The Great Escape aka. Mission One Point Five

Author’s Notes: This mission is rated M and NSFW for mentioning of sexual content and for agents using swear words.
The fic is a side story to the agents’ very first mission, Better Than Revenge, in which Hermione was a Time Lord and a Sue, to boot. It should be possible to read this without knowing the other, but it might be more fun to read that first.
The term ‘Meta Crisis’ does not appear in this fic, but is used in the main fic, which is how I know that this really is a Meta Crisis and not the Sue inventing a non-canonical form of regeneration.
Disclaimer: The PPC belongs to the legen — wait for it… — dary Jay and Acacia; I’m only playing in it. Torchwood and Doctor Who belong to the BBC. The Great Escape belongs to Blinded-Kit who is asked to keep it – preferably far away from us. Agents Mittens and the Radioactive Moss Creature are mine.

In RC#170 there was peace and quiet. Mittens was sitting in one of the beanbags, playing Okami. The Radioactive Moss Creature was rubbing the tulip kitten, Aniseed, with a flame repellent ointment known as kenet, which originated in Robin McKinley’s ‘The Hero and the Crown’ continuum. Back when the agents had acquired their mini-Darkspawn, many of which could breathe fire, they had taken to fireproofing the RMC twice a week, to prevent any mishaps. When the RMC had adopted Aniseed, this precaution had been extended to her. Aniseed thought that this was one of the greatest pleasures life had to offer and was purring like a small sawmill. She also liked the taste of the ointment and it was a bit of a struggle for the RMC to get it on her before she could lick it off its paws.
In the game, Mittens was trying to get through the Konahana Shuffle and had been trying unsuccessfully for about twenty minutes. Now he finally thought he had it figured out and started the sequence again. He got the first flower right, then the second, the third and the fourth and was just about to do the fifth. It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the workings of the PPC, that the console chose this exact moment to go BEEP! Mittens’ thumb slipped and he lost the fifth flower. He got up, noticed that his right foot was asleep and limped over to the console, where he pressed the red button and started to read the Intelligence Report.

The RMC stopped what it was doing and watched him for a moment, which Aniseed took advantage of by pouncing on its paw and licking off the kenet. It gently shook her off and resumed the rubbing, but still watched Mittens, trying to get a hint about what kind of mission this was, by looking at his expression.
The agents had heard nothing from Upstairs about their, or rather the RMC’s, decision to use a completely new recruit in a mission. It was of course possible, that Upstairs had decided to overlook the harebrained scheme on account of it actually working, but it didn’t really believe this. It rather suspected that Upstairs were planning to punish them in a more subtle way and it kept expecting a Twilight troll-fic to land on their table.
However, when Mittens finally turned around, his expression was not one of horror, but rather one of slight puzzlement. “You remember our first mission?” he asked.
“Of course,” the RMC replied. “Bleeprin can only do so much.”
“What’s a ‘Side Story…ONE-SHOT’?”
The RMC winced slightly. “It is usually just pronounced ‘one-shot’, without all caps. Let me have a look.” By now it had finished with Aniseed, so it dried its paws on a towel and walked over to the console to have a look at the Intelligence Report. “Yes, I remember,” it said. “In our first mission, the Time Lord!Sue died, but regenerated as herself – only even prettier, of course – and explained it with having gone through a Meta Crisis. Back then I assumed that she was simply hand waving the explanation, but it appears that she was serious.”
“I’ll go ready the backpack then. I’ll bring the gun and the Muggle-use wand.” Mittens had no idea what the RMC was talking about, but figured that he would catch on eventually and that the RMC would tell him, if there was anything he really needed to know.
“So, I was thinking,” the RMC said, a bit later, when they were ready to go and Mittens was setting the disguises. “Maybe when we get back, we could go catch a movie.”
“Sure. Did you have anything in mind?”
“Well, our author has this tradition, where every year she goes to see ‘The Nightmare before Christmas’ in 3D. What do you say we one-up her?”
Mittens nodded thoughtfully. “Christmas,” he said. “Yes, that sounds like fun.”
The portal opened and the agents jumped through.

