The Miracle Mind of Serene: the Tale of a Girl and a Ghost (Chapter 2)
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18/01/2018
Serene swung back in her chair as she turned to face her phone, her telekinesis typing away at the computer without her even looking. “So! First of all, Mortis, I’m going to need you to gather up all of the information you can think of about Richard.”
“Well,” the phone blared out in that deep, distorted voice that it had whenever Mortis was talking through it. “He’s a bitch.”
Serene shook her head. “No, no, I mean anything that can help identify him. Stuff like surname, species, address, age at the time you, er… died.”
“Well…” Mortis paused for a moment, the only sound being that of Serene’s keyboard going clickety clackety on its own. “He was around 20, 30 years old, and… well I don’t know what his address was, but the people he brought into the United Federation arrived by boat on the South-East coast, and he’s a rat - that’s both literal and an insult.”
“Mortis, you can’t just call someone a rat like that.”
“... He’s a bitch. Is that there.”
“That’s… I suppose…” Serene turned back to the screen as the keyboard finished typing, her initial search starting. “Say, when did you die again?”
“1967.”
Serene stopped entirely, slowly turning in her seat to look at the phone. “... The 60s? Do-... Do you know how old he’d be then?”
“Yeah, yeah, he’d be like 50 or something.”
“No, he’s going to be 70 at the very least, maybe even 80.”
“... Fuck me.”
“He’ll be an old man who’s lived through most of his life by now,” Serene explained. “You sure you still want to find him? And not, I don’t know, find something else to do?”
“No. Finding him and drinking milk are the only two things I want now.”
“But-” Serene blinked in surprise at that last statement. “Wait, milk? I-”
“Milk is fucking delicious.”
She shrugged. “Alright, fair enough… But, well, what are you really going to do once you’ve found him and you’ve given him a piece of your mind?”
Mortis was quiet for a moment, before speaking up. “I assume I’d just fade away on the spot, like this is that unfinished business kind of deal.”
“You assume?” Serene asked aloud, staring at Mortis for longer. “Don’t you know what being a ghost even means? Maybe from other ghosts or-”
“Nah,” Mortis interrupted her outright. “I’m the only one I’ve ever known of, so I have to guess at what’s going on.’
That was when the doorbell suddenly rang, Serene flicking her head over to the approximate entrance.
“Eugh,” Serene grunted out as she rolled her eyes. “Just a moment, Mortis.”
“Why? What is it?”
“Oh, probably just a fan wanting to meet me,” she explained. “I always get some from time to time. Hard not to be famous when you’re the only psychic in the world.”
Mortis let out a huff, dropping out of the phone and following along behind Serene.
Serene immediately put on a smile moments before opening up the front door.
What she wasn’t expecting to see was a male buffalo in a suit, his I.D. labelling him as a government agent. “Serene Cirillo, you’re under arrest.”
Serene paused, her eyes slowly going wide as her smile faded very quickly. “Wh… Under what charges?” she mumbled out. Already her body was getting tense, hand clenching the door handle tightly.
“You violated your official agreement and went off surveillance”. The officer moved aside to escort Serene out.
Serene cleared her throat, holding out her hand. “Let me get my lawyer, because there’s clearly been a mistake-”
“At 9:01 PM last night you went off surveillance without approval.”
Serene glared at him, her eyes starting to have a faint white glow. “... I got approval. You can check the voice logs at 6:13 PM yesterday, the 17th.” She didn’t question how she knew the exact time down to the minute, right at this moment she knew something was wrong. Afterall, how could they forget? They never forgot.
The officer didn’t react beyond speaking further. “It likely is a misunderstanding, then, but until it’s cleared up you’re coming with us.” He then moved aside to give Serene the chance to walk out peacefully.
Serene hesitated, before seeing Mortis pass by and possess the agent right in front of her. “Mortis, no!” She held him in place, Mortis unable to even check the agent for any weapons. “Get out of him, now!”
“You know it’s bullshit,” Mortis hissed out in the officer’s voice. “There’s no way that they just-”
“Just stop,” Serene cut him off without pausing. “This is just going to make things worse. I’ll just get this misunderstanding sorted out, it won’t be long at all. Please.”
There was a long pause. Before finally Serene could see Mortis leave.
Serene then let the agent go, watching him drop to his knees as he hacked and coughed.
“I am following you now,” she explained immediately. “I am exercising my right to remain silent.”
The officer glared at her, but said nothing else as he let her lock the front door before cuffing her and bringing her along.
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“Name?”
