Breya imagined a ringleader, with bright striped top hat and coat tails, doing a twirl on stage, announcing, "<span style="font-style: italic">Ladies and gentlemen, this is your last chance to commune with your loved one! Step right up, step right up!</span>" In the scenario, Breya couldn't really tell if she was the ringleader, or the attraction. Perhaps both.<br/><br/>"I don't really know man," Thomas said after an unnervingly long silence, "I wasn't really briefed on the whole thing. I just kind of...showed up. Maybe I'm your guardian angel now, or something."<br/><br/>Any kind of closure or comfort felt like a gentle let-down for the evening. Breya had gone off too strong using Thomas, she could tell. When she'd used an imprintable voice she had hoped for a very much alive but overbearing mother, or a grade teacher that had been harsh in the past. Not a dead brother who had tragically died before his time. You didn't mess with the dead. Breya knew from experience as a dead person.<br/><br/>A thought suddenly cracked through Breya like a lightning bolt. She knew more about about Thomas and Mica's life than ghost Thomas did. Ghost Thomas was somewhere, either in The Underworld or on Earth, with no recollection of his brother and the hardships they had faced. Through his death he had become a shell of his former self, just like Breya had.<br/><br/>It was so unfair.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Oh good God</span>, Breya thought. Was there a ghost somewhere, pretending to be Breya, knowing every detail of her past; a thief of thought, burglar of memory, going through her loved one's mind? Was that ghost imitating her habits and actions, even her personality, her real personality?<br/><br/>Breya suddenly felt sick to her stomach, full of revulsion. She wanted to leave, think for a while. But she couldn't just disappear now, after Mica had finally accepted what was happening, and was afraid that Thomas would vanish, just like on the night that he had died.<br/><br/>"Well, if, and that's a big if, this<span style="font-style: italic">were</span>that kind of thing, what would you say to me?" Thomas coughed, sitting forward on the couch like he was about to push off suddenly.<br/><br/>"Like, I never got to say just...goodbye."  Thomas shrugged dismissively in the way that people did when they were trying to avoid vulnerability and deep, indescribable emotion.<br/><br/>At least Breya could try to do this tastefully, respectful to their relationship. What would Thomas do? Yet she still felt it was wrong, that she didn't know enough about the brother. The only way it could be right was if she were him, which wasn't possible.<br/><br/>If only she'd stuck to computer tower spark-shows, shadows in the corners of eyes, the belief that aliens were coming. It was so much simpler to handle.