After a short disclaimer, the fic started in the final episode of ‘Children of Earth’ where Jack’s grandson, Steven, was being used as a living weapon against the 456. His mother was screaming and being held back by a couple of guards.

“Urgh,” the RMC said. “Can’t even get that right. His mother was outside a door looking in when this happened.”
Mittens looked at it. “You’re a cat again,” he said.
“So I am,” the RMC said. “Guess I shouldn’t have distracted you, while you were setting disguises. Or maybe the console just thought, that since I was a cat the last time we dealt with this Sue, I should be so again. Anyway, we’ll leave it be, if that’s all right with you. I’m actually more comfortable having four legs.”
“Okay.”
“Charge for getting the scene wrong, please,” the RMC said.
Mittens had brought the old notebook from their first mission. He flipped to the back and added the new charge.

They could see the crack forming on his forehead as his brain began to explode inside his school, and then finally, it was over and his limp body fell to the ground.

Steven’s head turned into a small school building and then he fell to the ground.
“If we ever needed proof that this really is the same Sue, I’d say we just got it,” Mittens said.
The RMC flicked its tail in distaste. “She’s getting things even more wrong,” it said. “Steven’s brain did not explode and there was no crack on his forehead. He was bleeding from the nose and ears and it was a lot more dignified than this.”

The Hermione!Sue, the agents knew from their first mission, teleported in, glowing with regeneration. She went over to Steven.

She stated sadly down at the young boy, placing one hand on his forehead and another softly on his chin, to open his mouth. She exhaled, the gold dust like particles flew out of her mouth and into his. Slowly, the light glow around her dimmed as she gave her regeneration to the boy.

Steven returned to life.
“Oh, great,” the RMC said. “Now we have a non-canonically alive canon to deal with.”

“Well, that’s my good deed of the day.” Hermione groaned as she stretched, before pulling her vortex manipulator from her pocket.

“Charge for having a vortex manipulator,” the RMC said. “They are generally only found on Time Agents and Jack’s is accounted for so …” Its voice trailed of as a thought struck it and it looked from Hermione to Steven and back again. “Wait, a minute,” it said. “This is wrong. This is very, very wrong.”
“What is?” Mittens asked.
“Hang on; I’ll just check the words. I could be mistaken.” The RMC squinted. “No, I’m not. She faints into the strong arms of Captain Jack, there’s a scene change and she wakes up in a hotel room some time later.” It hissed, then continued: “She sleeps with Jack, makes him seriously consider a threesome with the Doctor and there is no mentioning whatsoever of Ianto Jones and his recent death. But we have to let those charges go. We need to clean up this mess, right now; I’ll explain later. The minute Hermione faints, open a portal beneath her and Jack. That scene change can not be allowed to happen.”
Mittens nodded and as Hermione fainted into the arms of Jack, he opened the portal and they fell through.
“Now neuralyze the rest,” the RMC said. Mittens took out the neuralyzer, held it high and stepped forward. Everyone, who had been staring at the place where Jack disappeared, looked at him; some of them pointed weapons at him. He closed his eyes and pressed the button.
“Right,” he said. “There was no mysterious woman, who showed up to save Steven. Jack did most certainly not fall though the ground a minute ago. I was never here and neither was my cat.” Then he jumped though the portal in the floor, the RMC following him.

