The Ghost of Home

Transmigrate

"Have you heard? There's a tenth neighbor we've never heard of!" Julie says as she hops onto the left, skips onto the right, and spins around mid-air before landing at the last square of the hopscotch game.

Wally hums in acknowledgment and Frank grumbles.

"This again, Julie?" Frank flips a page in his book. "If we do, as you say, have a tenth neighbor, where would they be sleeping this whole time?"

"Near the forest? Maybe they live in a tent?" Julie halts before doing another spin, "Wally, do you know anything about them?" She turns to Wally, watching as the man runs his pencil across the sketchpad languidly.

"Oh, please Julie, this mysterious neighbor doesn't–"

"I do, actually!"

"Really!?" "What!?"

Julie jumps in excitement. "Goodie! Do you see them all the time!?"

"Every day!" Wally exclaims!

"Every day!!" Julie spun to Frank who was squinting at Wally, eyes darting for a hint of lie. Unfortunately for him, Wally's smile never faltered, his movements still as languid as ever. Leave it to Wally to stay composed.

"Will we ever meet them!?"

"Silly, Julie!" Wally closes his sketchpad and turns around. "We're with them right now!"

Wally stares right at you– into the audience. His eyes melt down like liquid as the quality of the video drops tremendously, luring you in before it was cut off by the show's theme song, the sound crescendos, and statics become more apparent as milliseconds come by to the point it hurts your ears, to the point that it felt like your laptop feels like it was about to explode. Click , and that was the end of the video.

The restoration team has managed to recover the first episode of an old kid's show titled 'Welcome Home' and you were ecstatic by the update. You dive into their email address and begin writing them your congratulations on another job well done. You lay on your chair's backrest, pausing mid-sentence.

'The part where Wally says that last line then the video quality gets scuffed was kind of creepy, right? It could well be a creepypasta!' You type in, hoping it comes off enthusiastic. You've become enamored by this lost children's media the moment your eyes were set on it. It felt nostalgic, familiar . You swear you've seen it– or at least heard it from your late, older relatives.

A sound makes you spring up, you turn to see your pencil holder has fallen onto the ground. You swear that was nowhere near the edge of the table yet you brush it off. You hit send and begin picking up the piled-up pencils and crayons you swore you threw away, and shoving them far away from the edge. No matter how many times you organize your things, you always manage to be accident-prone. You've been embarrassingly clumsy these days and it's almost suspicious. Maybe you should change your diet, assuming your food choices are somehow affecting everything that keeps falling and tumbling down around you.

The clock strikes 4 P.M. and it was time to go to the post office. You're expected to pick up a few gifts from a relative you barely even know. You wonder what they would gift you given that you've never seen them.

The chimes of the office ring, and you take the package with you home. It was small, almost flat, and you can take an educated guess that it was a bunch of papers with a few knickknacks tucked in it. Childhood items you left in your relative's house, perhaps? If not, then it's probably a bill for something and this was their roundabout way of asking if you can pay for them. You groaned at the thought. It better not be the latter or else you're going to talk their ear off about using you as some sort of piggybank just because you decided to live independently in some random place far from your families.

You sit on your bed, one leg up and the radio playing by your window, and sliced the package open with curiosity, accidentally letting loose the items that were not paper. The colors have faded and the paints have been nicked off by time but from the looks of it...

...It was a Wally Darling toy!?

You rub your eyes and turn the toy left and right. You don't remember even owning this! Your eyes dart to the other items that fell: A pen sporting the color theme of the lost show you've been obsessing over for the past few weeks and a very small square notebook with vibrant colored pages, its cover dirtied but you can clearly see it has a crayon drawing of a flower. You open the small notebook and there is a name written on the back of the cover. Your name, specifically.

You suppose it's normal to forget things in childhood. There were only a few specific events in your younger days that you can remember, the rest being irrelevant enough for your younger self to disregard. You glance back to the Wally Darling toy and pull it to your eye level. Faithful to the show, his eyes remain to have the same half-lidded look, though the paint of toy Wally's other eye has been chipped away.

You stare right back at it, the radio near your window seemingly playing on a loop, disregarded as white noise. The same eerie eyes indeed. You ought to paint his other eye soon. Maybe even take a picture of it and send it to the restoration team.

A loud clang resonates outside your bedroom and the radio audio glitches along it.

"What the hell?" You slowly turn to your door. Must be that damned pencil holder again. You sit properly on the bed before grabbing the rest of what's inside the package. As thankfully expected, it was childhood drawings. No offense to your childhood self but it was incredibly crudely drawn. It was beyond saving given you can't even make a form out of those crayon scribbles. Though there is one thing that's apparent in these drawings: the swirls.

Small swirls, big swirls, single swirls, multiple swirls, monotone swirls, and colorful swirls.

Well, at least you were good at drawing something in your childhood.

You lay down, your body now catching up with time. You wonder if you'll have the energy to cook up a quick dinner, suddenly remembering that you don't have that much left in your refrigerator. You mentally noted to do your groceries. But before you could think up a quick recipe, your lids drop, and the last thing you see is the crayon spiral mess you drew in childhood.

Your eyes open from the quick knocks on your door. You glance at your window, the sun shining through the gaps in your curtains. Of course, you slept through the night and missed your dinner. You sit up, your throat dry, your stomach empty, and your neck aches. Suddenly everything that touches your skin and ears is aggravating.

Knock, knock, knock , the sound echoes through your house.

"Impatient, aren't you?" you grumble, quickly running to the bathroom to wash your face and brush your teeth. You were unable to look at yourself in the mirror as the surface of it was incredibly foggy today and you have no time to clean it with someone knocking themselves out with your door. Pun intended.

You turn the knob. "Careful, you might need to pay for the soon-to-be-hole on my door if you keep knocking on it...Huh!?"

"Haha, sorry about that, neighbor! Would you fancy having breakfast with me today?" Wally fixes his suspenders, before standing up straight.

...Excuse me?

"Oh, am I too early?" He tilts his head before glancing down at your clothes, "I'm assuming my favorite lamb got themselves too into wood carving to get proper sleep, hm? That's fine, I'm the same with painting!"

"Did you just call me a...actually, give me a second," you say before slamming the door in his face. You run to your bathroom and suddenly you're aware of the sound of your footsteps. Hooves instead of flesh against the wood. Heavy, agitating. The radio you left turned on suddenly feels louder. The place where your skin was supposed to be feels itchy and the blood pumping in your body becomes apparent. Your hands, no longer of flesh, wipe the mirror clean.

You don't see yourself.

Up jumped the swagman and plunged into the billabong,

"You'll never catch me alive," cried he.

You don't feel yourself.

And his ghost may be heard as you ride beside the billabong,

"You'll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me.

You feel like you're floating on air.