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I ride my new bike into town and find a position close to the police station from which I can project. I search the building with my remote vision and find the office containing Chief Millward and Robert Turner. I choose to appear as the Cheshire cat. My feline-like head appears hovering in front of the police chief.

“I believe you wanted to contact Alice?” I say, causing him to jump. It takes him a few seconds to recover his composure.

“You gave me quite a surprise,” he says, “I take it you are still unwilling to give your true identity”

“Yes, it could be dangerous,” I reply, disappearing and reappearing as Alice in Wonderland. “Considering a young transsexual has just been murdered for standing out from the crowd, I think I would rather not draw attention to myself more than absolutely necessary.”

“It’s OK Tom,” Robert Turner interjects, “I am aware of this person’s true identity. It’s best if you don’t know.”

“OK, I will respect that. I was involved in the case you mentioned, a very tragic hate crime,” Chief Millward replies, “Let me explain our problem, it’s actually related to the case you mentioned.”

That certainly gets my attention! I glance across at Mr Turner who simply smiles at me.

“A ten-year-old Afro-Caribbean boy has been kidnapped, and is being held to ransom. They want to exchange him for Alison Little, the girl currently charged with murder. We let her go; they don’t post him back to us limb by limb,” the chief explains handing me a file about the boy, including a photo.

Mr Turner takes over the explanation, “We have tried to get info out of Alison, but she doesn’t want to co-operate. We are hoping a haunting from her victim may change her mind.” He hands me a crime scene photo of David lying on the ground with a knife in his neck. I immediately change my appearance to that of my old self, minus the knife.

“I thought torture was illegal, besides are you sure she knows something? Victims will make anything up to get the persecution to stop,” I state.

“It’s only dodgy if the jury believes in ghosts,” Mr Turner says through a laugh. “Seriously, nobody is going to object, and quite frankly no one is going to take her seriously if she complains. We will make sure that whoever is guarding her at the time ignores any screaming. Yes, we may be bending the rules, but a boy’s life is at stake.”

“We think she may know where the boy, Donald, is, as he disappeared several days before the murder of David Palmer. Depending on how the interrogation goes we have several choices,” Chief Millward adds. “You could possibly take Alison’s place in a swap, or you might be able to find the boy and help rescue him. It depends on your exact capabilities. We have both seen some of what you are capable of, but don’t know what your limitations are.”

“I can remotely see up to two miles. Drop that to one and a half if listening as well,” I explain, “I can form a solid projection up to a quarter mile, further than that and I start to fade out. I can do a ghost up to around half a mile. The further the projection the more energy it takes and the less time I can maintain it. If the distance is kept to a hundred yards then I can maintain the projection for hours. My record is three hours without a break. With short breaks to eat high energy food, to recharge my batteries as such, I have managed seven hours of near continuous projection.”

After a short pause, I decide to add, “Projecting takes a lot of energy, if I try to project for too long or too far then I risk falling into a diabetic coma. I have to eat double or triple the normal amount of food when using my powers.”

“You seem to be able to mimic the appearance and voice of anyone you choose, is that correct?” Mr Turner asks.

“I can reproduce anything I have seen or heard. The limit is my memory and imagination,” I tell them. “Also, I can only project in one place, so there are limits to what I can do. For example, I can project a baseball into my hand, but if I throw it at the wall, it will disappear once airborne. I can’t therefore simulate a working gun.”

“What about other objects? Could you simulate a flashlight, or a radio?” the chief asks.

“I’ve never tried,” I reply, “Let’s find out.”

I start by projecting a torch into my hand. I turn it on and shine the light round the room. Chief Millward opens a door, through which is a walk-in cupboard with no windows. It is dark inside. I walk in and shine the light around, illuminating the room.

“I would say that your flashlight simulation is a success,” the Chief says, closing the door to the darkened room.

I then try to project my cell phone. It appears to have a signal, so I dial the phone on the desk, after confirming the direct dial number. The cell phone appears to be ringing, waiting for the other phone to pick up, but the phone on the desk remains silent.

“OK, let me try something simpler,” I say. I replace the phone in my hand with a simple radio. I try to tune it into a station, but all I get from it is static.

“Hmm, I can simulate the look, but not the functionality. Let me try the most basic of radios,” I say. I have at home a book of circuit diagrams that can be built using a special kit designed for learning electronics. It includes a basic crystal radio schematic. I bring the diagram to mind from my photographic memory and then picture a blank circuit board resting on my hand. I build up the connections and components one by one, each part appearing in turn on the board. It doesn’t work.