Captain Jack Harkness fell though the portal and landed on a hilltop in a remote location, still managing to hold on to Hermione. A few moments later, Mittens and the RMC came after him.
Jack looked at them and frowned. “You look familiar somehow,” he said. He looked down at Hermione. “She’s not real, is she?”
The RMC shook its head. “No,” it said.
If Jack was at all surprised at the talking cat, he didn’t show it. “So Steven is not really saved?” he asked.
“No,” the RMC answered. “But he wouldn’t have been anyway. She screwed up really badly.”
Jack nodded and dropped the Sue on the ground. “Too good to be true,” he said.
“Look this way, please,” Mittens said and held up the neuralyzer. A moment later, when Jack was properly neuralyzed, they opened a portal to the corridor in the warehouse and sent him through. Then they turned to the Sue.
Mittens shook her awake, not gently, and she opened her eyes with the confused look of a person, who was expecting to wake up in a bed, with Captain Jack Harkness in the room wearing only a towel, and instead woke up on a hill, with a seriously irate person standing over her and a cat sitting next to her.
The RMC had the notebook placed in front of it, opened on the last page.
“Hermione Granger, you are charged with a bunch of the same crimes as in our first mission, which we won’t bother to go into here, except for two things. Firstly, your are charged with ignoring the fact that the Harry Potter books are a fictional series in the Whoniverse; a charge we forgot to make the last time, so it’s nice to get that out of the way. Secondly you are charged with character defamation of Hermione Granger, by claiming to be her, which annoys us even more in this fic.
You are also charged with not getting the scenes right, with having a vortex manipulator and with serious canon breaching by making a Human-Time Lord Meta-Crisis with Steven Carter. There has only ever been one of those and it is so extraordinary, that it made Donna Noble the most important woman in the universe; but even this huge canon break pales in comparison to what you did next, which was nothing. You know what a Meta Crisis is, so you must know what it did to Donna Noble and what the Doctor had to do to keep her from harm, and yet you took absolutely no precautions to keep Steven Carter safe. Which means that, in a very short time, his brain is going to overload and fry from the inside.” It took a deep breath and yelled: “What the fuck is wrong with you!? You didn’t think once was enough for the kid!?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Hermione smirked.
“No, it pretty fucking obvious, that you don’t know what I’m talking about and why don’t you!? Did you only see the first part of the episode and thought ‘hey, that Meta Crisis looks cool. I must get me one of those’ and then you went out to look for canon characters to shag, without bothering to watch the rest!?” It broke up, stepped away from her and gestured to Mittens.
He stepped forward and cleared his throat. “You are also charged with saving a character who was canonically dead. When we put canon back in order, he will return to being dead, which means that, technically, you’re making us kill a canon character. That’s also a charge.”
“And that’s just the best case scenario,” the RMC added, having had a moment to calm down. “If he doesn’t go back to being dead, when canon reasserts itself, it means that someone will have to get their hands dirty. You better pray that this doesn’t happen, because if it does, my colleague and I are going right back to the Floating Hyacinth to tell her, that we are not going to complete this mission and why. Oh, she’ll be angry and a couple of Twilight troll-fics will come our way, but what matters is that we won’t be made to complete the assignment and instead she’ll send some of the tough guys.” It flicked its tail. “They don’t mind killing a canon child. Imagine what they’ll do to you.” There was long pause in which Hermione tried to smirk, but failed.
Finally the RMC continued: “You are also charged with conspiring to do further crimes, mostly having to do with you lusting after Captain Jack Harkness. For all these crimes you are sentenced to death. Any last words?”
“No.” Hermione growled. “I want my Jack. I’m his favorite person in the whole world, next to the Doctor.” She drew her wand.
If she had actually bothered to display some kind of combat skill in her fics, rather than just sleeping with canon characters, or if she had been more like the real Hermione, something might have come of this. As it were, Mittens, who had drawn his gun while the RMC read the charges, simply shot her in the head before she could utter an incantation. “So,” he said, “do we feed her to the Acromantulas again?”
“Don’t see why not. Those who do not learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them and to have the punishment repeated by PPC-agents. Grab that Vortex Manipulator, would you?”
“Huh?”
“Her leather bracelet.”
“Oh, right. I’ll get it.”

