Awkwardness fell over the group inside Shriona's shed while we waited for the writer to come up with a way to fit some plot exposure into this mess. It made me reflect. Time to look inward. Realise who I am, who I was. Who I've been. Questioning reality has always been a hobby of mine, but these past few days made me grow certain; I've lost my sanity. A couple of days ago I was an average college student with an average life and average relationships. I say that even tough I've never truly had a romantic one, but at least I had platonic friend(s). Now my best friend is a zombie AND a ghost, I'm trapped in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory due to a poorly written excuse to advance a horrible plot... And Shrek's daughter let me use her ouija board.
They took me by surprise, the tears. The watery eyes stage completely skipped, they started falling down onto the muddy carpet in the shed. Bestie wrapped her arm around my shoulders, squeezing me to let me know that it's alright. Bestie always knew what to do. She's always there for me. And what have I done? I've been a shit best friend. Who kept forgetting that Bestie was a supernatural being? Me. The ghost looked at us, arms crossed, her face ridden with something like disgust. She scoffed.
"Oh just kiss already."
"What?" I looked at ghost Bestie like I'd just seen a ghost.
"Nothing."
But I'd heard her loud and clear. And Bestie had too. This just made the already awkward atmosphere even thicker and it lay heavy on our shoulders.
"One thing I can't get wrap my head around... If you are me,... who am I?" Bestie asked her ghost self, offering to change the subject. "Because I'm sure I'm me."
"Yet you are not. I died. I died somewhere in here to be exact. I don't remember how, I just remember waking up one day and being a ghost. And I remember seeing you walk off into the life that used to be mine, soulless." She was clearly displeased at the fact that she was robbed of a change at tangible life.
"But I remember that life... with my... our best friend." She looked at me. There was a hint of emotion in her eyes that I couldn't identify. My social cue recognition is letting me down again. "So who am I?"
"I suppose the mind is like a sea star, you cut an arm off, the arm regrows and the arm grows a new starfish. So were both us but not quite. Hence why I'm a ghost and you a zombie."
And we accepted this as the truth because we were done breaking our brains over this. Then an exclamation followed by a thud.
We abruptly turned to look for the origin of the sound. Shriona was holding the thickest, girthiest, juiciest, veiniest book you could ever imagine in her right hand, while rubbing a forming bruise on her skull with her left. "You were talking about mind splitting, right? I happen to have a book on that." That's a really weird thing to have a random book about. Is the writer this boring? She flipped through the pages, clearly looking for something particular.
"Oh there it is!"
Two minds from the same stem, can be united again, only if the death ritual is completed. The death ritual entails re-enacting the death of the person, but in reverse.
So we needed to know how she died. Great. "Do you really not remember" I asked ghost Bestie.
"No, I told you! I only remember waking up in the waste container around the back of the factory and seeing my body waddle off without me."
"Of course!" I jumped up and turned to Bestie. "Do you have any scars?"
"The scar!"
Bestie turned around and lifted up the back of her ripped T-shirt which was ripped because she was a zombie and zombies have ripped shirts. A scar that looked like a fresh wound, it looked like a stab wound, could be seen right on top of where her left kidney would be.
"... And you never considered that you might've been killed?" Shriona raised an eyebrow as to show how dumb we looked right now.
