A glimpse into the not-so-distant past, a peek into Trey pre-POSTCARD, pre-wrathraven. Swishy had ditched him but the dark had plenty of lessons for Trey as well. The shadows were an equal opportunity teacher, so he’d come to learn.

“SOUL.”

Trey astral projected without hesitation—but suffered instant regrets.

His paranoia of body departure boiled inside him as he shed his physical form like a candy wrapper. Trey drifted within the black-and-blue realm, utterly destabilized. He feared everything that could happen to a raw spirit, one without body armor. He glanced to his shoulder at Myst—a cunning smile played across her lips as she suspended Trey’s body on a shadowed nimbus.

He stewed on Ruby’s last text. ZLIDE—and haha, I’m right behind you! Accompanied by a string of ghost emoji, devil emoji, knife emoji. He considered the possibility and wished he hadn’t entertained the rabbit hole. Trey’s warp was special among physical bodies—but wasn’t that how the curses already traveled? They were flexible, dissected forms. Now that he’d gone blue, he tuned into the souls he otherwise couldn’t see from within his human body. They whoosh’d beneath and above and beside him as an oceanic current, distinctly ZLIDE-like movements.

For soul-folk, mobility was its natural boon. ZLIDE was a power walk at best. Ruby probably had something stronger.

He couldn’t get Ruby’s melodic voice out of his head, humming a singsong of ZLIDE-ZLIDE-ZLIIIIDE. Trey imagined her sweeping The Last Straw, pushing dust with perfect aim from one wall in a far-off dustpan. She was a domestic wizard, always singing under her breath as she cleaned.

“Crazy lady, weren’t we friends?”

An undercurrent of darkness licked at his feet, a warning from the curses to watch his tone about Ruby—Who do you think you're calling crazy?

“Oh wow,” Myst said. “So you’re her friend and not mine?”

“I’m not her friend no more.”

“Maybe you’re not mine either.”

“Come on, Myst, don’t be like that.”

“I don’t like you.” She shot a beam of darkness into Trey’s head—which felt like a finger flick upon his forehead. Visceral memories set upon him then: the snitchtalons dropping him, the stomach-sick sensation of free-fall, the frozen air cutting his face. As soon as Myst reopened his trauma, the vision ended.

He dizzied, he spun around, he clutched his head. “Girl, what the hell?”

“Oh nothing. Just a reminder that you need your friends. And that souls can get attacked too. This isn’t the movies, you know.” Her shadowy hands wrapped around his physical throat. Without a guarded body—or bodyguard haha—he couldn’t astral project safely. Gone were the days when folks lying on the street were disregarded as homeless people. Any stray bodies were likely to get soul-swapped into or sacrificed for someone’s beyond-human transformations.

“Thanks and gratitude, Myst, thanks and gratitude.”

“You’re welcome.” The dark tendrils receded from around his neck, one loop, two loops, three—she’d had him in a stranglehold for real.

Trey moved on, floating—like in the movies—to make a point to Myst.

She giggled her Myst-branded you’ll-get-yours giggle.

Alright, let’s find my stupid rye-and-cry friend.

(...)

He flew upward for a better vantage point—the scarecrow, its aura of gold, had to be out there somewhere. As Trey perused the surroundings, he was met by deep obsidian combined with the blue contours of solid surfaces. The glutted shadows gave nothing away.

Searching for Swishy, recovering his friend, protecting that precious heart inside—these were his priorities.

But Myst, being Myst, arched her eyebrows at Trey. She made no secret of disagreeing with his designs.

“Yes?” Trey pointedly asked. He made his suspicions clear.

“I was just wondering what you’d do without me.”

“The same thing I’m doing now? You know, seeking the Swish, investigating the dark.”

“Ah, I was afraid of that answer. So vanilla. So not good enough.”

Myst let him know that with the most annoying action possible—she flew off with Trey’s body.

“Hey, where are you going?” Trey reached his phantom arm towards her, flying at her—but much slower than her, of course. His soul was sluggish from a lifetime of vessel-piloting.

“I’m going away, duh!”

“Uuuh, try not doing that?”

“It’s a game of tag! Didn’t you have a childhood? Gather a sense of romance, of imagination. You’re blue now. You’re limitless, aren’t you? The shadows are at your disposal. Why go back to a body?”

“Because it’s mine! I’m not gonna justify wanting my body back!”

