.
The void around them went way back, to when Ryan was a baby. He watched interestedly as his careless young mother left him on the couch while she led a young man into the back bedroom. The girl was watching interestedly, mostly at the antiques (to her) and the fashions. Ryan glared at his baby self and saw with no surprise that he had fallen off and started bawling at the top of his lungs.
"Hush, Ryan, Mummy's working!" called his mother from the bedroom, and a man moaned from behind the closed door. The girl got a look on her face that suggested that she was gonna hit something, but instead, she walked over and picked Ryan's baby self up. He stared.
A mere spirit, affecting things in his memory, affecting things that had happened years ago???
"How are you doing that?" he asked. The girl shrugged and began bouncing the baby up and down, crooning softly to it, and eventually, Ryan's younger self calmed down and stopped crying.
"I have no idea, but it's starting to creep me out. I think I should go," said the girl. She set Ryan's baby self down again and this time, she set him on the floor so he wouldn't fall again.
"Wait," Ryan said briskly. He watched as she stood there and watched the scene around them change.
"What?" she asked.
Ryan looked around hastily. They were in the downtown section of Borehamwood. The girl looked around too.
"Wow... was this BorehamWood back in the 1800's?" she asked no one.
"Here... in here," he snapped. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her into the nearest shop. They both drifted through the door.
It was a clothes shop fulkl of dresses, tailcoats, petticoats, stockings, shoes, belts, purses, corsets and jackets. Ryan didn't recognize the shop, but a woman stood behind the counter. Ryan and the girl stared.
She was covered in blood. It was the young nurse they'd watched him tear to pieces. How could this be??
Ryan's mind was reeling. How could this be possible? This wasn't even part of his memories!! He had never been in this place!
"Oh, wow..." the girl muttered
The bloody monstrosity spoke, her bare jaw bone clacking, several of her teeth missing.
"May I help you today, fine sir, and young miss?"
"Uh..." Ryan paused. Then he got an idea. It made no sense to him at the moment, but it would prove one thing.
"Yes, actually," he said, putting on best, most flattering voice. The girl stared at both of them, then at the scene around them. She put two and two together in her hed, and her eyes got wide.
"Don't EVEN think about it," she said.
"We need a dress that will fit her," Ryan grinned, pointing one gnarled, bony finger at the girl, who was wearing her usual chained pants and black skull shirt.
Right this way, miss," said the bleeding horror, and she beckoned to the girl, who was getting paler, despite the sepia shade of everything around them.
"Go," he hissed in her ear, and he was pleased to see her shiver. He pushed her gently after the nurse. They both walked into a back room and vanishd from his view. Ryan closed his eyes and felt himself vanish from sight after them. For once, he didn't know where he was going, and he reappeared in the back room.
It was completely empty, save for a lone sewing machine and a few bare lights.
The bloody nurse with the torn face was pinning the skirt of a long, simple dress, with pale satin ruffles at the skirt and a lacy bodice that was cut low. The dress had no sleeves, only a simple shawl.
Ryan laughed. The nurse was dressing her like a rich lady of his time. Even though everything was sepia toned and pretty much colorless, he could tell the dress had a dark bodice and pale skirts. The shawl was the same shade as the skirts.
"Why can I touch things in this memory?" the girl asked the horrible dead woman.
"You are what is called an empath medium. It means you can turn yourself loose in the spiritual memories of the dead and help them move on. You can also touch things in those memories, although not everyone can see you." said the dead nurse. Ryan listened with interest.
"So... why now? Why didn't I figure this out sooner?" asked the girl. The dead nurse was now hemming the bottom of the outer skirt, so the girl wouldn't walk on them.
"You learn of your abilities when the right time comes along. Ryan's time has come. He must learn what went wrong, where, and what he can do to fix it. Only then can he move on," replied the nurse. Ryan had no idea how she was even talking, because he had ripped her tongue out.
"And how is he going to learnt aht?" asked the girl, although Ryan thought she knew the answer.
"Why, you're going to teach him, foolish girl," said the nurse, straightening up and staring at her with her empty, bleeding eyesockets.
The nurse swept her arm up and around, and knocked the girl down onto the floor. She vanished the moment she touched down, and Ryan was thrust back into the real world. His vision went black before he could ask the nurse what she meant.