Phantom Recall

38 || memoria phantasma

Hal leads me to another room. I don't know how, as when I think about it moments later, I don't remember walking through any doors, yet somehow we're here standing amongst a sea of what looks like crystallized bubbles, floating midair. Tiny particles reflecting light dance about them like dust molecules, and together they delicately mold an ethereal atmosphere before my eyes. Some fade in and out of existence as Hal and I take steps further into the room. Others maintain their pleasant glow.

It's mesmerizing. For a short while, everything else in my mind seems to fade into the void, leaving me with nothing but a childlike wonder.

"Do you know what these are, Will?" Hal says to me at one point. We haven't stopped walking yet. For all I know, this vast room filled with bubbles could stretch on into eternity. "What this place is?"

"It...isn't the border realm," I reply uncertainly. "Wisp told me that much. But no, I...I don't know. I just figured this was...whatever came after the afterlife..."

"It's a little different than that."

Puzzled by his tone, I turn my head from ogling the bubbles to stare at the back of Hal's hood. I guess he felt it, too. For just a moment, he twists around just to return the look.

"Take a gander at this, my friend."

We've stopped. Casually, and it would seem randomly, slowing our already slow walking pace to observe one bubble in particular. And all the others around us grow transparent as if to filter out all distractions. Nothing present in the universe, it would feel, but Hal, myself, and this strange phenomenon between us.

"You're familiar with phantom echoes, yes?"

I make eye contact and nod nervously. Hal chuckles.

"Oh, shake the look, Will, you still seem frightened." He pauses to raise his hand and hover it over where his mouth would be. "Here, just cup your hand under this sphere — gently, mind you, it could give you quite a headache if you're rough."

"So...is it a phantom echo?"

"Just touch it, Will."

It's a command, but once more does Hal's gentle voice ease me into a sense of repose.

I place my hand gently under the sphere. Something happens almost instantly — it flashes once, near blinding, but then dims down again until an image takes form in the crystallized surface. The image of Harlow holding me over the edge of that office building. There's no sound. But like a perfectly captured video it replays the scene as she loosens her grip and allows me to plummet. Story after story until I'm inches from the ground.

Then it stops. I don't get to see myself hit the ground.

"You're in limbo, Will."

I already feel tears burning behind my eyelids. "What is that supposed to mean?" I ask. "Why show me this? I had to live through this once already. I haven't lost my memory of it. Why drag things out, do I get to die or not??"

"Do you want to? You can if you would like. But you can also go back."

Hal extends his arm without warning and I jump back — but all he intended to do was touch the sphere as well. And once more, as though it were a recorded video, the scene rewinds back to the point where I'm first placed in peril. Harlow's hand near my throat, death just beneath me. It doesn't play back. Hal keeps the scene paused at this still image.