After disposing of the Sue, the agents returned to the warehouse to check up on the canons. They both felt their hearts sink. They had hoped that canon had completely reasserted itself by now, but Steven was clearly alive and Alice Carter was still hugging him, smiling happily. Around them, everyone else was going about their business, not looking at the non-canonically living boy and his mother.
“Steven hasn’t gone back to being dead yet,” the RMC said. “And Alice is aware of it. Of course, it would be very out of character for her not to be aware of it. She might not remember why he is alive; she just knows that he is.”
“And her knowing that he is alive is helping to keep him that way,” Mittens added. “Do we need to separate them to break the loop?”
“That would be the next step, but let’s start by neuralyzing her again and reminding her that he is actually dead. Maybe that will be enough to push canon into snapping back.” It looked up at Mittens. “You’ll have to do it. I can’t talk to her looking like this.”
“Okay.”
“Her name is Alice Carter,” the RMC said. “The boy’s name is Steven Carter.”
Mittens nodded and walked towards the woman. She was still sitting on the floor with her son, cradling him, and he was smiling up at her, with the smallest hint of confusion.
Mittens closed his eye for just a moment, then proceeded to walk up to them, taking out the neuralyzer. “Alice Carter,” he said.
She looked up at him and he closed his eyes and flashed the neuralyzer at her. When he opened his eyes again, she was looking at him blankly. “Alice Carter,” he repeated. His hands were suddenly shaking badly and he clenched them. “There was no mysterious woman who appeared out of nowhere and revived your son. Steven is …” He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, but Steven is dead.”
Alice Carter frowned. “But …” she began. Then she looked at the child in her lap. He wasn’t moving. “No!”
“I’m sorry,” Mittens said.
“No! No! No! No!”
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
As she started sobbing, he turned and walked away. He felt faint and dizzy and he had to make an effort to unclench his hands, so he could operate the RA and open a portal back to HQ.

Back in RC#170 Mittens slumped down in the beanbag, but made no motion to pick up the Playstation controller. The RMC looked at him, worried. It thought a cup of tea might have been soothing, but it lacked the hands to actually make one, so it just walked over to him and placed its paw on his knee.
“You had no choice,” it said.
“I know,” he replied, in a voice that suggested that even though he knew it, he didn’t believe it.
“The Sue had rigged it so that, if you hadn’t done what you did, he would have died anyway and in a much worse way.”
Mittens nodded. They sat in silence for a couple of minutes until something scratched at the RMC’s leg, demanding its attention. It turned to look and Mittens did the same. Gray and Lylium, two of the mini-Darkspawn were holding a steaming mug between them. Behind them, the rest of the minis were gathered, along with Aniseed and the Prefect Badger, all looking at the agents intently. Further behind them, the kitchenette was a bit of a mess, with a tea tin having been knocked over and the tealeaves having been spilled on the table.
Mittens reached out and took the mug. He looked at the content, then took a sip. “Thank you,” he said. He looked at the RMC and smiled weakly. “I’ll be okay,” he said. The RMC patted his knee, but didn’t say anything.
“About that movie,” Mittens began.
“We can go another day, if you’re not feeling up to it.”
“No, I think I would like to go. It’s just … Does it have a happy ending?”
“It certainly does.”
“Then I would love to see it.”
“Drink your tea then. We’ll leave, when you’re finished.”

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Halloween Co-Write

Author’s note: Since one of my favourite things in the whole world is recycling my own work, this is a edited (and translated) version of a story I wrote last year around Halloween.
Disclaimer: The PPC belongs to the awesome Jay and Acacia. Mittens and the Radioactive Moss Creature are mine.

Everybody was still shuddering after the last story, but turned to the next in line. Mittens, who had just taken a huge bite out of a pumpkin muffin, looked surprised. He swallowed hard, then said: “No, not me. I don’t know any scary stories.” He looked at the Radioactive Moss Creature; not for any particular reason, he just always looked at it, when he felt out of his depth, but the others all followed his gaze.
“How about you?” one of the other guests asked. Because of the darkness is was hard to tell who it was. “Do you know any scary stories?”
“I suppose I may know one,” it said. There was a murmur of encouragement from the other guests so without further delay, the Radioactive Moss Creature started its tale.

