01. Crossed in Love 
She stood staring down the long corridor of bookshelves and didn’t even notice that the girl had started walking, until she looked back at her and asked:
“You coming, lady?”
“I guess so. But where to?”
“I dunno, wherever we can go. It changes.”
She took a couple of steps, carefully. As though she was afraid the ground might crumble and fall underneath her feet. Then she took a more bold step and she was walking down the corridor beside the girl.
“What’s your name?” she asked the girl.
“Emma.”
“Right, I’m Theresa.”
Emma stopped to look at her. “I thought you said you didn’t remember anything.”
“I don’t. Anything other than my name, that is.”
“You’re really weird.”
Theresa looked at the girl’s garishly coloured clothing and blue hair but decided not to say anything. They kept walking and walking down the corridor and it felt like they weren’t getting any closer to anything.
Not until much later did they actually see an end-well and a corner.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Theresa said. “How big is this place?”
“As big as it likes to be.” Emma sighed. “All this time and I’ve never met any of the others.
“Others?”
“There are other people here.”
“How can you know? I mean, if you’ve never met them...”
She looked up at Theresa, seemingly very surprised. “You mean you can’t hear them?”
“Them?”
“The whispers. I know they’re somewhere in here... behind the bookcases. They’re whispering. I think they’re close today. They’re actually very close. Wait, come on this way.”
She turned the corner.
Emma stopped and pointed down the end of the corridor. A dead end. And at the end, indeed, someone was whispering.
“Look. Freaks.” The girl was suddenly tense. “Let’s turn back.”
“Huh? No, they might know where we are! Come on.”
“I don’t think I like them... Can’t we just go?”
Theresa ignored her and walked towards the two strangers. The smile on her face must look forced, because the transparent man was a creature she’d never believed in (how did she remember that she didn’t believe in ghosts?) and the woman’s eyes looked somehow wrong.
“Hello?” she tried saying to the man. “Do you know...?”
When he spoke, his voice was like iced water poured down her spine: “I have lost the love of my life.”
“Oh, that’s...”
“Seriously, Theresa, let’s ditch these crazies.” Emma was turning around but the man’s icy voice sounded again:
“Oh, my love, my love, why have cruel fate torn us apart?”
“I’m going to be sick.” Emma shook her head.
The woman suddenly stood up and loudly exclaimed: “Oh my love, I hear your voice in my head! It crosses the distance between us to reach my heart!”
Theresa cringed. Okay, this was kind of painful, but she was determined to talk to the two of them.
“I’m really sorry for the both of you, sincerely,” she said. “But I really need to talk to you.”
“My love is as fiery as the flames in your silken hair!” exclaimed the man.
Emma groaned. “Make them stop.”
“I knew him so well! I saw through his every move!” The woman fell down in her chair and her words just then made it click together in her brain.
“Wait, you’re... in love with each other?”
The sound Emma made was like a dying whale’s cry. “You two dofuses are in love with
each other? And you’re just sitting there like a couple of dummies even though you’re literally only a couple of feet from each other?”
“You do not understand my pain!” the ghostly man’s voice wailed. “Cruel fate can create a gap between lovers much wider than the mere feet that separate me from my love.”
“Oh, look at my love crying out his pain while I’m unable to reach him!” the woman added. “Oh would that I could touch him to take his pain away.”
“You... you can do that, though,” Theresa said carefully. “He’s right there.”
Maybe they really should have gotten out of there when Emma said so.
“You do not know the entire history,” the woman said. “We are separated by our feuding kin. He is a ghost and I a werewolf. Everybody knows that werewolves and ghosts are mortal enemies.”
“I hadn’t... heard that.” Theresa scratched her head. “I actually thought it was vampires and werewolves...”
“You know nothing of our pain, silly mortal!” the ghost wailed. “We must forever stay apart, hiding, ashamed of our love!”
“Hiding from whom?!” Emma threw up her hands. “Theresa, if we don’t get out of here, my brain will explode.”
