This Isn't A Game Anymore (VenturianTale fan fiction)

Chapter 33- Nostalgia

The icy water muffled the worried cries of his friends as Ghost plunged into the depths of the lake, the shattered remnants of ice drifting around him. The cold was suffocating, and he sputtered while trying to force his stiff and frozen hands to swim upwards.

HOLY CRAP THIS IS COLD- Came a voice that Ghost wished he would never hear again.

"Casket!" Ghost shouted in his mind. "I thought you were dead!"

I sort of wish! Casket sniped. Recall that I'm a player now. When you die you can see your player model lay dead awhile. You're alive so that didn't happen. Now I'm stuck i =n your head again as a ghost. I physically can't respawn. I don't think the code lets me in the game anymore...

"Good riddance," Huffed Ghost, quickly losing the ability to move. "Are you doing this?"

No, Replied Casket. You're in a frozen lake.

"I thought you'd be stabbing something by now," Ghost said grimly, shivering madly. "Or at least talking about it."

Casket seemed to pause. I... Don't know. I don't know anything right now, and neither do you.

Ghost tried to scoff. "What do you mean?"

The faces of the siblings and Toast appeared in the opening in the ice that was slowly getting smaller as he continued to sink.

I mean that what I once knew as myself was a warped creation of once who called himself a friend, Casket said, the insanity in his voice gone. There was a certain emotion to it... The murderer was sad.

"You're talking in riddles," Ghost muttered. "Please be clear."

You hate thinking about your past. Before the car crash and everything. O- Your parents. Think about them.

Ghost shut his eyes with some difficulty and tried to remember. To his horror, he couldn't. Beyond the crash and his later childhood, his life was gone. "What are you doing?!" Ghost shouted at him mentally.

See? I'm in your head. I'm going to try to fix it. It took dying for his hold to loosen. I had to shake it off from there. I was in shock awhile. You should know- I'm never quiet.

"FIX WHAT?! WHO IS 'HE?' WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT?" Ghost shouted.

You'll see. Just give me a moment.

Black dots began to dance around his vision, enveloping everything that he could see. Toast's cries became warped and distant, distorted by distance and Ghost's fading mind. The dots kept getting bigger and bigger until there was nothing left but darkness. Without much resistance, Ghost slipped into unconsciousness.

***

"Johnny, catch!"

A football sailed across the front yard of a quiet suburban residence, soaring through the summer air and crashing into the brown-haired head of a young boy. It bounced off, landing in the grass; the boy glanced behind him, his brown eyes unamused.

"Jimmy, stop it," he muttered, returning to the composition book on his lap, scribbling away.

"But Johnny!" The smaller boy whined, his shaggy dark brown hair falling into his eyes of the same color. His frayed shorts and stained t-shirt flopped around in the summer wind, about two sizes too big. His mud caked sneakers dashed along the yard and he sat down next to his older brother. "Are you still working on that?"

The older boy, Johnny, nodded impatiently. "Yeah. I've almost solved it!"

Jimmy rolled his eyes, flopping over on the grass. "C'mooooon. The house isn't haunted."