Look Look Look! There's a chapter 3! "On Talaxia we have a saying. The dream dreams the dreamer." (anyone who can tell me where that came from gets a cookie ) Well, it looks like the story has chosen the storyteller.

I can see this getting either ridiculously huge or it will just stop dead (ha ha, I made a funny) after this chapter. Depends on how much homework I have and how little I want to do it. I know for definite what it is though, a very welcome (but not very good for me) distraction from schoolwork. Just when I need to be concentrating harder than ever.

Big Thank You to my reviewers:

The Angel of Anarchy: I agree, much sadder from a first person perspective, I adore Evanescence, I have nearly everything they've recorded. Is this soon enough for an update? Lol

cakreut12: (hands cakreut 12 a box that is moving and making strange noises) here you go, one evil plot bunny. This one is particularly nasty, it keeps chewing the bars off it's cage, and they're made of steal! Good luck with your stories

You really do keep me going. I love you all.

For disclaimer see chapters 1 and 2.

Chapter 3 - The Welcome Wagon

The girl woke up in the strangest place she had ever seen. The light seemed to be coming from an indeterminable source and was casting everything in a strange kind of greenish glow. And there were doors. Everywhere there were purple doors, floating in the green black sky. 'Wait, Floating, where am I?'

She woke feeling disorientated and confused. The last memories she had were of sitting in her hotel room looking at her guitar, her new song, and the bottle of pills on the nightstand. She could remember the tears. The feelings of hopelessness. Then everything went a bit fuzzy, then black. She remembered the blackness. It was so cold, so empty, and dark, very very dark.

She didn't have long to sit in the light and brood however because very soon after she woke up something snuck up behind her and screamed in her ear

"I AM THE BOX GHOST"

She jumped so high she thought she was floating 10 feet in the air. When she turned around to see who it was she was met with empty air. 'AIR?' It was then that she realised that she actually was floating about 10 feet in the air. She let out a little scream of shock, which made her loose her concentration and begin to plummet back down to what appeared to be the ground.

She landed with an incredible bump but there was surprisingly little pain accompanied with the landing. She sat in shock for a few minutes, wondering where she was and what had happened. Then the words the mystery person had screamed in her ear registered 'the box GHOST. Ghost? But there's no such thing. Must have been a joke.'

She decided she wasn't going to get anything figured out just sitting there so she put her hands on the ground in front of her to help her get up. When she looked down at her hands, she received yet another surprise. Her skin had changed from a healthy (if a bit on the pale side) shade of pink to a very unhealthy shade of what looked to be pale blue, as if that wasn't enough, her arms were glowing. But she didn't have time to wonder about that, she needed to find someone, find out where she was and how to get out of this place.

She got back to her feet and surveyed her surroundings. There wasn't much more to look at apart from the doors. And the floating people. 'Floating people!'

"If this is a dream it's the weirdest one I have ever had" she said into the black sky.

"It's not a dream sweetheart"

For the second time in ten minutes she jumped right out of her pale blue glowing skin, but this time she assumed she could float, so she didn't land with as quite as hard a bump. Instead, she remained in the air bobbing up and down gently as she turned to see who this new person was. She was relieved to find that this time when she turned there was a face to go with the voice.

It was the face of a woman who didn't look much older than her late twenties, she was well dressed in a red suit jacket and skirt with a shirt and tie. She was wearing sunglasses, which seemed to serve no other purpose than to sit on the end of her nose. Her hair was red and stuck up in a very weird style. What the girl found weirdest about her were her eyes, they were the most startling shade of green she had ever seen in her life, they looked as if they almost glowed.

"Who are you?" the girl asked as she continued to float in front of the newcomer

"Spectra, Penelope Spectra, and what can I call you?" Spectra asked with a grin, in a tone that suggested she was talking to a 5 year old.

"I'm Ember"

"Ember, that's an unusual name, suites you though." Again she smiled.

"You said this isn't a dream, if it's not then where are we, and why am I here?" Ember asked. For some reason she had a feeling that this person would provide her with the answers she desired. She seemed to have a kind of calming aura to her, like someone who should be a counsellor.