”I think there’s a ghost in my apartment,” Cecilia said.
“There are no such thing as ghosts,” Christoph said without thinking, and he regretted it immediately when he saw the annoyed look on Cecilia’s face.
“I know, that there are no such thing as ghosts,” she replied, sounding very patient as if he was the one, who had said something outrageous and she was now explaining to him how things really worked. “When I say, that I think there’s a ghost in my apartment, it is because I have seen something, that has made me doubt what I thought I knew. You see?”
He didn’t. Not really. But he nodded anyway and, because it seemed like she was waiting for him to do so, he asked: “What have you seen?”
He had expected her to answer something like ‘things not being where she put them’ or ‘strange sounds’; the kind of things that people in TV-shows and magazines who claimed to be haunted, always complained about.
Instead she said: “I’ve seen the ghost.”
“Oh,” he said. He couldn’t really think of anything else to say, but apparently that was all the encouragement she needed.
“Yes,” she said. “It was sitting by the piano, playing.” She looked him straight in the eye as she said it.
“You don’t have a piano,” he pointed out.
“It brought its own.”
He wanted to say that she was imagining things, but he knew that it would only upset her, and that she would probably point out how hard it was to imagine a piano-playing ghost and he would have a hard time arguing that, so in the end he just said: “Oh.”
Once again, this was all the encouragement Cecilia needed. “I was out in the kitchen, fixing myself a cup of tea and I heard the sound of a piano playing. It was low and a bit muffled, so I thought it was coming from one of the neighbours. But when the tea was done and I left the kitchen, I looked through the door to the bedroom and there I saw a piano almost right inside the door. One of those upright pianos, you know, and there was someone sitting at it, playing it. It was the strangest thing in the world, much too strange for me to even get really frightened. So I just stood there, with my teacup and all, and listened. It was a lovely piece of music, not something I recognised. When he was done, he closed the lid, very carefully, and stood up and then both he and the piano disappeared.”
“Couldn’t it have been …” Christoph began, but paused when he realized that there was no reasonable way to finish the sentence. He could think of nothing that could be confused with a piano and a man playing it, especially not when there had also been music. But there were no such thing as ghosts. He suddenly found himself wondering about Cecilia’s mental state of health. But as she was sitting in front of him, with bright eyes, waiting for him to finally make a comment that was something other than ‘oh’ it seemed absurd for him to do so. Anyway, how did you, in a polite way, ask someone if they were feeling entirely well?
He saw her frown. “Are you okay, Christoph? Now you look like it’s you who’ve seen a ghost.”
“No. No, of course not. It’s just … Are you sure? I mean, you couldn’t have been mistaken?”
“No, Christoph, I could not have been mistaken. There were far too many details for it to simply be a shadow.” She half closed her eyes for a moment. “I can still see it clearly. There were candle holders on the piano, with unlit candles in them.” She opened her eyes again and shook her head lightly. “I either saw the whole thing or hallucinated it all, but no mistake is possible.”
“Have you seen it more than once?”
“No. But I haven’t lived there for very long.”
“Then maybe it won’t show up again. Maybe it wasn’t really anything.”
“Is that the scientist speaking? If the experience cannot be reproduced under controlled circumstances, then it doesn’t count?” He didn’t answer, but something must have shown in his face, for she leaned over and placed her hand on his, briefly. “I was only teasing,” she said. “I just wish that you could have seen it. It was extraordinary. And beautiful. Not at all frightening.” She looked like she was searching for the words to describe it. “I felt … privileged to have watched it.”
He still felt worried, but he managed to smile.
Cecilia looked at the clock. “I should go now,” she said. “Catch the next bus.”
He watched her from the window as she left.

