The Ghost of Jane Veckter

TW: death, depression

    The Veckters died three months, two weeks, five days, twelve hours, forty-seven minutes, and eight seconds ago.
    It had been a car crash. Well, more like a car accident. Wilson Veckter in the front seat had to cross the railroad tracks in order to get to the grocery store. They were already halfway across them by the time they realized the train was coming. By that point, it was too late. The train took off the front half of the car. There wasn’t even any blood left to wipe off of the gravel. The back of the car was left completely unscathed, as if a knife had cut it in half. The paramedics came, took in the scene. There’d been two people in the car. They only pronounced one as dead.
    Jane knew that was a mistake. She may have been sitting in the back of the car, but she’d died as if she too had been taken away by the train.
    She looked down at her body from the outside of it. The body ran through the motions just fine. She ate, even though she couldn’t taste the food. She showered, even though she couldn’t feel the heat of the water on her bare skin. She talked, even though the conversations were never able to linger in her memory. By all accounts and purposes, she should have been alive. Anyone who looked at her from the outside certainly thought so. Unless they could see the emptiness behind her eyes, that is. Everyone thought she was alive. Hell, she’d have thought it if she wasn’t floating outside of her own body
    For the first bit of it, she hadn’t minded so much. She was so caught up in her grief that it was okay for her to just float outside of herself, to let some other entity take the reins for a while. It gave her some much-needed peace, to not have to take care of herself. 
    As things were currently, however, she was incredibly bored and incredibly tired of not being in control of her own being. She was ready to take it back.
    The only problem was that she had no idea how to get back to herself.
    It wasn't a lack of trying, not really. It was just that she’d never had to force her soul back into her body before. Her body and soul had always been one united force. She’d spent such a long time away from her body that she had no clue as to how to get back to it.
    And then she met Rylan.
    Rylan was everything that Jane had been missing in her life. He was so full—full of emotion, full of care, full of love. He was gentle, understanding of her in a way that no one since Wilson had been. He was warm, a warmth that she could feel on her skin, in her bones. It brought her happiness, it brought her warmth.
    It also brought her guilt, the guilt that only comes with loving another after you’ve lost one that you loved. Was it not wrong to love someone so fully that she became distracted from the pain of losing those that she’d loved before? Was it not wrong to give her heart to someone else when it had been so thoroughly beaten and damaged before?
    But then she would think of Wilson—because, although the warmth distracted her, she never forgot about him, could never forget about him—and his shy smiles and his gentle hand. And she knew what he’d want for her.
    So slowly, Jane Veckter began to come back to herself.
    It was a painfully slow process. It seemed her progress had to be measured moment-by-moment, hour-by-hour. A brush to her hand brought her shooting back into herself. A plate crashing against the floor sent her richochetting back off of the walls. It took time. Rylan’s gentle smiles led her way. He did not bring her back to herself. That effort was all hers. He was rather a cast, holding her broken bones in place while her body sealed them back together.
    The Veckters died one year, six months, one week, four days, twenty-two minutes, and fifty seconds ago.
    And Jane Veckter’s ghost had finally returned to its body.