Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25969841-20180110235604

The Real Ghosts 

'''“Some political theories die and go to heaven; some, I hope, die and go to hell. “ '''

'''David Sorensen froze as he picked up the eraser by the whiteboard. A strange, eerie silence had struck at the auditorium. The last student had just left through the door after a barrage of questions about the upcoming exam. David was about to leave too, but the strange feeling kept him in place. A tingling sensation danced across his spine and pain shot through his chest. There was something about the atmosphere of the place that had changed: it was not that everything felt colder, it felt wrong . '''

'''The old professor glanced about the room and his gaze instinctively landed on the windows. The campus outside was completely empty. Tall trees with contorted branches was beset by the evening wind - a ghastly breeze that shrieked at him from outside the walls. He cursed his own superstition and turned to the whiteboard to erase the rest of his writing. '''

'''A plethora of terms had been outlined on it. One of them stood out from the rest. Three letters that had been known and studied by David Sorensen for his entire career. But today, they seemed wrong . Glaring, threatening, foreboding. As they were erased, blurry smudges of the red marker still spelled out the acronym that John von Neumann morbidly coined for his doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. '''

M.A.D. 

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">'''<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">David retreated out of the auditorium with his phone and his jacket. His steps echoed faintly as he paced across the corridors faster than he normally would. A poster on the wall that had previously been upright had dropped one of its corner pins, resulting in it hanging at a tilt. His own face was plastered across the paper, sporting a sickly smile that put strain on his aged and wrinkled features. “ <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">Sorensen’s Final Lecture: A Recap of the Nuclear Dilemma <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">” could be read in bold. The old scholar was way past his prime. A long career of brilliant academic achievement lay behind him, but he was frankly happy to finally be getting his late retirement tomorrow. '''

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">'''<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">Then the feeling washed over him. The same shiver, the same sting in his chest. The wind shrieked anew and David felt his throat dry out. Even through the veil of fear, his rational mind was still at work. There was nothing to be afraid of. These reactions was simply the result of his own reptile brain’s inadequacies. He was too old - indeed too intellectually distinguished - to give his own childish spooks any merit. '''

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">'''<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">But despite this assurance, he saw it. It had flicked into view as he blinked. As David froze in his tracks, a sting of unfettered and undiminished horror gripped him. '''

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">'''<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">What was before him was a man, or rather a contorted sketching of one. As if only the remaining smudges of a person that had been erased. Despite the blurriness of the apparition, Sorensen instantly recognized it. Carefully, slowly, he called out into the silence. '''

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">“John?” 

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">'''<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">No answer. John von Neumann stared back with an apathetic grin. The sole hairs on the long dead man’s balding scalp lay slicked back in characteristic fashion. He was dressed in a suit, sporting the same sharp gaze that his portraits showed to students of his doctrine years later. But this ‘thing’ in the university hall was not him. David could feel it. Something had taken Neumann’s image. Something that was not an individual entity, but a force. A holistic plume of smoke that had somehow manifested. '''

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">'''<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">A flash of memory came and went. A discussion he had had with a student that seemed hellbent on proving the existence of the supernatural. Sorensen had, with a sly smirk, stated that the only real type of ghost in this world was far from paranormal. This type of ghost could indeed possess countless humans and lead to the deaths of countless others, it haunted the halls of the university and the world beyond. It could make dead men talk and could be just as evil as the satanic ones of folklore. The real ghosts, he had claimed, were <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">ideas <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">. '''

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">'''<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">That is what the apparition was: an idea. The manifestation of a concept that had taken the incomplete shape of its creator. But something was off. It had, as all ideas have, been twisted by time and by the influence of others. The familiar faces of these others began to fill the corridor. Some entirely clear, some blurred and faded in their contours. Every single idea that had ever haunted the minds of men, clad in the image of their architects. Suddenly, the old professor felt a stinging pain in his chest. Clutching his heart, he dropped his phone and fell to the floor. '''

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">'''<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">Death loomed, but for some reason he was content. He knew now that his own ideas would live on, here, to forever haunt the halls of the learned and the learning. Ghosts that would carry his face among the giant thinkers that he had revered for so long. With his final breath, David Sorensen called for one final inquiry. He wanted to test his hypothesis. His voice did not carry his question, but the shrieking wind did. <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">“What are you?” <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">echoed across the corridor. '''

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;">'''<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">Suddenly, the phone that he had dropped blared, loudly and continuously. Dread filled the fading professor’s failing heart for the last time as he looked upon the words that had formed in the display. “ <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">EMERGENCY BROADCAST: Nuclear Attack Warning <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">. <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">Emergency centers now open. Locations and Survival Info now sent to mobiles. <span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">” He wanted to scream. As his eyes rolled up in his sockets, the apparitions’ horrid and mechanic answer to his question resounded across the corridor. '''

<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:400;font-style:italic;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;">“Wrong.” 

 <ac_metadata title="The Real Ghosts (Story feedback and advice please)"> </ac_metadata>