Ricky Rubio had just turned off his bedside lamp and was getting cozy underneath his multiple layers of blankets when a sudden flash of white passed through his half-closed eyelids. He opened his eyes wider, but couldn’t see anything amiss in the deep darkness of his bedroom. Dismissing the visual anomaly as a result of spending too much time reading his Kindle before bed, he was almost asleep when it happened again.
Now he sat up straight and could see a gray cloud, almost fluid in its movement, floating in the corner of his room, lending a ghostly glow to his dresser and wallpaper. It seemed not to be restricted by the walls of the house as it floated effortlessly through solid drywall. Within the shimmering plasma, dim orange and purple lights pulsated. Warily watching the unknown life form as it moved to and fro, Ricky knew that there would be no reason to make a commotion or to attempt an escape when faced with something so alien.
For minutes he watched. He was just contemplating an attempted return to sleep when the gaseous cloud, seeming to sense his impatience, suddenly morphed into the shape of an androgynous human head. It levitated down to put itself face-to-face with Ricky.
“Hello,” it greeted, its low voice flowing like a tranquil steam.
“Who are you?” Ricky asked, because he could not come up with another response.
The figure retained its placid smile. “I am the spirit of Steve Nash,” it said.
Ricky frowned. “But you’re still alive. Why would your spirit visit me?” He asked this question despite knowing somewhere in his mind that what he was experiencing was something very out of the ordinary, something that his rational mind should be rejecting as impossible.
Steve Nash’s spirit laughed in dulcet, almost melodious, tones. The shimmering lights within the vaporous form had congregated near the eye sockets of the face and were shining slightly brighter. “The soul and the body are not always as one.”
“So you left behind a zombie Steve Nash somewhere so you could come visit me?” Ricky asked.
“If it amuses you to frame the situation in that way, then yes, that is what I have done,” Steve’s spirit replied. Almost imperceptably, it swayed through the air as if carried on a breeze. Ricky wondered if this was an indication of humor. “I can assure you that Steve the mortal man is getting along just fine without me.”
Ricky wanted to pursue this line of questioning further, but also felt the need to press on to more important topics. “Why are you here?”
The spirit’s vaporish lips grew into a wider smile. “Ah, yes. The big question, finally posed! It has a simple answer: I am here to help you, Ricky.”
“What, do you mean, ‘help me’? Are you going to give me some wisdom from the spirit realm?”
“Let me show you,” Steve’s spirit intoned peacefully. Then, all of a sudden, the face transformed back into a wispy, amorphous cloud, and plunged itself directly into Ricky’s naked chest. Ricky felt a sudden sensation of icy coldness, then a warm tingling as Steve’s soul mingled with his own immortal essence. He let himself fall back down onto the bed, his eyes rolling up into his head and his limbs quivering as the merging of the two men’s life forces took place.
Then, it was complete. Ricky wanted to remain awake and ponder the ramifications of what had just occurred, but the process had exhausted him fully. He quickly fell into a deep sleep, not yet realizing that the old Ricky had been discarded, and into the same body a new being had been born.