The glimmer that came when the light hit the gap between worlds was wearing off on Kyrylo. It turned out anything could get boring eventually, even seeing into an unknown spirit realm. Now all the gap did was block his vision of Isabelle.
He was going to talk to her today.
Kyrylo sighed, flipping the coin he had picked up under the bench. It dazzled in the light, same way as the gaps, before he caught it. He rubbed it between his fingers, feeling the ridges and design in the metal before running into something strange. And sticky. He tossed the coin aside in disgust and tried to rub it off on his pants. Some of it came off, some of it was still on his fingertips.
“You going to buy a coffee yet?” Kyrylo’s partner, Felix, leaned forward on the bench to try and look into Kyrylo’s face. “Or do we just watch her?”
“I’m working on it,” Kyrylo replied, lifting his glasses and rubbing at his eye with the bottom of his palm. He eventually took the spectacles off entirely to try and clean them, grumbling over Felix’s completely normal eyesight.
“You say that every time,” Felix said, throwing his head back and staring at the sky. He had once had a toss of curly, dark hair that would bounce with him whenever he did this, but he had just shaved it all last week on a whim. Kyrylo could still picture it on top of the stubble that remained. “I’m getting really tired of sitting outside this place. It’s been a week. Any longer and my ass is going to start leaving an indent in the bench. Just do your closure thing and be done with it.”
Kyrylo felt the usual twist in his stomach. Isabelle was the only piece left in his life to say goodbye to, as per the agency’s rules. If you saw into the spirit realm, you saw your old life disappear. The secret had to be maintained.
It was just that he had a really good thing going with Isabelle. They had ended up in a couple of generic classes for first year students and sat together in both of them, day one. Now they sought each other out, saved seats, swapped notes. They had been planning out a couple more classes in second semester to sign up for.
Gone.
The moment he talked to her it was over. And yes, he could text her about it. He hadn’t gone to class for the last week, had officially dropped out but neglected to inform her, picking an illness as cover in their texts. But that just didn’t feel right. He would order a drink, make a final joke, and then vanish from her life entirely, as he had already done to his family, his friends. That was it.
“Whatever,” Kyrylo said, “just let me do this.”
“You say that like I didn’t have to do this too,” Felix replied, still looking up. He reached down and tapped at the little silver disc on the side of his waist, the symbol of their work and connection to the RIF.
“You never seem to act like it bothered you.”
“Been a year. You move past it. You have to.”
“Fine.” Kyrylo stood and felt the numbness down the backs of his legs from sitting too long. He shook them out to try and get something back. “I’ll go do this and become a shell like you then.”
“That’s the spirit,” Felix added. “Then we can go back to properly patrolling like it’s our jobs. Who knows how many spirits have started haunting people here while you’ve been stuck in this crisis or whatever.”
Kyrylo waved him off as he took his steps forwards. He still hadn’t figured out what he was even going to say to Isabelle. Then again, he had never really planned anything with her. It had just felt so easy, natural. They talked and laughed and he barely even realized what it was until they had told him it had to end.
In his mind he said goodbye a final time to all the dreams and fantasies involving her. No more dates, no future graduation, no marriage. He had versions of it where they never went out, just goofy friends who shared stories about terrible people they dated. He had ones where they had kids and a house. Clearer pictures of the future than he had of what he was going to do with his sociology degree originally. No clue what that job would have been but at least he could have figured it out.
Now…
He froze up in front of the door and stepped aside to let an elderly woman through. She gave him a sneer for blocking up the way and he regretted even holding the door for her, letting it close just behind her to even more looks from her wrinkled face.
This was the closest he had gotten yet. He could feel it on his skin, on his neck, little bumps forming as chills wrapped around him. He refused to turn around and deal with Felix’s judgement.
He straightened out his long-sleeve shirt, tugging at it in vain to get out the creases. Grey, boring, intentional. They couldn’t wear flashy colours anymore, couldn’t wear anything with frills. If you were going to pass through gaps and disappear from existence, you couldn’t be memorable to a passerby. Felix swore he had a closet of former fashion he was forbidden from. He bemoaned that more than he ever mentioned when he had to abandon his own family.
Even as he straightened it out he heard the training echo through his head, monotonous lines they had to review constantly at every turn. Spirits are the greatest danger to humanity. Kill on sight. Do not engage without a weapon. Do not make contact. They are the greatest danger. Over and over until it went meaningless and his mind blanked and brought him back to the store.
