Chapter Text
Wes suddenly felt a wash of adrenaline rush through him as he found himself at a table, up close, with a ghost. It wasn’t obvious when he sat down, of course. Otherwise, Wes would have gotten out of his chair and left the situation as soon as he could. Looking from afar through his camera lens was how he preferred to do these things. But he realized too late that he was sitting there, with a ghost, and figured he shouldn’t waste the opportunity to gain more knowledge about the whole ghost situation.
His friends back home warned him that the town was full of delusional people who seriously thought the area was infested with ghosts. It wasn’t like he had a say in where he wound up, so he figured he would just deal with the crazy until he graduated. Until he came here, he thought ghosts were just something people used to explain what they didn’t understand. Until he came here, he felt like he had a grasp on reality. Now he was here in a town where the normal had frequent run-ins with the paranormal.
“You come here often?” The ghost asked.
Wes had been caught in his thoughts and barely even realized that the ghost was speaking to him. “Can you repeat that?”
“I asked if you come here often.” What kind of stupid question was that? Not to mention how absurd it was that a ghost would be pulling out some old pickup line to use on him.
Wes opened his mouth to answer with some quip, but abruptly stopped himself after a cursory glance around the room. Dark brown oak beneath his feet, stained glass lamps at each empty table, the winding leaves of a peperomia framing a window- none of it looked familiar. He just moved into town with his family, and he knew there were plenty of places he hadn’t been to yet.
Thinking back, how did he even get here? He was on his way back home after basketball practice. He got lost, pulled out his phone as he was walking, and then…?
“No, I don’t.” The words came out unsure, almost like a question. Where was he?
A screeching sound came from his right and he startled in his seat. Someone had been standing behind an espresso machine, just barely out of sight. The piercing noise stopped as they dipped a metal cup downwards from the milk wand. A spurt of milk drops made an inch-tall jump from the cup and the barista slipped the frother back into the cup.
It looked like a normal coffee shop: plastic and paper cups lining the register, glass bottles of syrup, the clink-clank sounds of dishes being washed. But something just felt off.
“Sorry,” the ghost chuckled. “It’s a joke in poor taste, considering where we are.”
Wes paused.
“And where would that be?” He felt his tacky tongue dry in his mouth as he spoke. It wasn’t like he was wandering the streets high out of his mind after practice like some of the players on his team. Aside from the migraine beginning to blossom in his brain, he felt fine physically. There was no reason he could think of that would have unconsciously placed him here. So why couldn’t he remember how he got here?
The ghost in front of him made a sort of face. His eyes cast down for a moment with a suppressed grimace. He shifted around uncomfortably.
“I guess that means you don’t know,” he sighed. “I should have expected as much. Your memories probably aren’t all together, am I right?”
“Where am I?” Wes demanded in a hushed voice. He felt small, like a cornered animal cowering away from something he could not escape.
“Café das Fegefeuer,” the ghost explained. “Name’s pretty appropriate since this is the place people go when they die.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me! Please tell me you’re joking.” There was absolutely no way it was true. This was some kind of joke. Some sick initiation for newcomers that the town just liked to do to mess with them. No. Wes was not...
“I’m not.” the ghost said sternly while looking him dead in the eye. “I might not always be the most serious person in the room, but I never play around with things like this. It is a matter of life and death after all.”
“But there's no… I mean, how could I- what would have even happened to-” Wes was beginning to hyperventilate. Tried as he might have to take deep breaths, the only thing he could do was sharply suck in air before shakily working it out.
“How do I know you aren’t lying,” He accused. Yeah. What reason did he have to believe this ghost? He kept telling himself all manner of excuses and reasons why the situation was not real, or why he was being messed with, or the ghost in front of him had to just be lying. But he looked at his hands. He saw the way his fingertips waxed and waned in opacity.
“Don’t jump to conclusions. You aren’t dead dead. Not yet at least.”
Wes turned his head up from the floor he had been staring at. The ghost floated in the air as if he was sitting in some invisible chair. The ghost averted his gaze and scratched at his white hair.
“What does that-”
“Listen, I’m no good at explaining things.” He was clearly struggling with what to say and how to say it. Wes was frustrated. He wanted whatever truth existed inside the ghost's head to make its way through his mouth and out in the open. “Technically you’re in purgatory.”
“Like that in-between life and death thing?”
“Bingo!” The ghost snapped and pointed a finger-gun at him. “Kinda like me. Although, our circumstances are totally different.” What did that even mean? He looked to Wes like a bonafide ghost: transparent, floaty, and generally unnerving. But for some strange reason, Wes didn’t detect any of the malice and fear that he thought ghosts were supposed to have. The more he looked, the more the ghost looked normal. It was obvious that he wasn’t human, but he just looked like a kid his age would. He was scrawny, slouchy, and small.
“Okay, so not dead, but not alive. How exactly does that work though?”
“Mostly comas.”
“So am I-”
“Yup, coma. Do you remember how it happened?”
Wes closed his eyes to concentrate on the millions of possibilities that could explain why he was in this unreal place, but he just kept coming up with the same result. Nothing. He could not remember a single thing.