Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4501923-20151206220401/@comment-25867149-20160204220247

Take a look, it's good but I don't think it's what the story needs, I want to try again.

The crimson muscle car pulled out to a juddering start outside the infamous apartment with a faint squeak. Ghost looked first at his partner, Johnny Toast, and then ahead, thinking of the offending house. How many times they had been called in to investigate things at that location, not including the false alarms. It was more times than Ghost cared to remember, mostly to maintain his ever-precarious grip on his own sanity. What horrors lurked beyond that foreboding door this time? No doubt something so horrifying as to defy any hope of description by methods both conventional and extreme. In their silence the two men shared a single, unspoken understanding about the house, and in particular the family that lived in it.

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"Not long now, sir." Toast said exuberantly. As much as he was apprehensive of whatever it was they were about to run into in the Acachalla household, he relished the experience of driving, which was an unusual trait in itself. But then, he always had been a car fanatic.

Toast, ever the car enthusiast, had once again replaced the old Ghostmobile with a newer model, yet another sporty car of the week.

He was a regular Toad of Toad Hall.

Ghost approved of this one's colour scheme, at least - red. He liked the colour red, he didn't know why. He didn't like it when he bled. He always went kind of fuzzy when he bled. Sometimes he would black out.

He didn't know what would happen next, but he was told it wasn't good.

He had heard a name - Jimmy - but he'd usually just shrugged it off. It was something messing with his mind. Wasn't it? There has been something important, something he was supposed to remember. What was it?

He hadn't been having as many blackouts recently, but he was always on edge about them and their catalysts - he made a point of avoiding- point.

Point. Sharp. Knifedeathbloodkillstabstabstab. A flood of images of death flooded into his mind, invading his synapses with a terrifying ferocity. Stabstabstab!

Ghost shook his head, trying to dislodge the rogue thought. Toast, looking around for a moment, noticed his friend's distress and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "are you alright sir?"

They both realised in the next five seconds that nobody was holding the steering wheel. At once they both grabbed at the wheel, all thought of the previous danger forgotten. The next few seconds passed in a blur. The car hit a bump. It flew. It rolled. It sailed with terrible glory through the midday air before smashing through the front gate and the Bobbilator and straight into the water tower, waking out three of the four supporting legs. The airbags deployed instantly as the impact came. There was moaning. Something was burning. Johnny Toast couldn't see very well; his airbag had trapped him in an uncomfortable position facing upwards. He gulped uneasily as the twisted metal screamed at him and buckled. The tank fell. He screamed. The front of the car was sliced off two inches away from Toast's legs. An explosion of water drenched the surrounding area, extinguishing the petrol-soaked fire that was spreading around the car and drenching Toast.

Toast tried to reposition himself to check on a Ghost. Then, to his sheer horror, he found he couldn't. He has whiplash from the crash. Oh god! He started to panic. What would he do, what would he do? He'd have to retire! He'd be stuck in care! I'm too young to be in care! He wailed mentally and broke down. The thought of long-term paralysis terrified him. The thought of impotence, of being disabled, of actively needing help with everyday activities that most people take for granted.

This thought, combined with the awkward seating position and orientation of the car affecting his blood flow and remnants of the smoke and exhaust fumes starving him of oxygen, was too much for him to bear, and he slipped into oblivion.

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He felt something tugging at him, pulling him out of the abyss. He clung tight to it, not wanting to face the painful truths of reality. His senses seemed distant and unfamiliar, as if his body was no longer his own; as if he was watching event unfold through another mans eyes, on a television screen. Through this blurry image that seemed so far away from him and yet so close, he saw terrifically bright lights, heard far away sounds, so loud and yet so quiet. Had he himself been silently screaming? Through the chaos that was unfolding before his eyes, he thought he could see people, staring at him. He tried to make out their faces, but all he saw was the shadows of their eyes.

No, he thought, I shall stay here. There's a reason, he thought, why babies are born screaming and kicking, and the reason is most likely because they don't like being dragged out from sweet safe nothingness and void into the unending horror we know as everyday life.

