Glass Child Short Story, 2

Hopelessness. Despair. Love. All things a spirit shouldn't have to feel, yes? I, who was empty, was feeling the stirrings of fullness…and I didn't know how to feel about that. Why should I reach for this beautiful Mortal, across the veil so? Why should I feel this strange pull on her, this strange need to touch her softly, my phantom flesh caressing her long limbs softly?
It was an enigma to me, one who was an enigma in himself. I was the only spirit here, stuck between This and The Next. I couldn't even make it In-Between, something sucked me into this shadowed vortex and held me with all of it's might, as though I wasn't meant for Up or Down. Am I confusing, little Mortals, ye who read these writings, the musings of a dead man long gone?
I died in the year of Our Lord, 1903, under the rule of Edward VII, after just landing in San Francisco during the plague outbreak. As a eighteen year old, fresh from my father's plantation in India, I had felt indestructible. The sights of the United States, and the world, were mine for the taking, or so I thought. I whored myself around, gambled drank, slept in dingy hostels. I effectively killed myself.
It's funny, stuck here in Wherever. I could remember my death, but I couldn't remember my life. Only the acts of immorality that lead up to them. My name, my father's name, the boat I arrived to the United States in, my family, the name of our plantation. Nothing, it was all gone. I was an empty being, and now…now I was feeling things again. And stuck in Wherever, you weren't supposed to feel.
At least I don't believe so, it's not like anyone had ever written a book on Wherever, a traveller's guide to this demesne. A booklet on sight seeing areas.
I felt a flash of light, and a ripping pain, and I was pulled from my home, the place I had decided to haunt, in a lightning gesture, a flick of God's wrist, and again, I saw her. Midnight hair, like a waterfall, her pale white skin standing out starkly against it. Her emerald eyes, named aptly for the flashed and sparkled in the light, like real gems, her long delicate limbs. She was beautiful, heart breakingly so, and I felt pulled to her, this earthbound angel. But I couldn't reach her, the Veil that separates This, The Next, In-Between, and Up from Down; it kept me from reaching her, from softly caressing her hair with my hands…even if she couldn't feel it, I could. Soft as silk, I imagined it. I beat against it in agony, and started to cry, beating uselessly against the barrier.
She filled me with feelings. Love, obsessive almost it was so strong. Despair, that I couldn't reach her through the Veil, and hopelessness…I was but a spirit thing. A ghost, a shade, a shadow of what was and what can never be again. How could she see me, to love me in return? To know that I was there? To see me…however I looked. I was nameless, and in my mind, faceless. After all, a ghost can't see his own reflection, can he?
The Veil bested me yet again, and I felt myself getting pulled away, back to my place, but as I was flashed away, a strange dull crack echoed through Wherever as I beat against the barrier once more.. Back to my tether, that kept me stuck here in Wherever. I felt different though…something was different about my emptiness, my phantom flesh. I felt more solid, more of This than Wherever. What had happened? Had I gotten closer to her this time? Had I cracked the Veil, was it possible? I wracked my mind for images of it…had it cracked?! Was that what I had heard, that strange sensation, that strange dull crack?
Hope filled me. I was feeling again, so much more strongly this time, the essence of Hope herself seemed to distil in me, and in Wherever, I lit it up like a sunrise, the glow of Hope, golden, shining to touch my dreary world. Maybe next time…maybe next time I could reach through! Maybe next time, if just for a moment, I could touch her hair, feel her skin. Feel alive. feel life, feel beauty! If I could be allowed but one touch, I would be content in my Wherever for all eternity.