The Traveler (Flash Fiction)

I knew I wasn’t alone, even before I saw her face staring back at me.

I’d felt her eyes boring into me as I walked through the warehouse. I’d heard her sigh all around me, the unnatural breath of something unfamiliar. I’d felt the chill of her on my skin, a tingling sensation alerting me that something was different here. So it really wasn’t that surprising when I turned to find her standing not three feet away from me.

But I still gasped.

Her blond hair lay in strings around her pixie face. She was a pretty girl, probably only ten or eleven. She wore faded jeans and a tee shirt sporting the peace symbol. If it wasn’t for the cut of those jeans, I’d have never known she wasn’t from this time.

An untrained eye would have thought she was a ghost.

But I knew better. I knew her presence here wasn’t because she was a lost soul tied to this place. She wasn’t haunting me.

She was, of course, dead in my time, but that didn’t make her a ghost.

I knew she wouldn’t speak till I did, so I offered a smile.

“Hello.”

The niceties were not returned, only a vacant stare. It was no wonder They were so often mistaken for ghosts.

“Do you have a message for me?”

Without a word, the girl reached out her hand toward me. I took an instinctive step back. This wasn’t how things usually went.

“What’s going on?”

She gripped my wrist. “It’s time.”

I felt panic starting to rise. “Time? For what?”

“You’re to come with me.”

I shook my head, wanting to announce a firm no. But it was too late. I felt myself disappearing with her, being sucked into the unknown.

I was being erased.