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The Ghosts of Mike and Jeff

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Neither Mike nor Jeff knew each other prior to that evening. Their separate journeys on the same long stretch of road would most definitely alter both their lives in many ways, so much so that it would not only bring both of their lives to an end, but it would also see their lives continue on none the wiser as to if anything out of the ordinary occurred at all while creating an afterlife with each other on that long stretch of road which would last for all eternity.

The nighttime sky was falling, and the temperature was cold; so cold that the previously fallen rain along with the sky darkening had already begun to turn wet patches to pockets of ice by the time Mike well and truly came to be on this particular road. Roadside lights were few and far between, leading conditions to be anything other than at their best.

Travelling at quite the speed, Mike received a sudden blow out to his front right tyre, and this blow out was such that it forced his car off the road and into a ditch.

Jeff knew this particular long stretch of road like the back of his hand, he had travelled it so many times before all without incident, so when Mike, leaving his car behind, made his way out of the ditch and back on to the road, he had totally caught Jeff by surprise, and Jeff only hit his brakes at the moment he had also hit Mike. As Jeff's car swerved and came to a halt, his head collided with his steering wheel and this completely and instantly knocked him out.

How odd, Mike thought, it is that he was able to grab hold of and remain upon the vehicle that struck him, well it would be something that could be odd but not as odd as what was to come next for as Mike let go of his grip and came off the bonnet of the car that hit him, he noticed two things. The first of these things was that there appeared to be no one within the car that had indeed just hit him, and the second thing would be the sight of a body lying on the ground near-by.

His initial thought was that the person lying motionless on the ground must be the driver of the car that hit him, but how could that be? The windscreen was still intact, and none of the car doors were open, but on closer inspection, Mike realized that the body on the ground was actually that of his own.

The impact of being hit by the car had killed him, and somehow his soul, his spirit or ghost, or whatever he could be thought to be now, had clung on to the bonnet of the car, leaving him at a complete and utter loss as to what the hell was happening. On top of this, as if it wasn’t all odd enough as it is, where the hell did the driver of that car go?

Jeff awoke in the middle of a road, the same road he so happens to know so well, and he awoke to the sound of an oncoming truck which blew its noisy horns in frustration of there apparently being someone out in the middle of a road blocking the way forwards.

As confused as he is, Jeff got out of the way to the sound of a truck driver shouting profanities as he passed by. Now Jeff noticed a few things of his own. One, with the sun shining, it was plain to see that it was now no longer night-time. Two, he indeed was still on that stretch of road he knew so well, and neither his car nor the guy he had hit were anywhere to be seen.

Jeff assumed he had spent the night unconscious on the road and that whomever he had hit must be alright and had probably taken his car, so Jeff did what he felt was all he could do, and that was to thumb a lift back into town. It wasn't long before he got that lift. There was a newspaper on the dashboard of the car he got into.

'Is that today's paper?' Jeff asked.

'It sure is,' spoke the car driver.

After looking at the headline, Jeff said, 'sorry mate, this is yesterday's paper.'

'It can't be. I just picked it up this morning, it even has today's date on it.'

Had Jeff gone back in time? It was looking that way, but how could such a thing be? The thought hit him of when he had woken on that road if night had gone on to be day, then how did Jeff manage not to be run over by any potential oncoming traffic?

As Jeff got out of the car that brought him back to the town, the strangest sensation of deja vu he had ever felt came over him, and that would be compounded when a point came when he could see himself get into his own car on the far side of the street he so happened to be on. Watching himself get into his own car and drive off was seriously the oddest thing he has ever seen.

This other him was wearing the same clothes as he was, so if he could deduct anything, then that would be that he must have somehow just gone a small amount of time into the past, but surely this is impossible, right?

If indeed he had gone back in time to an earlier point of the same day, then Jeff, indeed coming to conclusions, knew that his other self at this point in time had a few errands to run and that it would be at least an hour or two before the accident would be due to happen over again. All this is so very odd and as odd as odd can be.

When it began to get dark, Jeff, being in a bit of a panic to prevent an accident from occurring at all, managed to organize himself a lift back out onto that long stretch of road. Whether fate has anything to do with anything or not, it was some coincidence that Jeff had organized himself a lift with a stranger he so happened to come into contact with by chance, the very same stranger he would be due to hit while out of this long road of his.

As it is, of course, Mike and Jeff have never met, until now that is, and Jeff cannot know at this point that it was Mike that he hit first time round as he had been knocked out before he could get a hold on what had happened. On this now new occasion, a near-by Mike overheard Jeff saying that he needed to get out on that stretch of road and said that he was going that way anyway, thus prompting their official meeting.

Sure, enough along the journey, right as they were approaching the spot where Jeff was sure he needed to be, Mike's front right tyre blew out and forced his car into a ditch.

As Jeff, not Mike, climbed up out of the ditch and onto the road to seek aid, he was to be caught in a moment he would not be able to escape from for he was to be hit by an oncoming car, and when this car came to a halt, Jeff let go of the bonnet only to see himself laying on the ground. Another somewhat strange sensation hit him, one that told him that he was dead and having some sort of out of body experience.

Stranger yet, the car that had hit him was his own, not only that but Jeff himself or an earlier version or alternate version he had seen of himself had been driving the car that ran himself down, and not Mike as he had done on the first go-round. What a mind-boggling moment this is, and it was not done yet, for when Jeff looked to another point of this road, he could see Mike kneeling over his own body too. Something very strange indeed was happening here.

'Don't you see?' speaks Matt, ‘you just killed us both.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding, right?'

If only that was the case.

With some sort of time loop catching up with itself, both Jeff's and Mike's dead bodies disappeared, but their ghosts, their souls remained crouched over the spots where their bodies had been, and the strangeness of the moment in which they found themselves in continued to get a whole lot stranger for both ghosts of Mike and Jeff would watch as an alternate version or living version of Mike crawled up of the ditch he had gone down into after the tyre blow out.

This Mike, an undead Mike, would be amazed to see an unconscious and living Jeff sitting in the driver's seat of another car. As it is, this version of Mike had never been hit by Jeff as for the second time around; Jeff hit … himself.

Living Mike couldn't help but wonder how this could be, Jeff unconscious within the confines of another car when not so long prior Jeff had been in the passenger seat of Mike’s car. Living Mike and living Jeff are in no position to discover or to realize that their dead counterparts are nearby.

Something very strange is indeed happening, or more precisely, has happened. The living Mike moves the living Jeff into the passenger seat of this other car and drives him to the town hospital, while indeed being totally unaware that he was leaving behind the ghosts of himself and Jeff to roam the long dark stretch of road for all eternity arguing over what had actually happened and whose fault it was, Mike's for coming out of a dark ditch so suddenly, to begin with, or Jeff's for hitting them both ...??

 

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Written by actung
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