“Serene Cirillo.” God, even in interrogations Serene was still being asked the same routine.
“Age?”
“21.” Not a single thing had changed, despite the fact that it was a police officer instead of a neuroscientist.
“Occupation?”
“Can we just skip to the actual interrogations please?” Serene complained, getting to her feet. “It’s me, the psychic girl, and I can prove I’m the psychic girl real quick by using my psychic powers.”
With that she lifted herself off the ground, hovering for a few seconds before she landed back down. “Is that good? Do you believe that I’m the psychic girl now?”
The officer looked to Serene with a raised brow, but sat down in his chair all the same. “My apologies, miss Cirillo, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Serene dropped back down onto the chair, putting her hand on her forehead. “Thank you, it’s just… It’s been stressful. Today and yesterday.”
The officer nodded. “I understand why it’s so stressful, but hopefully we can resolve this swiftly. It says here that you’re under supervision due to your unique psychic powers.”
Serene didn’t say a word, instead nodding.
“And it says here you’re under arrest for endangering others via illegally interrupting that supervision-”
“6:03 PM yesterday, I rang up to organise my given week of no surveillance,” Serene repeated. “It’s in the logs.”
“I’m sorry, miss Cirillo,” the officer said with what seemed to be a genuine look of disappointment. “But the logs have already been provided, and there was no call from you yesterday.”
Serene’s eyes began glowing white again, silent as she processed this information. “... It must have been tampered with, then. I can provide evidence, too.”
The officer raised his brow again, looking back to Serene. “And what evidence is that?”
“Oh, it’s-” she paused, cogs turning in her head. They couldn’t have forgotten. And… And Mortis had to turn the surveillance off on her end… Why is she only realising now? They’re doing this on purpose. “... Actually, can I speak with Mortis first, please? He’s the ghost that’s been following around.”
The officer was very clearly trying to hold back a laugh, every fibre in his being telling him that laughter was a very poor action to take. Despite all of that, he still failed, a quick chuckle escaping his lips. “R-right,” he said, trying to regain composure - but it was already too late.
Serene blinked, looking over to the ball of fire that only she could see. “Mortis, can you hear me?”
Mortis obliged and flew into the officer, his posture abruptly changing. “Yeah, yeah, the sooner you’re done with this the sooner we can get back to business.”
Serene gave a nod. “Right. Before you even answer me, just ASAP, can you fly back home and into my phone, please? Guard it, just in case-”
She saw Mortis leave the officer’s body as he flew directly up.
At that same moment, the officer was hacking and coughing intensely, almost falling off of his seat. He slowly sat back up, eyes wide in realisation that he was just possessed for nothing more than a brief conversation. “You- the ghost- I-”
Serene nodded. “I haven’t been lying at any point in this interrogation, I promise.”
The officer let out a heavy sigh, getting to his feet. “Well for your sake, I hope you’re right. Don’t worry about Mortis, we’ll make sure the phone stays locked up in evidence until it’s time for the court case.”
With that, the officer turned and left the interrogation room, leaving Serene sitting there alone.
He turned to an officer that was waiting just outside, whispering into his ear. “There’s evidence in her phone, wipe it immediately. Don’t bring any weapons, and stick to a group of three or larger at all times. We don’t know what this ghost is willing to do, but he is real.”
---
Mortis had made his way back to Serene’s home (knowing full well in the back of his head that Serene’s bleeding heart was going to make him make it up for the unfortunate driver he used to get here).
The door was still locked, but that was no trouble, as he just phased through the door to get to the other side.
Guarding the phone… was going to be boring. As Mortis prepared himself for the dull task, he noticed something.
Serene’s computer was still on. And it was on a webpage. He slowly moved into the computer monitor right away, looking to see what he could.
…
He couldn’t scroll.
After a few awkward moments of moving between the monitor and the mouse, he managed to see what was on this webpage. Information on Richard. It looked like he founded a restaurant called the Delicious Den.
He could just go there, and linger until he found the little rat and-
Oh, he loved it so much.
… But they knew he’d be searching for Richard now, surely. Now it’s only a matter of Richard changing restaurants and he’d be back at square one. He couldn’t have that.
At least now he was getting help from that naive little girl, at least now he had a back-up if things went back to square one. So when he left the monitor, he made his way into the phone. He then lifted the phone up all the way to the roof. Might as well make it impossible to spot while he waited.
…
He might be able to make the machine do whatever he wanted, but that didn’t mean he knew how to navigate the web. Maybe now was the time to practice, while he’s stuck inside.
