Chapter Text
1.9 Losing A Staring Contest To The Ceiling
Monday 15th July 2024
05:33 am
The following bullet points are all internet searches made from Ash O’Sullivan’s iPhone XR, in the minutes preceding their morning wake-up alarm
- seeing ghosts?
- seeing ghosts -ai
- gf sees ghosts -ai
- how to turn off ai results -ai
- how to turn off ai results without putting -ai on the end of everything
- gf seeing ghosts what do I do -ai
- seeing dead people
- seeing dead people that don’t look like people you know -ai
- can your brain invent new people -ai
- schitzophrenia symptoms
- schizophrenia symptoms -ai
- is scizophrenia common with people who have ptsd -ai
- ptsd hallucinations? -ai
- nhs website
- hallucinations -ai
- helping gf with hallucinations -ai
- how to tell between hallucinations and actual honest-to-God ghosts -ai
- is my girlfriend a psychic -ai
- search engines that don’t have ai
God, Ash really doesn’t know what they’re doing, do they?
06:42 am
Funny fact about the human brain – you need a full night’s rest to make up for single hour of lost sleep.
Tara wasn’t entirely sure how many hours of sleep she had lost over the past few days, but she knew that even year-long coma wouldn’t make up for it. She could quite literally be killed and resurrected after a few hours, and that wouldn’t make a dent in her ever-growing sleep debt.
Today was a Monday. Of course it was. Saturday had gone by in a blazing whir, and Sunday just dragged on, so it was Monday again. As the natural cycle of the days of the week progresses – each day would come, and from dawn to dusk the day would play out. All events in chronological order, and then the next would come. Never to repeat – but sometimes to rhyme.
It was also raining outside. Uncharacteristic for the middle of July – but this was British weather, what can you do? Tara herself was impartial to a bit of rain – sometimes it was calming, like deep down it smoothed out the shattered fragments of her scrambled mind.
Maybe if she stepped outside - felt the wind as it carefully held her face in its hands, the rain as it pelted down on her skin, the chill as it consumed her in some sort of cosmic attempt to comfort her in some way…
…or she would just get really wet. But either way, it would be a very meaningful, cinematic moment. So ultimately it would be absolutely worth it, hypothermia risk be damned.
Tara wasn’t really sure what to do now. There probably wasn’t much going to be much use in going back to sleep, given it’s already 6 in the morning and the early lights of morning were already visible. That’s the thing about waking up early. The more distance between the current time and the time you were supposed to be up by that there was, the more enjoyable that the whole process is in general. Normally because of the darkness. In the hours that blur between late night and early morning, it is always better to be swaddled in darkness than doused in light.
Sometimes the darkness is simply more comfortable. More familiar.
When you were a foetus, you too where engulfed in darkness, exposed to the harsh light upon your birth.
You learn to adapt to that harsh light, it becomes softer, easier on the eyes.
You learn to live.
For there to be disequilibrium, there must first be equilibrium. They are Yin and Yang; one cannot exist without the impending imminence of the other.
When all there is in the world is disequilibrium, sometimes all you need is an anchor to tie you back to the present, the now. To be your harbour in the storm that is the world around you.
Given the fact that it was Monday on a school day, Tara could already hear Ash getting ready for the impending day. They were going to spend the next 9 hours talking about Stuart Hall’s reception theory to their GCSE classes and conveniently forgetting about assignment deadlines, and boy, were they going to have an okay time doing it.
In theory, Tara should’ve also been getting ready for work, but thankfully she was on sick leave for a bit, so this gave her some medically obligated time to just sit around and do nothing for a bit.
No, really, she couldn’t do anything that wasn’t more mentally strenuous than reading an email for 30 seconds otherwise her brain would medically explode.
Okay, well, her head wasn’t going to actually explode – but it sure felt like it would.
Tara then decided that a good use of her time for now would be to go back to her ongoing staring contest that she was having with the ceiling. In all the years she had done this for, she had never won. Not even once. However, on more than a few occasions, she had gotten very close to winning.
She knew it was a little silly – the ceiling has never blinked, and it probably never will – but it was just slightly funny to think about how she might hypothetically win a staring contest against a building.
Having near mastered the art of zoning out, it was difficult to find any actual humans for Tara to lose to. Sometimes people have asked her what the strategy for her apparent lack of ability to lose a staring contest is, but in reality, there isn’t really as much of a strategy as you would think. You just open your eyes and eventually you find yourself as if you were somewhere else entirely…
…that and also the fact that most people found that Tara’s eyes gained a sort of glossed-over quality to them whenever she would do this. As if the last dimming of any apparent light left in her eyes had been snuffed out.