Christoph was at a bar, having a beer with a couple of fellow students. The conversation had turned to an upcoming movie they were all looking forward to see. Christoph wasn’t taking part in the conversation, he was just nodding and making grunts at the right places, when his phone rang. He fumbled it out of his pocket and read Cecilia’s name in the display. He answered the call. “Hi, Cecelia!”
“Hi! Could you turn the music down, pleace?”
“I’m at a very noisy bar. I’ll go outside.” He squeezed himself through the throng of people until he reached the door. “I’m outside now.”
“Can you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“I won’t tell you what to listen for. I just want to know if you can hear it.”
He strained his hearing and thought he could hear music. “Music?” he asked.
“Yes!” The word sounded very loud in contrast to the low music, he had just been able to pick out. “You can hear it too! You can hear the ghost.”
Christoph felt a shiver run down his spine at her words. He listened even more carefully. Yes, it really was a piano playing. “It doesn’t prove anything,” he said. “It could be a recording.” A long silence followed his words, broken only by the soft tones of the piano, playing a lovely little tune, he didn’t recognise.
Finally, Cecilia said: “Are you suggesting that I’m sitting at home, playing a record for you, trying to trick you into believe in the ghost?”
“No, of course not. I’m just saying, that is what other people might say, if you try to tell the public about the ghost.”
“Is it, really?” He could hear her smile. “That is very forward-looking of you, Christoph. I’m just trying to convince you; I hadn’t even begun to think about the general public. But I think you should see the ghost for yourself. Come on over tomorrow night.”

Christoph had been hanging out in Cecilia’s apartment every evening for a week now. It was nice. They would talk and watch movies and drink lots and lots of tea. But the ghost hadn’t shown up and Christoph could tell, that it was bothering Cecilia. When they talked, she wasn’t all there and when they watched movies, she didn’t turn the sound up too high. He noticed how her hands sometimes seemed to grip the handle on her tea cup a little too tightly, as if she was suddenly struck by an unpleasant thought.
This evening started out the same. They drank tea and was talking a bit about one of Christoph’s teachers, when Cecilia tilted her head. “You hear that?” she said.
It took Christoph a moment to even remember what she was talking about, but then he did notice it. The faint sound of a piano playing. Before he could say anything, she had gotten up and walked into the hallway. He followed her. She was standing in the hallway, one hand on the wall, looking through the open door to the bedroom.
He felt a prickling sensation in the back of his neck. There, right inside the door, was the piano and the man playing it, exactly as she had described it, down to the unlit candles in the candle holders. He blinked and noticed how he could also clearly see the shape of Cecilia’s bed through the piano and the man. The melody being played was the same as the one he had heard through the phone, a lovely, little piece and now that he could hear it more clearly, it struck him as a bit sad.
The ghostly figure played for a couple of minutes and when the melody was at an end, it closed the lid on the piano carefully, stood up and … faded away.
He slowly tore his gaze away from the place where the ghost had been and saw Cecilia looking at him. Her expression wasn’t triumphant, but instead worried, even pleading. Like she was afraid, that he even now would deny the evidence of his own eyes.
“I’ll admit that I can’t explain what I just saw,” he said. “Not within the boundaries of existing science anyway. Maybe it’s a wormhole in time, but they are theoretical …” He was babbling, but that was okay. He saw her smile.
“You can explain it with science fiction if you want. As long as you don’t try to come up with a completely mundane explanation.”
“Well, I can’t, can I?”
“Did you also feel sorry for it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. Though, now that you mention it, it was a sad melody.”
“In the stories, ghosts often stay behind because they have unfinished business. Do you think that is the case?”
Christoph thought about this for a moment, then said. “It plays the piano, and it is not a melody either of us recognise. Maybe it composed the music, but died before it could play it for anyone. Maybe it wants the the music to be known. Does that sound too far fetched?”
“Considering we’re dealing with a ghost here, ‘too far fetched’ can take a hike. I think it sounds reasonable enough. But if you’re right, then what can we do to help it?”
Christoph thought again. Getting the music published properly seemed impossible, but there was another possibility. “We could record it and post it on youtube,” he said.
Cecilia tilted her head, a puzzled look on her face.
“I mean, if the ghost just want its music to be known, “ he continued, “maybe getting a few thousand views will be enough. And if it turns out it is not, we can always think of something else.”
She nodded. “Yes, maybe it will be satisfied with that. We should try it.”