He tried to use this fancy schmancy search bar to find something to watch.
a… c… t… i… o… n… space… m… o… v… i… e… s…
…
Enter?
Ahah, that worked!
… What is all of this rubbish? Why does it look so fake? And why’s this one called volume 2? Guess they just can’t make movies anymore…
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25/01/2018
Serene was confident that she’d come out of this court case with a success. Her lawyer was unusually incompetent, and the prosecutor was a clear expert, expertly weaving his words into compelling nothings. By all accounts, anyone would think this was a complete disaster.
But thanks to Mortis, she knew that her phone was safe.
And right she was, as when it came time to present that phone to court, the evidence that she had made the call was right in there, time and everything. Even despite the prosecutor trying to argue that the audio was faked, there was nothing he could say to throw it away as evidence.
So she was rather pleased with herself as she walked out of court as they pronounced her innocent, even managing to successfully argue for a full month of no surveillance. It was while she was walking out that a grizzly bear stepped out, wearing a government suit. It was the person in charge of her experimentation, General Thomas.
“Congratulations on the court case,” he spoke warmly, extending a hand. “I hope there’s no hard feelings, miss Cirillo.”
Oh, there were plenty of hard feelings. But Serene didn’t share any of them as she shook his hand. His grip was unusually fierce, her hand even hurting a little from it. “It’s okay, General. But I will be making sure the surveillance is actually off from now on. Hope you understand.”
He looked her right in the eyes with his good eye as he ended the handshake. Behind the smile Serene could see something focused, calculating.
“Of course, you can never be too careful. I’ll likewise be making sure that this embarrassment doesn’t happen again.”
Serene nodded, stepping to the side. “Well then, I’ll be seeing you for your next scheduled experiment in a month. Might even ask for two hours in exchange. Bye bye~” As she continued walking, she briefly twirled around in order to wave at him, smiling wide. Now it was a simple case of making her way to the bus stop.
An ear piercing, high pitched screech rang out from her phone, immediately followed by an annoyed huff from Mortis’s hellish voice.
“Wait for me, why don’t you?”
Serene let out a small giggle, turning the voice speaker off before putting the phone to her ear, as if she was making a phone call rather than talking with her ghost friend. “I did, I was talking with the man who was probably behind all of that. The big grizzly bear.”
“Oh him? He was angry as fuck, definitely trying not to swear in public.”
Serene let out a sigh, slowly shaking his head. “I really can’t believe they’d do this. I spent my whole life trusting them, and… eugh. I’m so glad I can trust you to help me out when I need it, I don’t know what I would’ve done with somebody.”
There was a small silence before Mortis answered. “Of course you can trust me.”
Serene smiled wide. She knew she could trust him, she had made the right call. It was then that the bus arrived. “Just a sec,” she said before lowering the phone.
Once she was on and seated, she brought the phone back to her ear. “And back.”
“Thank god, I was dying of boredom.”
Serene rolled her eyes. “Now that that’s dealt with, we’re going to continue looking into your reunion, aren’t we?”
“Sure am, while nobody was at your house I quickly checked what you left open on your computer. Richard was apparently the founder of some Delicious Den place.”
“Right, but…” Serene briefly pauses to look around, noting that around half of the bus has noticed her, some giving occasional looks, some trying to avoid eye contact entirely, and the few kids that are on the bus staring at her in awe. “... I can’t go as Serene. And besides, I’ve just gotten a big success, I really want to spend the night celebrating.”
She heard the long, drawn out groan from Mortis. “Fine, fine. But we’re going there tomorrow, no matter what.”
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General Thomas was slumped in his office chair, his grip on his mug unusually tight. He was glaring at the files, just knowing what the week’s papers were going to say.
Psychic Girl Found Innocent Thanks to Supernatural Intervention!
All of his plans with experimentation on this psychic girl, ruined because of this stupid little ghost! This was going to set him back years if he can’t find a way to control the situation! Where did he even come from?!
No, no, he couldn’t let failure distract him, no matter how much it humiliated him. He had to figure out why Serene had searched up information about this ‘Richard’ individual, and why this ghost is helping her. Hopefully his employees have already-
“Sir.” He didn’t move, but his eyes glancing up to the agent that entered his office told that he was paying attention. “We’re in touch with Mr. Richard, and he’s asking for our protection in exchange for his information.”
At this, Thomas looked up to the agent, a brow raising. “Protection? From what?”
“From Mortis, sir. Claims that they knew each other.”
General Thomas paused, his frown slowly fading away. This could be the key to solving this little setback. “Very well. Let’s hear him out.”
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