At best, it was a glimpse into Tara’s life from an outside perspective. The eyes were supposedly the windows into one’s soul.
At worst, it was like looking a corpse in the eye.
Sometimes, though, there were people that were not deterred by this. There had been others that had seen that look in Tara’s eyes, and instead of blinking, they would stare back in solidarity. In adoration, even.
The person who had stared back in the latter was in the kitchen of their shared flat. Judging by the boiling hum emanating from the kitchen, they were seemingly making themselves tea. Most likely white tea on account of the fact that it was a Monday and they needed the energy boost, but not an onslaught of caffeine. Ash was considerably more of a lightweight than Tara when it came to caffeine, and that was a part of them that neither they nor their students needed to see right now.
It was a fresh week. A fresh start, even.
Tara decided that she should probably say good morning, before Ash heads off to work for the day. After all, she wasn’t going to see them until 5pm at the earliest, so this needed to be done as soon as possible.
Ash had previously insisted that they needed to stay home today – you know, on account of the whole situation with Tara – but eventually it was Tara herself who had said Ash had to go to work. After all, Tara was out of action for the next week or so, and there were bills that needed to be paid.
And anyway, Tara would be able to manage for a few hours.
Sluggishly, she turned the door handle, and slowly made her way over to the kitchen.
Ash was stood there, pouring warm water into their Sonic The Hedgehog mug – pre-equipped with the teabag that was about to become their morning drink. It was white tea, just as Tara had predicted, but predicting such things had become commonplace after knowing them for this long.
They had managed to sort out their cropped hair into something vaguely presentable for a working environment, and had thrown together a sensible-looking outfit consisting of a very sober shirt and some nondescript dress trousers. It was as sober a getup that it was possible to get from Ash, if you didn’t count the wildly colourful, badge-encrusted ID lanyard around their neck.
“Morning, Ash.” Tara smiled. One of the first instances of her doing so since the concussion. It was almost weird, seeing Tara this content
“Good morning, Tara.” Ash replied, in a manner that perhaps was a little too cheerful for quarter to 7, but I suppose that was in part due to their occupation. Seemingly comes with the territory.
The distance between the two of their mouths vanished soon after, as they shared a brief kiss, before continuing the conversation.
“You still sure about me going to work today? I can still call sick if you want.” Ash asked, their tone slightly softening in concern.
Tara was still insistent on the matter. “Like I said, don’t worry about it. You have a job to do.”
“…I guess so…” sighed Ash, “…hey, at least you can catch up on sleep, right?”
“Yeah, I was thinking of doing that.” Said Tara, getting herself some water. “-wait, what time is it again?”
“Quarter to.”
“Well, you should really be off by now.” Tara mentioned, this was true, as a matter of fact. Ash had to be in around an hour or so before any students got into the building, allowing them to prepare for the days ensuing lessons.
“Ah, right you are.” They replied, pouring the rest of their tea into a flask. “Well, I’ll see you at 5 – maybe earlier if I get all my marking done.”
“Okay,” said Tara, before raising the glass of water to her mouth, “I’ll see you then.”
Tara took a quick break from this sentence to finish off the glass of water, which
“-and remember, don’t worry about me too hard. I’ll probably just sleep until you get back.”
“Alright then, enjoy sleeping.” they smiled.
Ash then made their way out of the flat, grabbing their umbrella on the way out, and finally closing (but not locking) the door behind them.
As the footsteps dampened, Tara found herself alone in the flat. She finally has a moment to herself…
-Oh, who am I kidding- no she doesn’t.
“Alright! I admit it! I know you’re all in here!” she yelled at the sofa defiantly, her tone harshening significantly. “Just get up so we can get this over with.”
…nothing but silence. The ghosts were clearly still trying to maintain the illusion that they absolutely, definitely, 100% not in the room at the moment. This would be much better maintained if any of them had half an ounce of spatial awareness.
“…you know you’re clipping through the furniture, right?”
Tara asked, noticing somebody’s leg sticking out of the sofa.
“…uh- no we aren’t-eth?”
Joseph - the person that the disembodied leg belonged to - was almost instantly hit with an avalanche of “Oh, come on!!” and “Are you kidding me??”s from the other ghosts.