“Come on, you two,” Theresa said, while Emma sighed and looked away. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of your love.”
Emma muttered: “You might as well try to reason with the bookcases...”
“No one’s here to judge you anyway,” Theresa continued, ignoring the blue haired girl. “It’s only the two of us and we won’t judge you.”
“Speak for yourself...”
“So you see, there’s no point in-“
She was interrupted by another moan from the ghost: “You don’t know our pain!”
“Oh would you. shut. up!” Emma shouted, and before Theresa could even think to hold her back, she ran up to the ghost and stomped on his foot.
For a second Theresa was sure that her foot would just slip right through, but then he cried out in pain and jumped around on the spot. The werewolf woman gasped.
“You-! How-! How dare you!”
Light, almost too bright to look at, flashed, illuminating the entire corridor and the woman was growling and writhing while her ghostly lover stood by, gasping.
“Oh no, my love!”
Theresa backed away. “E-Emma, what have you done?”
“Oh, calm down. I just gave them a nudge.”
The woman straightened up, and growled at Emma. “How dare you hurt my love? You stupid little girl. Come here, and I’ll-“
“Oh my love!”
The ghost pulled her into his arms. “My own dear love! You defend me with such ferocity! Such fervour! Why, with passion like that, how could anything ever keep us apart?”
“Y-you think so?” The werewolf lady replied. “I’d never even considered…”
“You and me, together! We can do anything! Even go against our fighting kin!”
“I’m beginning to regret this,” Emma said.
“I don’t know, it is kind of sweet, isn’t it?” Theresa said.
But for a second, a strange melancholy swept over her. Not for any kind of reason that she could think of, but it was pressing down, threatening to swallow her unless she looked away from the happy couple…
“Come on, let’s get away from here. It’s disgusting,” Emma said.
“I want to get away from here before they start snogging.”
Theresa shook her head to get rid of the numbness that had threatened to take her over, and she shot Emma a teasing smile. “Don’t you think it’s cute? You brought the two of them together.”
“No, I do not. It’s horrible.”
She chuckled. “But you’re a proper little matchmaker… Hey. That reminds me…”
“Your name’s the same as the main character from my favourite book!” How had she not remembered that? No, how had she remembered that when so many other things were completely gone, wiped from her mind?
“So you don’t remember anything, except your name and your favourite book?”
“Pretty much, yeah…”
“And what’s your favourite book?”
“
Emma by Jane Austen.”
“… Ah.”
“Hey wait, look, the corridor’s different!” This was the way they had come from, the only other way they could have gone, and it was completely different.
“Yeah, it changes around a lot. Didn’t I mention that? Sorry.”
Emma shrugged and didn’t look sorry at all. She was walking straight on ahead, not caring that Theresa was falling behind.
“Hey, Emma, wait up!”
“Critical error.”
Theresa stopped and spun. “Who…?”
“Critical error. Shut down immediately.”
A bit down the hall, Emma stopped too. She didn’t turn, she didn’t look at the strange woman who had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere; she just said: “Ignore her, Theresa.”
“What, but?”
“Ignore her.”
“97,” the woman said. “96. 95. 94. 93…”
“Ignore her!” Theresa sensed an edge to the girl’s voice now.
“Who is it, Emma?”
“You’re better off not knowing, Terry. There are a lot of weird people around here.”
She was already gone.
“Emma, I’m just not sure…”
“Critical error. Please initiate manual reboot. 97. 97. 97…”
Now the woman’s voice was scratchy and unpleasant.
“Emma, wait!”
She took another look at the strange woman and shook her head. “Emma wait up!”
Then she followed the blue-haired girl around the corner.
Author's note: My, finally, I manage to post some more of this! Between my uni work and holiday with my parents and general 'what if it turns out crappy'-ness, this has been hard to write. Also, I admit the parts with the ghost and werewolf were painful to write... so melodramatic! But hey, at least I didn't have them quoting Shakespearean sonnets as I had considered!