He found himself standing between two doors, and he instinctively knew that the doors were symbolising his own mental state. The door behind him led back to the real world; the door ahead, to sweet release. He stepped forward hesitantly. Was he really ready to let go of it all? Images flashed past of everywhere he'd been, everything he'd done, everyone he'd met, everything he'd ever seen. Had it been worth anything? All those years studying and learning and annotating, what had it ever done him? How had nearly 10 years experience in ghost hunting ever helped him? He was a broke alcoholic widower, the only friend of whom was a schizophrenic sociopath with the mentality of an 8-year old. Why would he want to go back to that?

His family thought he was a failure; his own brother actively hated and despised him, he had been mercilessly teased in primary. His mother had always seemed so... Aloof, cold. Not a bit of it, he later discovered. She just despised idiots, had no time for fools. Tragic really, otherwise they would've got on famously.

He felt someone trying to revive him; he resisted.

Exactly what reason had he to go back? Why would he ever choose to go back to his terrible life?

He visualised the personification of his own death manifest before his eyes, beckoning onward with icy fingers.

He looked back again, and there stood six figures. The dark room was now a creamy white. He recognised all of them. His wife, Mary. Oh, how he missed her. He missed her with an intensity greater than the sun.

His father, Peter. So many regrets, so many unspoken words hung over him, how he wished he could go back and change it. Aimée, the French ghost, his first international case. Though she scared the pants of both him and Ghost, in a way he couldn't help feeling sorry for her, wanting to help her. Johnny Roast, his longtime schoolfriend and late PIE colleague. Toast had been away when Roast met his untimely end. He'd been a close friend for so LNG and Toast wasn't there to return it when he needed it most.

Sylar and Benny, the unpaid interns. He deeply regretted not bring able to save them, but there was nothing he could've done; they had both sacrificed themselves of their own free will in order to save his life. And on top of that, they never even even got their references printed for their CVs. How disappointed would they all be if he just decided to call it quits now?

A long time ago, he'd made a promise to look after Ghost. He couldn't just break it now, when he's so close to finishing it! And he knew, in that moment, he had to fight. He had to survive. For them, for himself, and for Ghost. And maybe his "customers" too. He turned around and smiled sadly at the figures as he stepped towards the other door and pulled it open. Everything faded away as he stepped through.....

___________________________________________________________________________

"GAH!" He shouted as he jolted awake, electricity surging through his body.

"He's alive!" Billy announced.

"Thank goodness for that, we couldn't possibly afford him on our insurance." A gravelly Southern voice said somewhere, deadpan. There was then a metallic thwang and the sound of the man crying out in pain.

The sky was darker now, and there was definitely either police or ambulances present, the lights were bouncing off of everything and there were faint sirens in the distance. Toast tried to move his neck again and discovered it seemed to be working again, to his infinite relief. Over by the gate Sue was talking with someone he recognised in law enforcement, he couldn't quite see him behind what was left of the wall. A man in a suit surveyed from a distance, dispassionately scanning the field with eagle eyes. Even Spencer had come out to see what the commotion was about, though he didn't seem to have much to do there and was mainly standing inside the garage trying to avoid attention, which he probably had an allergy to along with everything else, Toast thought. That was a cruel though; Toast expelled it immediately.

"Hey mistur, are you gonna be alright?" A childlike voice asked him. He looked around and saw Sally hovering over him innocently. Billy looked round and stared at Toast's chest in shock before pulling a large waffle out of a large wound and giving Sally a hard stare.

"What? It's to make him feel better." She said before skipping off back to the house.

Toast tried to speak but made little more than a rasping cough.

"Hey, you might wanna take it easy, the doctor says you've got a something, I can't remember, he used a lotta long words. Oh wait, was that for you or for your friend?"

Toast's eyes widened as he looked around for Ghost. They finally settled on the wrecked car.

It was in a state alright. It was I'm such a state that it was quite possible that it would never be driven again. Even if it had been salvageable immediately after the crash, the paramedics cutting most of the side off to get him out completely scuppered that notion. A crane winched the car gangly over into the horizontal position and Toast's blood ran cold.

Ghost was lying in the car. A twelve-inch metal bar had smashed through the windscreen, piercing through the car and impaling itself through Ghost's torso. "Oh yeah, I think it was him." Said Billy. "He doesn't look too good."

Unable to use his voice, once again, Toast silently screamed.