Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen by Claude Lalumière & Mark Shainblum

Author:Claude Lalumière & Mark Shainblum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
Published: 2015-12-09T14:16:52+00:00

Lost and Found

Luke Murphy

Days later, and I was still finding his things. I’d spot a razor blade under the bathroom sink or one of his books jumbled among mine, and I’d pick it up like it had thorns and put it in the box in the closet. He said he’d call when he was ready to coll ect his stuff. I didn’t even know where he was. Had he moved in with that other girl? Were they coiled together on knotty sheets while I stared at the ceiling?

I tried not to do it. Three days I walked in circles around the apartment telling myself not to do it. I tried to distract myself: web surfing, cheap wine, bouts of self-pity. It didn’t work. I needed it. My skin fizzed like cheap pop. I scratched my arms and bit my lips. My boss called. Why wasn’t I at the office processing forms? I told him I’d quit.

At four in the morning I watched a web video that promised me I Wouldn’t Believe What Happened Next (spoiler alert: I did, without much trouble) and realized I’d worn out the distraction capacity of the internet.

I walked to my bedroom. I lay down with my clothes on, shut my eyes, took a few deep breaths. My weight of flesh and bone and blood sank into the mattress.

I felt the shape and outline of my body, sensed its boundaries, and floated out of it.

I drifted up to the ceiling, turned and looked down at the fleshbody lying on the bed below me. Its eyes were closed, mouth slack. Greasy hair and grubby sweatshirt. When had I last showered? Physical me looked wretched.

But ethereal me felt glad to be weightless again. No pinched nerves or lower back pain. I held up the hands of my lightbody in front of my face, saw a vague form made of ghost-colored mist. Perfect. I floated to the wall and pressed myself into it. A chalky sensation in my lightflesh as I passed through it. I pushed deeper into sudden darkness, moved through sour-tasting concrete and rasping brick and burst into the night air. Streetlights glared seven stories below. I flitted above the luminous streets of Toronto and flew.

* * *

We’ve all got two bodies. Our other body’s where our consciousness lives, and it’s made of thinner stuff than the flesh. Quantum particles, maybe. Lots of people slip out of their skin at one time or another, mostly when they’re in shock or asleep or on th e operating table. And everyone does it one final time. But I had the good or bad fortune to have learned how to control the process when I spent a week in hospital with appendicitis at the age of six. The incense-and-crystals crowd calls it astral projection, and I’ve been doing it for almost as long as I’ve known I shouldn’t talk about it.

* * *

I soared into a layer of thin clouds far above the city and rested in the air. Below, the sprawl glittered between the two blacknesses of lake and forest.

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