They were still hanging out in Cecilia’s apartment every evening. She had studied the dates that the ghost had appeared on, but hadn’t been able to work out a pattern, so they just had to wait. They had moved their chairs out into the hallway and had a camcorder on a tripod pointing at the door into the bedroom. The ghost had so far appeared at a quarter past midnight, so at fourteen minutes past midnight, Christoph would turn on the camcorder and they would wait with baited breath. The time until fourteen minutes past midnight they spent talking, but now Christoph was also absent-minded and always had one eye on the door.
Five days after they had first seen the ghost, Christoph once again turned on the camcorder and they waited. But this time, when a minute had past, the ghost appeared, faded into appearance along with the piano. They barely dared to breathe as the ghost began to play.
Seconds rolled by along with the lovely melody. Christoph was watching the recording and was glad to see, that they seemed to be getting a clear and sharp image – well, clear and sharp for a recording of something transparent – when he was stuck by the thought, that this was too boring. If they ever were to get people to watch this video, as was the point, they needed to make it more exciting. The needed to film the ghost’s face.
He got up and lifted the camcorder from the tripod. He saw Cecilia give him a confused look, then her expression changed to worry as she guessed what he was doing. She didn’t speak, so as not to ruin the recording; instead she tried to grab his arm, but he easily avoided her.
He had to time it just right. He remembered the melody and knew that it was coming to an end soon, so he couldn’t waste any time, but he wasn’t in a hurry either. He zoomed in on the back of the ghost’s head and started to move around it. This, he thought, would look so cool. He didn’t care if people thought is was a fake ghost, as long as they also thought that it was a cool shot.
He moved around the ghost, getting the side of its head in frame, inch by inch. He got a crawling sensation on the back of his neck. Something was off, but he didn’t know what. As he took another step to the side, he realised what was wrong. The ghost didn’t have a profile.
He looked through the viewfinder and a whimper escaped him. The ghost had no face. There was a black hole where the face should have been, a dark hole that seemed to go on forever.
At the sound of his whimper, the ghost stopped playing and turned its faceless head towards him. His horror must have been obvious for now he heard Cecilia whimper as well, but he was unable to turn and face her. He started going backwards, still holding the camcorder between himself and the ghost as if it was a sort of talisman. The ghost got up and the piano faded away, but the ghost remained. It reached out and tried to grab the camcorder. Christoph stepped backwards and into Cecilia’s bed. He tried to get around it, but the ghost had caught up with him. He struck out against it with the camcorder, but it grabbed it and wrestled it from him. It hands briefly touched his, the fingers cold and clammy.
Then the ghost held the camcorder and for a moment Christoph thought it would finally disappear. Instead, in turned the camcorder on him, and everything went dark.

When light returned, he was somewhere else. A dark room; or so he assumed since he couldn’t make out the walls or even the floor. He tried to get up and found that his hands didn’t touch anything. There wasn’t a floor at all. Yet, he didn’t have a feeling of falling either. He turned towards the light, a big square, like a TV screen. As he looked at it, he saw Cecilia’s face. It was huge, filled the whole screen. He could see that she had been crying, her eyes all red and puffy. He realized where he was. He was inside the camcorder; the ghost had caught him in here.
As he looked at Cecilia, she tried to smile and failed miserably. She placed a finger on the screen, a huge orange-pinkish circle and ran it down. As he was wondering what she was doing, she drew a ‘W’ and he realised that she was writing him a message. I W I L L G E T Y O U O U T. How, he thought, but he tried to smile back at her, without a doubt failing as badly as she had done, and waved a little. Then the light disappeared as she had apparently either turned of the camcorder or, perhaps more likely, placed it in its back to keep it safe.
He curled up in the darkness, unable to do anything except waiting. He tried to whisper her name, but there was no air and he didn’t make a sound. Instead he said it in his mind. “Cecilia.”

There was a moments silence after the Radioactive Moss Creature had ended its story.
Then someone asked: “But what happened afterwards?”
“Yes,” someone else said, “did she get him out or what?”
“What about the ghost?” a third person asked.
“I actually don’t know,” the Radioactive Moss Creature admitted. “I had to leave in a hurry and I never got to hear the rest of the story.”
A disappointed murmur followed these words, but the Radioactive Moss Creature turned to the person sitting next to it. “Now its your turn to tell a story,” it said.

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