Guilt

Julianne knew she was dreaming as she drifted through the gleaming white hospital, distant cries and screams reaching her ears from other areas of the hospital. The hallway she scuttled down sounded relatively quiet and felt relatively calm. Through all the doorways she passed, she saw quiet rooms with quiet people watching over quiet patients lying silently in their beds. Only the beeping of machines and monitors speared through the silence, and even those quieted down to nothing but white noise after several minutes.

Finally, after drifting along for several moments, Julianne reached the open doorway she’d been looking for. A doctor with a clipboard stood next to the bed of Julianne’s beloved; a nurse stood opposite the doctor putting finishing touches on the machines’ settings. Neither of them looked up as Julianne stepped into the room, her footsteps muffled with quiet sneakers.

Kelly Hartford lay on his pristine hospital bed. Blood soaked through the bandages shrouding sections of his skin, dotting scarlet on the otherwise white bandages obscuring his many wounds from view. As Julianne drew nearer to her husband, still unnoticed by the doctor and nurse, the machines connected to Kelly began going berserk.

Julianne stood in stricken silence, not a single tear slipping past her eyelid as she watched the doctor and nurse rush to fix the problem. The machines quieted down, but the nurse and doctor retreated from the bed looking dejected. Finally, they noticed Julianne standing there, staring at the pale body of her husband.

“Ma’am,” the doctor began, taking a step towards Julianne. His voice broke some emotional barrier Julianne unconsciously created, and suddenly she was sprinting towards Kelly’s hospital bed. Tears blurred her vision, but she could still tell that Kelly’s bed had somehow leaped twenty feet away from Julianne. The faster and harder she ran, the less distance she seemed to cover towards Kelly’s bed. The beeps of the machine filled her ears, and suddenly Julianne stumbled and fell, straight through the white linoleum and into the darker unknown below.

Julianne shot upright in bed, breathing heavily and drenched in an ice cold sweat. Her alarm clock continued to announce its presence until with a low growl, Julianne grabbed it and threw it across the room, watching with cruel satisfaction as the back of the clock popped off and the batteries rolled out. Julianne switched her gaze back towards the end of the bed, her gaze softening as she beheld the floating specter at the end of her bed. No distinct features could be seen; it appeared as clearly as a human figure seen through a foggy window. And then, slowly, it faded away.

Julianne turned her bedside lamp on and slid out of bed. As she passed through the area the ghost had been floating, the air around her cooled down considerably before warming back up the instant she cleared the end of the bed. Julianne sighed and grabbed her clothes from the stool sitting next to her window before heading haplessly towards the shower.

{*****}

Matt Sanders sighed as he leaned forward in exasperation to rest his forehead against the steering wheel of his car. He’d barely owned the damn thing for a month, and already it was beginning to break down on him. He’d been heading to a friend’s house, dandy as you please, when the stupid car decided it would sputter to a stop, barely offering Matt enough time to pull it off to the edge of the street. After several failed attempts at restarting it, Matt decided he had no choice except to have it towed and serviced.

“Piece of shit,” Matt grumbled before turning his flashers on and sliding out of the car. He repositioned his hat on his head and slipped his aviators down across his eyes before stepping up onto the sidewalk. A body shop was only down the street; he’d go there and see if they could help him out.

The body shop consisted of a building attached to a garage-type area. The garage door was open, probably to let some fresh air into the no doubt stifling workshop. As far as Matt could see, there was only one mechanic working on a car in the garage area. He approached the mechanic; all he could see of him was his legs, sticking out from underneath a car hitched about half a foot off the floor.

“Um, excuse me,” Matt began. The sound of metal tapping against metal stopped issuing from underneath the car, so Matt took that as a sign to continue. “My car broke down just down the street. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it.”

Matt heard the guy put his tool down underneath the car. Matt stepped back to give the dude room, noticing that the mechanic had some scrawny chick legs. His legs were shrouded in a mechanic’s jumpsuit, but Matt could tell how baggy the pants were. Maybe he was just tall and scrawny.

A hand snaked out from underneath the car, gripping the edge of the car to help the mechanic slide out on his fancy little cushion on wheels. This was one feminine dude. He had petite, feminine hands, even though they were covered in a fine layer of grease and oil.

Then, the mechanic pulled himself out from underneath the car. Matt’s eyes widened in shock as the mechanic turned out to be a chick. She climbed gracefully off of the cushion, using the car as leverage to pull herself to her feet. She grabbed a rag and wiped her hands off, taking in the shocked look on Matt’s face.

“I can go get Poe if you want me to,” she said suddenly, seemingly not offended by Matt’s surprise to find a woman working in the generally male-dominant profession of mechanic. “He’s a male mechanic and he’ll be glad to help you out in any way possible, as I go get you a cup of coffee or something.”

Matt caught the slightly bitter tone in the woman’s voice now. He could understand how she might get tired of seeing people’s shock at a woman mechanic. Matt, however, didn’t much care whether she was a man, a woman, or some strange parody of both.

“Oh, no, that’s fine,” Matt said hastily. The nametag on the woman’s jumpsuit read Julianne. He could barely make it out around the grease that had been permanently splattered across the tag.

Hell, the woman wasn’t even ugly. She had a smudge of grease on her cheek, but that seemed to be the only blemish on her lightly-tanned face. She pulled her bright red, curly hair back into a braid that trailed halfway down her back. No makeup whatsoever surrounded her dark brown eyes. Even in this casual attire, Matt couldn’t deny that she was beautiful.

“So, what’s the problem?” Julianne asked, motioning with a hand for Matt to follow her. He obeyed as she walked towards a door leading into the building connected to the garage.

“My car’s been working pretty nicely over the past month, but today I guess it just decided to be a piece of shit. It stopped and wouldn’t start again. I haven’t got a clue what could be wrong,” Matt explained as Julianne grabbed a set of keys hanging on the wall before heading out the front door. She hoisted herself up into the driver’s seat of the tow truck, and Matt soon followed, seating himself in the passenger seat.

Very shortly later, Julianne maneuvered the tow truck around so it sat in front of Matt’s vehicle. She climbed out and asked Matt to pop open the hood. He obliged and stood back in slight awe as Julianne bent over the engine, expertly sifting her way through the different components under the hood in search of the problem.

“I can’t tell just from looking what’s wrong,” Julianne explained, her torso still stuck under the hood of the car as she prodded around. “We’ll have to take it back to the shop and take a more detailed look through it to see what’s going on.”

“Okay,” Matt answered as Julianne ducked out from underneath the hood and gently closed it. She climbed back into the tow truck to position it better to hook the car up to tow.