“Well, you shouldn’t have handed it to me—idiot.”

Myst flew through trees and Trey flew through tree trunks—yet closed his eyes through the phasing; Myst wound around clusters of curious curses and Trey hit those same curves—although clumsily crashing through the occasional shadow; Myst launched straight into the obsidian sky and Trey followed suit—though slowed down, suddenly fearful of the tenebrous atmosphere. Blackness was everywhere, not a trace of a blue-contoured cloud or horizon to guide him. No moon, no stars, no evidence of space or Heaven.

Myst had melded into the shadows, vanishing, yet lurked from some unseen crevice.

Trey imagined his body—which was easy, having seen himself in the mirror every day of his natural-born life, his naturally-bodied life. Once the image of clear, unmistakable, he unleashed the spell: “ZLIDE!”

Even as a soul, he felt his atomic destructuring. A pneumatic tube dragged him along the black realm. The abyss was alive with eyes, with staring curses tracking his warp. The feeling embarrassed him, actually, of the local shadows gawking at a blue boy careening along.

He reappeared through the other end of the ZLIDE portal in another clearing. He’d successfully followed his body—his spell was accurate about these things. But his body was nowhere to be found. Myst, everywhere and nowhere, was a master of disguise. She was in the dark corner of a tree. She was the shadow of every grass blade. She was the rotted-through side of a felled acorn. She was the stray feathers of shadowclaws taking flight. Trey wasn’t the expert. He was uneducated here. A scholar of the un-dark but a vagrant of the shadowdeep.

“Do better, my friend. I’m sure Swishy will be fine.” Trey’s voice, though. Myst on the ground again, inhabiting Trey’s body. She puppeteered him, but strangely enough, she didn’t know how to walk or stand up straight. She spasmed; she leaned strangely; she more or less stroked out.

Trey cringed from the grotesquery of…himself. How could he let her do that to him? Stupid, stupid, stupid…“Please, Myst. Stop playing with me. There’s much to do.”

“Of course, Trey. But as my chosen champion, it’s my responsibility to train you.”

“The training could’ve been before Swishy dipped off.”

“It could’ve been, yes. But isn’t this more fun?”

“No?”

“Disagreed, my friend, disagreed.” She waved; she saluted; she gestured with practice and natural ease. Myst acclimated to her possession near-instantly. “You see, when you become a soul, you’re useless. You’re good at battling with your vessel. But if you don’t make the most of a raw soul’s influence, then you’re as good as dead. You’re no better than the feckless curses crying in the dark.”

“ZIP!” Trey ran towards Myst, a sudden burst towards his body. But she was the altar, she’d read his maneuver long before he’d conjured the scheme in his mind.

“ZLIDE” She slipped away—Trey’s perfectly postured body in tow.

“Hey, give me back!” Trey skidded to a stop where Myst had just been.

“Buh-bye now,” Myst laughed, her voice filling the clearing like a supermarket announcing system.

Trey knew she was right. He was a little dejected. He stared at his blue hands, blue Timbs on his feet, perplexed. Out of luck didn’t begin to describe it. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know how to fight back as a soul. He didn’t know where to run or hide or make a maintenance request to the gods. God, he clasped his hands, Lift ya boy up. The dark has me pressed! But you’re greater than the dark. You’re Greatness and Glory itself. Save me—because Myst, that demon, is about her games. In your name, amen.

He felt better, lighter—if it were possible for a soul to feel any lighter than what he was.

“Now Myst,” he called out to the surroundings, “You know it’s kind of an emergency.”

“I can see everything, though. The scarecrow’s not one to be sold short.”

“I’m not selling him short at all, but there are dangers out there.”

“Oh, there are dangers everywhere. Don’t be a baby. Now tell me, how will you fight as a soul?”

There was no way out of this. He’d have to train; he’d have to figure out how to maneuver as a dark dweller. Entering the dark was one step—becoming the dark was the next. If his folks in Clayhearth knew what he was doing, he knew they’d be disappointed. Or maybe proud of his survival? Who knew? Not like he had the liberty to be nervous about that now. But thoughts of his folks and home steadied him.

How to grab his body back? The answer came to him then. ZLIDE wasn’t good enough. But simply returning to his body in the natural way a soul seeks its body might work.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

He closed his eyes. “Okay soul, do your thing.”