“If you want me to wear a wire, it will have to be a real one. However, that would prevent me from appearing, disappearing, and walking through walls. I can however carry things while invisible,” I state. To prove my point I vanish and pick up a pen from the desk. I carry it around the room and place it back down. The only part of my body that’s solid while doing this was my fingertips, so that I didn’t have to worry about colliding with the furniture, as I can’t see where my limbs are in relation to other objects.

I then have another idea. I project a portable video player into my hand. I switch it on and it starts to play my favourite Benny Hill sketch. The image of the fat British comic comes on screen being chased at high speed by a group of scantily clad women to the tune of Yakety Sax by Boots Randolph*.

“Mr Turner, would you mind assisting me in a little experiment? Please go into the next room, out of sight. I will try to project what I can see and hear with my remote vision onto this screen,” I request.

Mr Turner leaves the room. I close my eyes and follow him with my remote vision. Chief Millward gets out his cell phone and uses the built in video camera as he watches the screen. Mr Turner walks into the stairwell, stops, holds three fingers in the air, and then recites a Limerick:
“There was a young lady named Alice,
Who used dynamite instead of a phallus,
They found her vagina,
In South Carolina,
And most of her anus in Dallas.”

Mr Turner walks back into the room as Chief Millward pulls up the footage from the phone on his computer monitor.

“Not bad,” Mr Turner states as he sits back down, “that could come in very useful for remote surveillance. However, I wouldn’t like to have to rely on it in court, as explaining how the footage was obtained would be impossible. In addition, there is no proof that it hasn’t been tampered with. You can presumably make anything appear on that screen.”

A image of Alice in Wonderland appears on the screen and she recites another Limerick:
“There is a young man named Robert,
Who’s at great risk of being hurt,
If he doesn’t watch out,
He will get a clout,
From a fiery young girl in a skirt.”

“Touché,” Mr Turner replies, “While remote surveillance might come in handy in the future, right now we require your projection skills. We need to act fast. Are you able to pay a visit to Alison tonight?”

I agree to try it, and we discuss how it’s going to work. I will return home and get some rest, and then Mr Turner will collect me and drive me to just outside of the local jail. Alison will be in solitary confinement and the guards instructed not to check on her and ignore any sounds coming from her cell.

The cell is rigged with CCTV and microphones to record any information. The footage will never find its way into evidence. It will only be seen by Robert and Tom. I can have free reign over what I do to her. The only limitation is that there must be no lasting physical harm. If she is examined the next day, it has to appear that it’s all in her head, or self-inflicted.

Alison has been responsible for spreading and promoting the vile bigotry in our school. It was Alison who influenced some of the others, especially Stephanie, to bring out their prejudices. One of the charges being considered against her is inciting racial hatred. I’m not convinced that she will tell us anything. I certainly can’t rely on her conscience, the young boy is black, and therefore to her sick eyes isn’t even human.

It’s nearly midnight when I appear in her cell. As promised, only Alison is present. She is wearing red prison-issue cotton pyjamas, and is lying on the bed asleep, covered with a thick woollen blanket. The room is sparse in its appearance. The bed is along one wall. On the opposite wall is a toilet and washbasin. The plain brick walls are painted white. A small barred window is high in the far wall. Behind me is a solid steel door with a small letterbox-sized hatch for looking through, which is currently closed. Embedded in the plain white ceiling are two spotlights. These are currently dimmed, providing a small amount of light should the guards need to look in.

I materialise in the room as David, my appearance matching how I was when murdered, including the knife sticking out of my neck and blood soaked-clothing. I find the light switch and put the lights to full intensity, which isn’t massively bright. Alison starts to stir in her sleep. I take hold of the bed covers and yank them from the bed. As Alison is holding the covers, and wrapped partially in them, this has the effect of pulling her out of bed. She ends up on the floor, on her back, looking up at me in shock. I bend down over her and shout “Boo!” She screams.

I wait for the screaming to stop. She sits on the floor staring up at me, breathing heavily. I have made myself slightly see-through, so that she can just make out the outline of the door and ceiling through my body. The light in the ceiling is just visible though my head.

“What’s the matter, never seen a ghost before?” I ask. Alison shuts her eyes and refuses to look at me.