“Sure, you aren’t.” Tara replied, unconvinced. She sighed heavily, before speaking again. “Look, if we can all just come out now, it’ll save everyone the effort – alright? This is already a lot to handle at 7 in the morning.”
And so they did. Silently, the ghosts began crawling out of their respective hiding places. The hiding places that the ghosts had chosen were… definitely something, to say the least, ranging from just outside the flat, to literally inside of the furniture. Although, I suppose you have to give them some credit though, given they weren’t exactly given much range of choice.
As for Mazie… she was lying under the coffee table.
Tara knew this was irrational, but this image of Mazie lying there bloodied and open-eyed… almost reminded her of…
…that day.
…Anyway! Trying to shake off the fact that there were essentially a handful of sentient corpses in her living room, Tara attempted to put herself back on track, desperately trying to avoid looking directly into anyone’s dead, cold, empty eyes.
“Look, I just want to know why you’re all following me. I know it just started with you guys and… you – following me.” She began, first pointing at Alex and Thomas, and then vaguely gesturing to Mazie, not even daring to so much as glance in her direction. “But where did you two come from??? It’s like there’s more of you every time I look!”
Tara found herself nervously picking at the small, fingernail-sized scar on her right forearm. Tentatively awaiting a response from somebody – anybody – just some kind of reasoning behind all of this. Why does this all have to happen now? Couldn’t it- couldn’t they all just wait?
Mazie stood there in the corner of the room, mustering every last ounce of courage left in her to speak up…
…but she knew that look in Tara’s eyes – the one that told her that she really, really didn’t want to look at something. She knew that scar she was picking at, too. She knew it all too well, a relic of an argument and ensuing fallout.
The fight… the fall…
Mazie was the reason that scar was there, and Mazie still was the reason that Tara was picking at it.
Mazie knew that she couldn’t mess this up any more than she possibly had. She really couldn’t. She’s already ruined everything just by being here.
Even as she stared at Tara’s nervous fidgeting, there was still a piece of Mazie that hoped for a sense of renewal with her. Maybe – just maybe, once the smoke had cleared - there was something inside of the tattered scraps of their relationship that could be the key to fix it all. Things could be back as they should be, the equilibrium would be restored, and she and Tara could be friends again.
Evidently, she was mostly thinking with that part.
Mostly.
But that’s not going to end well for anyone, is it now?
Tara wasn’t exactly satisfied with the answer she had been given – the answer in question, to clarify, was complete silence from everyone. Ghosted by ghosts if you will. I’m aware of how terrible that joke is, by the way.
“Oh, okay, I see how it is…” Tara responded to her lack of response. “Well, if you’re all just going to stand there, I’m going back to sleep, okay? Clearly, I need it.”
Defensively, Tara inched away from the corpses in front of her in the direction of her bedroom door - before realising that this interaction was entirely optional, and fully committing to retreating back into comfortable subconsciousness again.
“Not today, Satan. Nicht heute.” Tara said under her breath, before turning around and slamming the door. Literally and figuratively giving them the good old door in the face.
Immediately after being shunned, all remaining eyes in the room turned towards Mazie.
“Weren’t you going to say something to her?” Asked Thomas, in a confused, almost accusatory manner.
“Yeah, that’s sort of the reason we followed you guys.” Added [Jane Doe], just out of Mazie’s line of sight.
Mazie didn’t meet anyone’s gaze; she just stood in the spot – still reeling from how much Tara clearly didn’t want her to be there.
“I just…”
She trailed off, seemingly unable to finish what she was going to say.
“…I don’t know.” She mumbled. “Not anymore…”
“Well, we were all kind of under the impression that you knew what you were doing, given you went an-”
“-you don’t exactly have to know what you’re doing.”
Alex cut Thomas off, given he was clearly about to start something that Alex would probably have to diffuse again. “The important thing is that you try and state your case at some point. That way, all of this will have been worth it.”
I mean, it was basically the same thing, sure – but the delivery was in a much less… abrupt manner than Thomas probably would’ve given.
Mazie stared through everyone else in front of her, through the door, and directly into the culmination of her past mistakes. She took a moment of consideration, before taking (as close as she can get to) a deep breath from her broken, decayed lungs.
She stepped through the door.
***
Tara flopped into the bed headfirst. She couldn’t be arsed to take anything else today – and it wasn’t even 7 in the morning! New record!
Maybe she was losing it. Maybe she wasn’t-?
-They’re still talking outside the door.
“Hm.” She thought, proactive of her own brain to somehow hallucinate dialogue happening outside…
This really does seem like grounds to get help.