His soul-form unbound into a vapor, a misty trail which flowed through the air. He wasn’t a human form anymore, simply smoke, ether. Trey wasn’t just a soul—he was a soul assigned to his body and his body alone.

Myst teleported behind a distant tree and when Trey’s soul homed onto the location, she warped again to a treetop some twenty meters away. Trey naturally followed the course of his own body. His shadowy trainer warped several more times in succession—near, far, sometimes high and low and even once underground—but she couldn’t lose Trey’s pursuit. He wasn’t catching up all the way. He’d caught onto his own scent, though.

ZIP, he breathed out, letting the word slip out of his mouth like the smoke he’d become, an easy release, an easy spell trigger that propelled his soul like a winding wind. Myst teleported into a bush, then a tree knot, then a cloud—but Trey sped and sped and sped and sped, effortlessly, catching up and slamming into his body.

He’d reclaimed himself once more—several stories about the ground. Oh God, I’m tired of this. Before his descent, he activated a ZLIDE and clumsily landed in a treetop, trapping himself in a hammock of blue, glow-in-the-dark branches.

Myst appeared before him, a tiny fairy pirouetting upon his chest. She brushed leaves out of his hair. “Good job, that was lovely.”

“Thank you—but also fuck you.”

“Yes, yes. That’s what they all say. But what’s the real truth? Tell me, Trey.”

“I don’t know. The darkness fucks harder?” He shrugged.

“Bingo!”

She mouthed Z-L-I-D-E, and she disintegrated with every subsequent letter, her shadow pieces subsumed into the dark—drawing every Trey atom with her.

The pair reappeared on the surface—Myst sticking the landing as a graceful and fluttering sprite, while Trey rolled about in the dirt and humidity.

“Okay, so what did you learn?” Myst asked. “Quiz time, chop-chop trainee. Hurry before Swishy gets eaten.”

“Never trust a shadow bitch.”

“You knew that already. But about being a soul. What about that?” Her tone became inquisitive—Professor Myst was in the building.

“I don’t know what I learned but let me play with this spell for a sec.”

“Play is the way! You’re learning.”

SOUL—he reactivated his astral protection. Both his soul and body gave Myst a pleading expression. “Please watch my body okay—properly this time!”

“Okay, Trey. I’ll put it on your tab.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Everything costs, you know that.”

(…)

Once more, he ascended, searching for Swishy. Trey began to understand Swishy’s existence; he was beginning to…feel a disturbance in the dark. With his visual sight limited, feeling was the only option—the best option. He closed his eyes and reached for Swishy’s familiar soul, drawing an infrared border around him. There! He found him and activated ZLIDE—but couldn’t. A great confusion took the place of his missing energy.

Trey gradually landed, or rather, he’d lost altitude. Not of his own volition either. He was tired, tired, tired.

So downward he went.

The young man hadn’t remembered astral projection feeling so cumbersome. When he last used it, the snitchtalons held him as a sky-high captive. He’d flown easily through the night skies, chasing the snitchtalons. He’d maneuvered himself as a swift blue wind—light as a feather, light as air. Trey had been a soul in the most traditional, paranormal movie sense.

But why was he so heavy now? Why did his blue-boy form feel like drifting through a slog? Trey felt as if a collection of arms pressed down upon his shoulders. He strained his non-physical, non-existent musculature. Something wasn’t right. Something had gone awry. Myst laughed as Trey panted. He was…out of breath?

As a ghost? What the hell? I don’t even do air!

Myst marinated the shadows with mirthful laughter, but Trey put her taunting out of his mind. He concentrated on maintaining ascension, on searching for a blighted scarecrow tinged in gold.

But Trey descended…and descended…and descended…and at last had to land.

Walking. The undignified and humbled ghost boy had to walk. He was panting, sweating, and disgraced. His hands were on his hips, his neck rolled to the side. He wiped sweat from his forehead.

His ghostliness now came with strange, non-ghostly sensations. Fear didn’t begin to describe his current state. He prayed; he begged for mercy; he mourned. What’s going on with me? This isn’t how it’s supposed to be…

The young man dragged his feet, now struggling to lift his legs. “Look, Myst, you gonna give advice or what? I’ve got to find Swish.”

“I could give you a tip, yes, I know what’s happening. But the question is: why don’t you know?”

“Because I don’t do this every day. I’d say this is my second time ever. Tutorial please!”