"Sweetheart, you're in the ghost zone"

"The WHAT!"

"The Ghost Zone" she emphasised every word as if she were talking to someone who was partially deaf.

"But…ghosts aren't real, are they?" Ember had started to stutter in fright, dreading the answer.

"Of coarse we're real, why do you think everyone here is floating" she paused for a second and looked at Ember's feet "including you"

Ember followed Spectra's eyes and looked down at her feet. She noticed a couple of things then. The first was that she was still wearing the outfit she had gotten for her 17th birthday. The second was that it wasn't just her arms that were blue; her entire body was blue and encased in a soft white light. The third was that her boots were indeed floating a few inches off the ground. For the second time she shrieked and landed on the ground with a bump. She heard Spectra laugh as she started to get to her feet again. As she got up a piece of her hair fell into her eyes, she was about to brush it behind her ear as usual, until she saw the colour. It was no longer the bright shade of red it was the last time she had checked. Now it was the same turquoise colour as the flames on her guitar. 'My Guitar! Where's my guitar!'

She got to her feet in a panic and began looking around for it. By some miracle, she saw it lying a few feet from her. She ran over to it and picked it up. She felt the familiar comforting weight of it on her back as she hung the strap over her shoulder and swung it so it rested with the head pointing down to the ground behind her. Re-united with her guitar she felt strong enough to deal with anything (which was a good thing considering all the surprises she had had since she had woken up in this bizarro-land)

She then walked back over to the woman in red and prepared herself for a very weird and possibly terrifying conversation. Steeling herself she looked the woman strait in the eye and began asking the questions she was able to formulate after her brain had recovered from the strange things it had had to process recently.

"You said 'of course WE are' what did you mean"

Spectra sighed and looked at Ember with something that looked like pity. "You have no idea do you?"

"That's not what I asked"

"But that's my answer; tell me, what is the last thing you remember?" Spectra now took up a sitting position in mid air and began to sound more like a counsellor. With all of the things that had happened to her recently this didn't bother Ember as much as it would have not so long ago. She remained standing, averted her eyes from Spectra's and tried to remember.

"I remember…a hotel room. I was sitting on a bed in a hotel room. And I was crying. Looking at my guitar. I remember looking at the song I had just performed and feeling worthless. I remember looking at the bottle of pills I had on my bedside table…then I remember feeling light-headed, dizzy, like all of my cares were slipping away and then blackness…that's it."

"Sweetheart, do you know why you're here?"

"If I knew that I wouldn't have asked you would I and you STILL haven't answered my question, what do you mean WE are real?" Ember's voice was laced with sarcasm and anger but Spectra ignored it, she was used to it by now having been assigned as the official welcome wagon for all of the new ghosts that arrived.

"You, me, and everyone else living in this realm are ghosts" Spectra explained. As with all of the new arrivals, this girl's face registered disbelief, dought and anger. This was why Spectra had been chosen to greet the new arrivals. She could appear human to ease them into the revelation that they were dead, then change and frighten them into believing if need be. And it looked like this girl needed to be.

End of chapter.

A/N: I have hit upon a fantastic idea. I have had so many ideas for this fic that instead of shoving it all into one huge chapter; I will break it up into lots of smaller chapters. Damn rude little plot bunnies just won't leave me alone, no matter how many traps I set they just seam to hop over them or get round them somehow. They seam to like to attack me at random times as well. Little gits.

I know boo, hiss, making you wait longer, but hey that means more story for anyone who might enjoy it. And the chance for me to see how well I cope trying to write two stories, two essays for English, a piece of coursework for Biology, a report for Health and Social Care, any poems I might start along the way and revise for my exams all at the same time. Oh joy and fun!

Hope you liked and don't worry, I'm having too much fun watching where this story takes itself to stop writing it. There may be big gaps between updates for all of the above mentioned reasons, but it will be updated, I promise.

T.T.F.N.

May the angels bless you and keep you safe.