Kyrylo felt the usual trembling through his chest as he re-opened the door and stepped into the coffee shop. It wasn’t stopping him this time. Isabelle was right there, behind the counter beaming at the miserly old woman who had beaten Kyrylo inside. That was her corporate smile, her warm, charming look that didn’t mean anything so she could get through the workday and then roll her eyes later and tell Kyrylo about whatever insane thing was shouted at her today. That was really all she had at this job, that and her running shoes, the one piece of uniform she could control that she proudly bragged to Kyrylo about.
He drew closer as the current customer moved on, leaving nothing between the pair but the counter. He didn’t really mind that her work forced her into an atrocious all-brown outfit, laughed with her at the blonde tips from that ombré she had regretted getting but couldn’t afford to undo. Sure, she was taller than him, practically everyone on her volleyball team was, but none of it mattered. She had redefined what an attractive woman was the minute they had started talking.
“Oh!” Isabelle smiled and did her signature head tilt, ten degrees to the right. “What brings you to my lair, Kyrylo?”
He even liked how she said his name, something he had once groaned through when teacher’s read off attendance. “A coffee.” He paused for a bit and it seemed like Isabelle was expecting more than that as well, still watching him with walnut eyes. “But like a good tasting one.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“So not a coffee?” Isabelle punched in an order for one of the more complex mixed drinks. He saw the name of it flash on the screen between them, didn’t even recognize it from the menu but that was pretty normal for his orders. He knew it had caffeine in it and it wasn’t bitter so that was all that mattered.
“Only you get me,” he replied, then felt a tremor through his legs, the tops of his cheeks igniting. He had said that a dozen times before so it just slipped out, ignoring all the weight and meaning behind his visit. This was how she got him every time, like there was no rest of the world, just this world, this spot wherever the two of them were chatting.
Isabelle scoffed. “Almost nobody wants an actual coffee, man. You’re not special.” She gestured towards the table at the end of the counter, where the cream and sugar were sitting. “I’ve watched how much extra sugar they add. These people are animals.”
Kyrylo forced himself into a laugh, coughing through part of it before offering up his phone to pay. Her usual jokes cut him in the context of finality.
“I guess you’re feeling better now?” Isabelle continued, watching the receipt print out and showing it to Kyrylo. He waved it away and she tossed it into the garbage at her side.
“Yeah, I mean I’m outdoors and all, right?” He flinched inside. That had been his easiest excuse, to tell her some sort of medical intervention was needed, he was going away for a while. Now it was in the garbage too beside the receipt. “But I-”
“Great!” Isabelle’s eyes lit up. He had only ever seen that once before, back when they had first met and she had been describing almost running into her celebrity crush at the airport. She had babbled with excitement for ten minutes that time. “You’ve somehow missed so much and also like nothing? It’s crazy, I’ll have to tell you. Oh also…” She softened suddenly. “I saved the notes for you from last week so I can give you those.”
Kyrylo straightened in shock. “For a class we don’t even care about? Why?”
“I mean you shouldn’t be punished with bad grades for being sick.” She slid over to the machine next to her, pressing a couple of buttons to produce the syrupy-sweet drink for Kyrylo. “And you always save a seat for me…for my hearing.” She placed the cup up on the counter between them and flashed a gentle smile. “But we can just hang out and I’ll catch you up. I’ll text you when I’m free.”
“Sure,” Kyrylo mumbled and grabbed his drink. He wandered outside and then ducked around the corner before Felix spotted him, unprepared to face his handler. Felix had such a way of being smug and disappointed all at once and Kyrylo didn’t need that reminder of what he had just failed to do.
So he picked the next best option as he slipped further into the alley between the coffee shop and its neighbour; he found a glimmer and passed straight through.
The walls around him began to melt, exposing the interior of the coffee shop again. There was the elderly woman inside, irritated at somebody on the phone with her. Kyrylo couldn’t make out anything they were saying; it all sounded muffled once you crossed over, growing increasingly hazy and losing colour over time, like it was slowly sucked away down a drain below them.
And then there was Isabelle behind the counter. Even through the filter of realms, even as the colour seeped out from her clothes and washed away, she was radiant to him. So he hadn’t properly said goodbye. Or indicated he was leaving. Or really anything he was supposed to do. Actually he had done the opposite and possibly agreed to an outside-of-school hangout. Which would normally be described as a date but Kyrylo had to shove that thought as far down into his head as he could. Just focus back on the shop, on Isabelle, on finality.