“If you feel it, then you should be able to see it. You’re not a human scurrying around in a haunted hotel. You’re a ghost—you are the haunting. SEE, Trey, for your own good please see. In the words of you humans, Trey…be better.”

Ouch—more indignity. Trey’s pride was skewered like a kabob. But he felt so bad, so tired and bedraggled, and as he lifted his heavy head he concentrated. Pressure makes diamonds, his people liked to say, pressure makes Dimes—Trey Dimes.

He reactivated the SOUL intent—as a soul this time. He could feel it—now he’d see it. And then he saw…

The eyes, the hands, and mouths of his haters—a plethora, a legion, an army of hating-ass curses. Aggressive entities clung to his shoulders and wrapped his legs and bit his face. There were small souls, insect-like. Trey regarded them as mosquito souls, buzzing and life-stealing.

Give us your soul! Give us everything you are! We’re happy to claim another. Join our family. You’ve served the city well in your physical form—now show us who you are inside. Join us. Become us. Give us your knowledge! Show us how to construct better shadows.

“I’m not constructing a thing! Get off me!”

Are we on you? Or are you in us? We live here already. We’re simply moving you in, hehe. We’re giving you a HAND. Hospitality, Trey Dimes, hospitality and grace and kindness.

“Consent? Permission? What about those things!” He slapped the shadowy hands away, but for every hand he deflected another three appeared to drag him down.

That goes both ways, dear friend. You’re trespassing, are you not?

“Always a twist with you people.”

You people? Now Trey…that’s hurtful. Cearth is way beyond such ugly designations.

Trey attempted ascension but couldn’t muster the strength. The vines were taut and inflexible. The shadows hardened like shackles. He was a chain gang of one, and the curses were content to be chains—they were content to assume any form that served Ruby and her sanctuary.

He noticed then as Myst carried his body alongside him, that things weren’t quite matching up the way he’d expected his mirrored image to match. He placed a blue soul hand on his physical one—there was so much less soul than body.

Trey shrank and shrank. The curses drained him as he progressed. His soul drained and the ambient force of the shadows weighed down, stealing him, crushing him, oppressing him. “Bruh! This sucks!”

“They’re sucking you, yes.” Myst had no shortage of quips—no doubt she’d call this training as well.

His first instinct was to ask Myst what to do—futile, always futile. He saved himself the drama and trauma of a useless exchange. The cogs of his mind turned as he calmly considered a solution to his rapid depletion. ZZT intent bloomed within him and spread to his hands, his head, his feet. A soft aura of electricity clung to his ghostly boundary. The shocks were more diffused and less harmful—but the light, that’s what he was after, the luminous ward that knocked the shadows away.

The curses reached for him, but their hands and vines disintegrated as soon as they encroached upon the light. Nothing of the shadows could drown out the gold. His latest lesson: only physical entities could block the light.

With Swishy and his gold rake vacated, Trey was his own torch, his own light. He liked that idea now that he gently glowed, watching the curses slam into him and complain about it. Coward! Talk to us properly! The shadows won’t hurt you—you’re one of us, obviously. Now put that zap-sappy away and join us…in discourse, just discourse. He smirked at them, especially at how their lexicon became real salesman-like and academic all of a sudden. The sucking was stopped—and the sucking-up was in full effect.

“ZZT, ZZT, ZZT,” he sang, then glowered. “ZAP, ZAP, ZAP!” His aura expanded in a radial wall that shot several Trey-lengths away from him. Area of effect—one of his favorite move types. Again, the souls weren’t significantly harmed, only singed and blighted enough to moan about it.

It’s not fair! Let us in, let us in! This is our home! Who are you to switch on the lights?

But Trey absent-mindedly sang his spell, maintaining a flickering orb of voltage spell. Protected by his shield, his soul quickly recovered. He walked, then power walked, then realized his strides naturally increased—he’d returned to normal size. After a few more moments, he strolled upon the air and shifted into a hover. He floated along, a proper ghost again.

Myst’s eyes opened from Trey’s shadow. A simple level-two spell had no real effect on her. Her darkness maintained its sturdy construction as she hoisted Trey’s body in her arms, an embarrassing but helpful princess carry for the Clayborne. “The best solutions are the simplest ones, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say, indeed I would.”

“Good. Now tell that to your new friends.”