“There is no such thing as ghosts. This is all just a bad dream,” she whispers to herself.

I sit down beside her. I extend my finger and run it down her cheek, under her chin, sideways across her neck, and down her chest. I find one of her nipples through the fabric of her pyjamas and start to move my finger in small circular motions around it.

“Are you sure this isn’t real, your nipple is becoming hard? Thanks to you I died a virgin, perhaps we could rectify that now?” I ask.

Alison opens her eyes and looks at me. “Go rot in hell!” she shouts angrily, getting up off the cold floor and sitting down on the bed.

I think for a few seconds, and then reply, “OK, that can be arranged. This is close enough to hell. Let me see if I can make myself rot.” My primary reference for rotting is seeing fruit go off in the fruit bowl. I’m not sure how realistic this is going to be, but it will look real enough. I make my face turn to shades of blue, green and black. My skin starts to shrivel and shrink, exposing the skeleton below. Fungus sprouts over my body. The clothes I am wearing also commence decaying and fall to pieces, exposing more of the putrid skin beneath. The knife in my neck begins to corrode.

Alison tries to ignore me, but can’t help but stare at the revolting sight. She turns green and races to the toilet to throw up. I change back to my previous projection, pre decomposition.

“I take it you didn’t like that. Any other suggestions you want me to try?” I ask.

Alison finishes throwing up and flushes the toilet. While she is doing that, I pick the blanket up off the floor and make the bed. Alison stands and watches me finish tucking the blanket under the mattress.

“Lie down, let’s talk,” I say, lying on my side, my head supported by my hand. I indicate that Alison should join me. I am now dressed in identical pyjamas to Alison.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to rape you. Unless you want me to, that is,” I say with a grin. I’m not at all interested in her sexually. In fact, the idea repulses me, but I can play the part if it’s called for.

Alison pauses for a few seconds before lying down beside me on her back. She tilts her head towards me.

“You’re not going to go away, are you?” she states, sighing.

“You want me to stay and keep you company?” I ask, deliberately misinterpreting her meaning.

“I want you to sod off and leave me alone, but I guess that isn’t going to happen,” Alison says to me. “What is it you want, why are you here?”

“Don’t you think it’s appropriate that I haunt my murderer?” I tease. “Seriously though, there is a reason. Within each of our souls, there is a balance of good and evil. In your case most of your life has been spent expressing your evilness. I’m not even certain you have a good side. Unless you want to spend the rest of eternity in damnation I suggest you start to redress the balance.”

Robert Turner, at my request, has given me some of the propaganda circulating from the white supremacist group to which Alison belongs. A lot of their inspiration comes from the writings of the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi party. There are some religious references included, so I hope my heaven and hell spiel will get her to talk.

I continue, “You have taken my life, possibly others. You have spread misery over an entire town. You can help to redress this balance by trying to save a life. Specifically, there is a young black boy by the name of Donald, and I suspect you know where he is. With my help you could save his life, and yours, from eternal damnation.”

“Firstly, I am not sure I believe in eternal damnation, and I am not fully convinced there is such a thing as ghosts. I must be going nuts. Either that, or this is a very bad nightmare,” Alison replies. “Donald was kidnapped by thirteen on the instructions of two. Thirteen is my mother. I’m number 52. I don’t know if there are actually 52 of us, or if the numbers are assigned non-consecutively. Low numbers are seen as higher ranks. I helped snatch the kid for my mother.”

Alison then talks about the hostage, “The brat’s mother is a hooker, and the father is a retarded dropout. Scum like that shouldn’t be allowed to breed. Intelligence is largely hereditary; with genes like those, he isn’t ever going to amount to much. That’s without even considering his flawed racial background. The blacks are several hundred years behind us in evolution. Just look at their music, all primal beats and no refinement. Name one great scientist, scholar, or philosopher who was black. ”

“Never mind his heritage, where is Donald now?” I ask, having listened to enough of Alison’s racism.

“It was being held in my family’s basement up until I left on Friday morning,” Alison replies. “I assume the police raided my home after I threw that knife at you, so it must have been moved. I don’t know where. Two would have found somebody else to house the brat. Policy is that we don’t get to know people in the other cells. Therefore, we can’t identify them. Two acts as a go-between. The intention was to raise publicity for the cause by executing him live on the internet on Monday morning. Now they are trying to swap him for me, I don’t know why. I was an idiot.”

