Afterlife?

Afterlife? Part 3

11

Tristan hovered beside Miles, looking down at his body. The face looked rather pale, and the bleached part of his hair had been shaved off when the doctors performed surgery to stitch up the back of his head, so now his hair was natural maroon. There were tubes connected to his body in various places, and he was breathing shallowly. It was the most bizarre experience he had ever gone through, to be looking down at his own body.

Miles glanced sideways at him. It had been a long night, as they waited for morning to come so they could come and see the body. As soon as Miles had been told that Tristan was the boy who had been in a coma for eight months, following a car accident, and had made sure by glimpsing through the window that it was really Tristan, he had rushed home to tell him the good news.

The whole night Tristan had been too nervous to stop moving around the room, and Miles had been too excited to sleep, even though he was bone-tired. They had discussed the matter over and over again.

"Why did you think you're dead?"

"Because I suddenly found myself the way I am, and I was wandering around, then I met this girl ghost and she said I must be a ghost, and she took me to the school, and everyone there thought I was a ghost too. I never doubted for a minute that I was anything else. But if I'm not a ghost, then what am I?"

"Well, your body's still alive, it's in a coma, so I guess you're a spirit or something?"

"But why couldn't I remember anything, then?"

"The nurse told me you came in with a really big cut on the back of your head, the car hit you and you flew across the road and your head hit the edge of the sidewalk, and you also had a broken arm and sprained ankle, though those injuries healed while you were still in a coma."

"But then, why am I bound to this apartment? It has nothing to do with the accident."

"Tristan, I know less about this than you do. You should go ask your teacher."

"I will, after I see the body. I can't disturb him at night, he'll be off somewhere haunting someone."

"He's haunting someone? I thought he's been around hundreds of years. Does he still hold a grudge against someone?"

"It's just for practice, you know, not to get rusty."

"You ghosts are going to be the death of me."

..........

Now that he was here, in the same room as his physical body, Tristan couldn't help but be nervous. He asked Miles, who looked equally nervous,

"Do you think if I, um, go back into the body, I'll come out of the coma?"

"Probably. That's the way it should work, shouldn't it?"

"Well, here goes nothing."

Tristan moved toward the body, lay on top of it, and floated down.

"Am I awake?"

"Actually, you're sort of overlapping with the body, you're not really in it."

Tristan sank a little lower.

"How about now?"

"Still overlapping."

After several attempts, Tristan righted himself again and came to hover next to Miles.

"I don't get it. Why can't I go back into my own body?"

Just then the nurse walked in, and Tristan turned invisible at once.