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Two weeks passed and it happened again…
The mysterious people appeared again. And it is not just people, but animals and objects too. They appear at random times and places, after a random number of weeks or days. It could be an interval of two weeks or two days or two hours. I think I am going insane.
My name is Avatāraya Nazar, a twenty seven year old from Bengal. I moved to America in 2016. The first time I saw these things was on July 5th of 2023. It was on my way to work when I saw a house that hadn’t been there the day before. I blinked, and it disappeared.
I initially thought that I wasn’t very awake yet, seeing as it was 7:00 in the morning and that I had only been up for a little less than an hour. But those things , houses and other objects kept appearing. Then the objects became animals on August 1 of 2023. And on August 26 of 2023, the animals became people. People in dressed in old Victorian Era clothes, soldiers with bullet wounds on their bodies.
There were the masked people. The masks varied, there were simple masks of white with a golden border. There were the extravagant masks of peacock feathers and gold lining with intricate details of the human face. And today, September 9th of 2023, a ghost spoke.
It was an old woman dressed in old 90’s clothes, and I freaked out and tried to hit her with a chair.
Yeah, I know that trying to anyone with a chair is probably a bad idea, but hey, the woman is not human at the very least. I think I freaked out my neighbors with the bang of the chair hitting the floor. The chair went through the woman and she glared at me. It was a glare that made me, a grown adult man, want to hide in my room until my mother came to comfort me. I gulped nervously under the woman’s glare when she spoke.
“You jerk!” said the woman. “Trying to hit a woman! I guess chivalry really is dead!” My voice shaky, stuttery and terrified, I said “Ah, s..s..sorry?” The woman stared at me. “Do not be such a coward!” said the woman brandishing her arm at me.
I, of course, do the most sensible thing. I flinch and duck. I recover and stand up, facing the pale white, almost clear woman. “None of you…… things ever spoke to me before,” I asked. The woman scowled.
“Do not call us things ,” she said venomously. “Then what are you?” I asked, hoping that she wouldn’t say ghosts. The woman's colorless eyes brightened, giving her an eerie, otherworldly glow to her. “I’m an Apparition, which are humans who died without fulfilling something in their lifetime. The objects are Presences, objects that should have been historically important, but never achieved it. The animals are Shades, commonly known as extinct animals,” said the woman. I was in shock, it was a groundbreaking discovery!
“This is .... is groundbreaking! Why hasn’t anyone ever reported this before?!” The woman seemed sad for some reason. “Because no one can see or hear us Avatāraya Nazar. You are the first person in centuries to be able to see and hear us.” I was puzzled.“Why me? I’m nothing special.”
The woman laughed. “You truly are an idiot. You can see Apparitions, Presences and Shades. I say that you are quite special.” “Why did you speak to me? None of the other Apparitions ever talked to me before.” “We need your help,” said the woman, “Apparitions, Presence and Shades have been disappearing, and we suspect something to do with technology that you humans have.” I didn’t want to get involved with this kind of stuff.
I didn’t even want to see Apparitions, Presence and Shades! The woman looked at me, her eyes looked as if she was crying. “Please,” she said and I saw her tough exterior shattered. I knew that I would regret this, but I replied to her. “Alright,” I said and the woman’s eyes brightened.
“So…..” Before I could finish, a loud gunshot sounded. I spun my body around and ducked, making the bullet miss me when but then another shot was fired and hit me in the shoulder. I fell to the ground in pain, hearing the woman’s voice fading. Then I knew no more.
The End