Alison begins to cry. “I was aiming for the knife to pass you and stick in the tree. I didn’t mean to kill you. I wanted to scare you and make you rethink your stupid behaviour and drop the sissy nonsense. You’re one of the smartest people I know, if only you could lose the eccentricities then you would be the ideal partner for selective breeding. I knew I would get in trouble, although I didn’t expect this much. I was supposed to keep things low-key so as not to draw attention to my house. The last thing we needed was police snooping about with a hostage in the cellar.”

I wipe her tears away with my fingers. “If you would just learn to look beyond the hatred and fear of different lifestyles, and get to know people properly instead of judging them, then life would be a lot better. I simply had a birth defect, something that is not beyond the capability of being fixed. At least now I can be reincarnated as a proper girl instead of a defective one.”

I kiss her lightly on the cheek. I figure that the one thing that might overcome hate is love. I wasn’t sure but the selective breeding partner comment almost sounded like she had feelings for me. At first, I was angry with her, but the more I listen to her, the more my feelings turn to those of pity. In a way, she has done me a favour. By killing David, it gives me the opportunity of closure and a fresh start as Jennifer. I think she is genuinely upset by my death, although she seems to think it’s justified and I wonder how much is true regret and how much is resentment over being imprisoned.

“Who’s number two?” I ask.

“All militant members are only ever referred to by code. That way if anybody is caught we can’t identify one another under interrogation. The leader is one. Two is the go-between and second in command. I have never seen him, although my mother has on a number of occasions. He is an older man with a deep husky voice, that’s all I know,” she sobs.

“I have already said more than I should, if they find out they might abandon me, or worse, arrange for my martyrdom to the cause,” she adds.

“You don’t have any further information that could be useful?” I ask. “You do realise I could make your life in here very difficult if you lie to me. I can keep you from sleeping every night until you collapse from exhaustion. I could restrain you so that you can’t use that toilet over there, I don’t think the guards would be pleased with the mess that could cause.” I disappear and reappear sitting on top of her stomach.

“Get off me!” Alison shouts. She tries to slap me in the face, but I let her hand pass through my head. I laugh at her attempt before vanishing again and reappearing standing leaning against the wall at the end of the bed.

“I can keep this up all night, can you?” I ask. “Look, the police aren’t going to let you walk out of here. The first rule of dealing with hostage situations is that you don’t give in. It only encourages more hostages to be taken. What they will do is find a substitute to send in your place.”

I morph myself to look and sound exactly like Alison, “I could offer my services to do that, I know enough about you to pull off a passable impression.”

I sit back down on the edge of the bed beside her. “You are going to be spending a lot of time in cells like these, that is certain. What isn’t certain is how comfortable that cell will be. If you help bring down this web of evil hatred you are entangled in, then the D.A. will ask for leniency.”

Alison lies back and closes her eyes, before speaking, “I don’t know. I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. If I help the police, then a hit will be put out on me by the cult. If I don’t, then I spend the rest of my life in misery in prison, possibly with you annoying me. I screwed up, yet they still care enough to want to break me out.”

I think about this for a moment. “You said that the cult runs selective breeding, are you one of the products of this?”

“Yes, third generation, it’s my duty to have as many children with as many suitable candidates as possible,” Alison replies.

“It sounds to me that the only reason they want to break you out is so that you can be a baby factory for their twisted ideals. After all, you have already proven yourself to be a liability.” I pause for a second before pushing the point home. “This cult of yours sounds very clinical and full of hate. It doesn’t sound like love, romance, and happiness feature in their priorities.”

Tears once again start streaming down Alison’s face as the thought that I could be right rips at her heart.

“Besides, what’s the harm in telling a dead person the truth?” I ask. “You said yourself that I don’t exist. It might help ease your conscience, if you have one.”

“54 West Wallaby Street,” Alison whispers, “I am not supposed to know that, and I don’t know for certain he would have been moved there, but it’s the only place I know he might be.”

Alison rolls over onto her side and faces the wall, sobbing into her pillow. I bend over her, kiss her lightly on the cheek, and say “Thank you.” I switch the lights back down to their dim setting and leave the jail.
 

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*http://youtu.be/l1WpzrtQwI0 - I couldn’t find any decent Benny Hill chase scenes on YouTube, so this is the next best thing. The car chase from Blues Brothers set to Yakety Sax.