“Huh?” Trey glanced to the edge of his ZAP bubble and caught a glimpse of shifting shadows. The movement resembled personhood—he recognized stride movements and anatomical gait, nothing like the smokiness of the curses. He along in his dome of light, catching the heels of the fleeing creatures. Swish-swish, went their motions, swish-swish. But it wasn’t Swishy. The sounds were off. These creatures rustled like brooms, distinctly non-linguistic. Scarecrows? No way…

ZOOM—he flew fast and smooth and upright, guided by a rail of shadow. His zap-light encompassed the scarecrows then, small ones, scared and uncertain ones. They shielded their eyes from the brightness even though they didn’t have real pupils. Kids liked to put on a show. Trey shook his head in his palm. Not more babysitting—when does it end for me?

“When you die,” Myst gleefully offered.

Trey sighed. The way things were going, he was just as likely to survive 5 minutes or 50 years. He wouldn’t be shocked about either with how he progressed—yet somehow found himself in harrowing situations. “Who are you guys?” Trey asked. “And why are you Swishies?”

“I love Swishy, I love him so much—but I have my own name, you blue jerk.”

Trey knew that his already long night now became much longer. At least she could speak. And she appeared in perfect hay bale health—a glance at her gold-straw joints indicated that much. Good work, Swishy… “Yes, purple bow—I’m rude and jerky. Now that that’s established, your name—let’s hear it.”

“Amie!”

“Like amethyst?”

“Why do you knooow that?”

“My hometown likes rocks. Gold ones, mostly, but we have purple too—like your bow.”

“That’s so cool. I want to go there someday.”

Three—no, four, five, six—children clamored behind her, swishing excitedly and unintelligibly. They were scarecrows, too, grade-school-sized. They wanted to see the brightly colored rocks. They asked if he was from a ghost from Clayhearth. And if there were older ghost-bros to show them around and maybe get donuts.

Bro, you’re a lightbulb! You’re SPARK-ly! Twinkle, twinkle, Clayhearth star!

Trey waved the kids towards him. “Let’s start with names, yeah?”

Amie, Butterscotch, Roland, Jimena—

“Jimena, that’s pretty!”

Thank you! My daddy’s named Jimmy.

Trey smiled, nearly clenching his teeth to breakage. Jimmy—he wanted to slap him. “That’s so unique.”

Jimena’s smile revealed straw teeth of different sizes and alignments, the hilarious tragedy of childhood dentistry.

“Look kids—once we leave the dark, we’ll see about a trip to my city.”

The kid-crows swished in the dark, their straw-bits blizzard-ing their shared dome of light. Myst swirled beyond the glow, concealing herself along with Trey’s body; the black entity allowed them their moment.

Trey had to hand it to himself, though. He was a maestro with kids.

“Thou hast not asked my name.”

Trey was on alert and unconsciously stepped in front of the children.

“Ah, wrathraven possess thine tongue?”

“Bristles, yo.”

“Bristles…thou sayest it with such power. How delectable.” He smiled sickly. There were fresh wounds on his face, his shoulders, his arms. He then reached into his satchel and pulled out a clump of straw—which trembled and groaned. No! No! Trey believed it said. But he couldn’t tell—or didn’t want to tell. Bristles tossed the wheat into his mouth and chowed down. His wounds closed as he gulped down the straw.

The kid-crows clung to Trey’s hip, the several of them smashing their wheat bodies into each other. Amie adjusted her purple bow, fearful of its theft. “Our parents…he has our parents in the bag.”

Trey’s eyes went dilated into pure portals. “Is it true? Did you harvest the scarecrows?”

“Harvesting, hunting—thy soul shan’t worry over the trivialities of NATURE. Hay is organic. It’s a grain—soul or not. Neglecting nourishment is a fool’s game, Trey.”

The bag cried out, vibrating its fears. Their harmonized agony ushered appeared to blast away the darkness itself. An enigmatic intent bloomed above Bristles’ head.

POSTCARD…Trey stood dumbfounded, contending with the reality of the dark rolling backward as a gift-shop world took over.

The beach, the sands, the light-bright ultraviolet of the skies, the shimmering layers of ocean waves—everything was so beautiful to Trey, so stunning and lovely, but he knew that the other shoe—the other Timb—had already dropped. Bristles’ satchel squirmed and bulged in despair.

Trey squirmed, too, as he shielded the children. He quietly despaired over several kids’ meals clinging to his hip.