Except…
Something else was there, behind her. Unlike Isabelle, whose body now rippled as though she were behind wet glass, this figure was clear. Spindly, hunched, with an impossible stick torso and gangly limbs, a rounded head with two burning eyes of blackness. Its hands were so thin as to be practically fingers but the actual fingers flared out into lengthy, wide claws, ending in glittering points.
A spirit.
It continued to hover behind Isabelle, observing her, peering over her shoulder then scouring her back with its eyes, little white holes in the center of the darkness revealing its gaze. It reached out with its fingers towards her, cautiously.
Kyrylo heard his heart in his chest. He could feel the constrictions across his pecs as the bones tightened underneath. He didn’t have a weapon, couldn’t; he wasn’t authorized to carry one yet while in training. Felix had it, would hand it to him whenever they crossed over, if he let him hold it at all. He wasn’t supposed to be over here.
But something couldn’t haunt Isabelle. He couldn’t just watch it happen, that was…what was the point of any of this if he had to give it all up and he couldn’t even save someone he cared about? He refused to let that happen.
His body sprang up in response, dashing towards the spirit and leaping before he knew what was happening. He tackled it, felt the coldest thing he had ever touched, felt it rush through him, around him, into him. Some sort of shriek, a brief flicker in his mind of a memory, a warning in training class not to touch spirits without a weapon.
Then it was over. There was nothing. He was on the ground, the floor of the coffee shop on the other side of the counter, standing under someone who was adding milk to their coffee. Of course they couldn’t feel or see him, it was just the appearance of two realms overlapping.
Kyrylo grabbed his head, feeling a strange weight in it on one side, like his ear was full of water. Whenever he tilted it the weight went with him, tumbling from one side to the other. He shook it away and checked back over his shoulder, able to see Isabelle’s head from his angle, the rest of her cut off by the counter. There was no spirit surrounding her anymore. He breathed.
“Holy shit!” It was Felix jogging up next to him. “Oh fuck, you didn’t…are you ok?”
“Yes?” Kyrylo slowly got to his feet, shooting Felix a quizzical look. He couldn’t feel anything wrong with himself. He just hit the ground a bit hard but nothing was broken; Felix was talking as if he was on fire or something. “I got the spirit right? You saw that? I know we’re not supposed to touch it but I just couldn’t…”
Felix didn’t say anything. Just stared back at Kyrylo like he was processing. And Kyrylo had never seen that before. Felix was always cool, disinterested, bored in training him and bored with the spirit realm. This was all just a mundane job to clean out some benign hauntings that took very little effort to swat away. Kyrylo had just tackled one into the ether so how hard could it really be with a sword or something? He had never found it difficult to beat them when he had been allowed to wield.
“Again, the spirit is gone, right? This kind of matters man, it was haunting Isabelle.”
“No you…” Felix trailed off. He swallowed, hard enough Kyrylo could see it. “You fused…you fused with it so…yeah.”
“What the hell does that mean? Fused? I don’t…it doesn’t…” Kyrylo patted his chest down like he was different. There was nothing. His very human skin and bones underneath, he couldn’t see anything had changed. The coffee shop around them had almost faded entirely and had nearly vanished as they continued to delve into the other realm and completely cross over. “Is that worse than touching them?”
Felix blinked a few times and seemed to come together. “It means you’re a fucking crime man. Nobody is supposed to…that’s a death crime thing in RIF. They execute you. And I can’t…wow this is a lot. Shit we have to get out of here too, we’re not supposed to be in the spirit realm this long.”
“Wait, what? They didn’t mention…they said don’t touch them, when was fusion an option? That is not a sufficient explanation. Are you going to turn me in or something? Am I going to die, is that what you’re telling me?” Kyrylo was unfamiliar with a panic attack. He had heard it described once to him, by Isabelle. The tightness in his throat, blurring on his vision, his head was somehow scrambling in all directions and yet precisely focused on this one overwhelming, sinister thought: death. This felt like a panic attack but really he couldn’t tell.
“No I won’t…I mean I don’t think…” Felix shook his head again as if to reassure himself. “We won’t…we’ll figure it out ok, we’ll just go back and not mention it and figure out a way to undo it or something?”
“Yeah…ok.” Kyrylo held his forehead with his palm, feeling the cool touch against his searing face as it flushed in panic. “I would very much like not to die.”