Death. What happens after it? What lies beneath the surface?
Poor Arielle Daniels stumbled through dangerous hoops to figure this out. She wakes in a new place--the Void--and discovers that what waits after death are layers, dimensions, and sadly...
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"How can you ask me to be patient?" Arielle's hands formed fists at her sides, her nails clawing into her palms. "I've been dead for months, and now you're asking me to wait longer?"
The ghost scoffed. "Hey, it's not my fault that you took so long to wake up, kid." She arched her spine and gawked at the front door, then squinted. But if she'd noticed or heard something, she didn't share it with Arielle. "Patience is key for ghosts."
"So what about this perimeter shit?" Arielle glided over to the ghost's side and peered towards what she peered at, but saw nothing abnormal or outstanding. "Can you explain that a little, or do I have to be patient about that, too?"
Questions and concerns overwhelmed her, but a sense of claustrophobia joined her confusion. Was she to confine in this building forever? Or would she, like this experienced specter, be able to venture out at some point?
She spotted her chalk outline from the corner of her eye, and the broken mirror, and the front door she'd wished to yank open to escape from the house. Why wasn't she able to react to her death? Why hadn't she cried, screamed, thrown a tantrum? Tears tickled her lash-line, yet they never fell down her cheeks. And though the ghost claimed she still had feelings, the only emotion in her at that time was rage. And not rage at her demise—it was rage at not having all her inquiries answered.
"All I can say is I don't know what or who decides of a perimeter's range, its exact dimensions." The ghost removed her gaze from the door, and her lips bunched as she glanced at Arielle. "We're detained within a certain space from the location we died. Some people can't get more than a few inches away, and some can wander around a bit... and some have hundreds of miles of free territory to explore. I'm..." She smiled, her cheeks flushing a deep sepia. "I'm lucky enough to be in that last category."
Arielle's brows scrunched. "You... can travel hundreds of miles from this place?" A new emotion brewed in her belly—jealousy.
Can she travel far enough to find Jade? Or Stella, up in Ohio?
"I can, though I've never tested all my limits." The specter-girl raked her fingers through her greasy tresses and winced as she got stuck in a few tangles. "If you wander too far, you get... stopped."
Arielle blinked and tipped her head to the side. The sentence sounded too ominous to be left without explanation. "Stopped?"
"Yeah." The ghost blew out an impatient breath. "Rumor has it you see colors shifting to all white or absolute obscurity... like the end of a reel, if that makes sense. And that stops you; you can't go any farther than that." She rolled her right shoulder, then her left, and stretched her arms above her head. "It varies by person. I've heard someone saw a black pit surrounding their entire perimeter. Creepy, if you ask me."
Despite the tension in her limbs, Arielle perked up and peeped around her, searching for shadows but afraid of finding them. "I... see nothing. So, what's my perimeter?"
