The Static Between Us

The dream-team are back together. Charlotte. My trusted companion. My partner in crime. My emotional support human slash unofficial crisis manager. Only today it’s less dream and more nightmare — the tables have turned, and I am, improbably, the voice of reason. The unlikely hero. The one who has her shit together… until everything proves that she doesn’t. Charlotte is not her usual competent self. She’s scattered. Tearful. Forgetful. She keeps losing things that are actively in her hands. It’s like she’s absorbed too much of me through prolonged exposure — second-hand neurosis. I should come with a warning label, a pair of gloves, and possibly solitary containment and a catholic priest. She’s also driving like a loon. We’ve already had a near-miss involving a pensioner on a zebra crossing. “Eyes on the road!” I yell as the van skims the arse of an elderly woman who is simply trying to live her best Tuesday. Charlotte gasps, overcorrects, and the van swerves like a shopping trolley with one rogue wheel actively plotting murder. Ten minutes later, she has somehow lost the entire contents of the van. Not misplace. Not shuffle. Lost. As in vanished into another dimension. We fling open the back doors and stare into a yawning, echoing void where parcels once lived. It’s disturbingly empty. Toilet-roll-aisle-during-Covid empty. “Easily done,” I say, bravely lying to myself. We discover the parcels strewn along the road behind us — breadcrumbs leading directly to our own impotence. Some are flattened into contemporary art by passing traffic. But nothing we can’t tuck behind a plant pot, sprint away from, and agree never to speak of again. We reverse slowly, leapfrogging backwards. Charlotte crawls the van along while I hop in and out collecting parcels like a deranged frog powered by caffeine and fear alone. Then we see her. Someone is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the road. Charlotte slams the brakes. The van groans to a halt. Nancy Wheeler. From Stranger Things. Which is ironic, because this is — somehow — the strangest thing to happen so far. It’s not every day you encounter a Netflix celebrity casually kneeling in traffic like a confused praying mantis. Her 80’s curls bob up and down like she’s giving CPR to a Demogorgon. We jump out. “Are you okay?” I ask. “Shh!” she snaps. “I’m concentrating.” She’s hunched over an ancient-looking contraption — all wires and twitching metal arms dragging scratches into paper like a nervous insect. It looks like a lie detector had a sordid affair with a toaster back in 1983. “What is that?” I ask. “I’m communicating with spirits,” she says flatly. “If you’d kindly shut up, it would help.” Rude. Bloody celebrities. The machine suddenly judders violently. The metal rods shrieks across the page like it’s trying to escape itself. “A message is coming through,” Nancy whispers. I lean in. “I wouldn’t get too close,” a voice booms behind us. Steve Harrington. Of course it is. The universe has done stranger things. “I told her not to mess with spirits,” he mutters. “But typical woman. Never listens.” I’m convinced it’s the other way round — but I let him have it. Celebrities need small victories too. The machine screeches louder now, frantic, desperate, carving illegible panic into the paper. Steve sighs. “Right. That’s enough.” He kicks the machine. It performs an elegant airborne death spiral and disappears into a hedge. Nancy explodes. “What the fuck, Steve?!” Charlotte and I reverse-moonwalk back to the van before it escalates into a full Jerry Springer tribute involving unresolved sexual tension and aggressively invested 80’s perms. We drive on. Five hours later we are hollowed out husks of women. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually overstressed and undelivered. Not even the promise of a meal deal can lift the mood. The air inside the van feels damp and vaguely disappointed in us. We’re sick of parcels, sick of each other, sick of existence in general. But we persist. We always persist. If in doubt: keep going and hope the universe gets bored. Charlotte asks if I can drive. I shouldn’t. I don’t have a valid licence. I’ve had strict doctor’s orders not to drive — delivered in a serious tone, with a look that suggested debate would be medically unwise. But Charlotte has charm. Weaponised charm. Calibrated, lethal, and impossible to resist. So now I’m behind the wheel. Bricking it. Already regretting this decision before I've even started. My brain feels foggy. My hands shake. Every sensible cell in my body is staging a protest. I reverse. Into a stone gargoyle. Its head detaches dramatically and rolls towards me, stopping just short of my foot. Its stone eyes etch into my soul whispering ‘look what you did, you absolute moron.’ I panic. Hyperventilate. Spiral. A full emotional meltdown on a stranger's driveway. Charlotte inspects the damage. Her face performs the entire emotional spectrum without saying a word. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” I whisper. “It’s pretty messed up.” I press the dent. The metal gives and white liquid oozes out. Milk? “It’s milk,” she confirms, far too calmly. Then: “Amanda… this has gone way beyond wet wipes.” My heart folds in on itself like crushed metal. “I’ll lose my job. I wasn’t supposed to be driving.” “You won’t lose your job,” she says kindly. “It’s your car.” The van is suddenly my Kia Venga. Crumpled. Traumatised. Lactating. We flee as the gargoyle’s owner runs after us shouting, “You vandals! You’ve decapitated my Gregory!”. Milk trails behind us like the world’s least intimidating crime scene. The scene escapes like spilt milk — no point crying, no point chasing — all I can do is watch it go without me. I’m in a shopping mall now. Vast, echoing, artificially cheerful. Kylie calls my name. My heart dips instinctively — I half-expect her to thwack me round the head with that enormous bag she always carries, like a handbag-based act of revenge. She doesn’t. She just smiles, unnervingly soft, and asks if I’d like to meet her new friends. The word ‘new’ sticks in my throat like a splinter. Replacement always stings, even when you pretend you’re enlightened and evolved and totally fine actually. One of her new friends sobs uncontrollably. He wipes his tears on my jumper while apologising for having friends for the first time in his life. His self-esteem is off-the-scale low. Not just low — underbelly low, overlooked, undervalued, scraping the ground, attracting flies. He seems nice enough, aside from using me as his Kleenex. Kylie has already disappeared. Nowhere to be seen. I can’t help wondering if this was the plan all along. She’s probably off galvanising the next best thing — she’s always been distracted by prettier things, shiner things, things that promise more for less. And as I look around at the others, it lands with a small, quiet thud that we definitely aren't that. Then I spot a familiar face. Andy. No — Alex. From the Plough. From Thursday night swimming. “Hey Andy,” I say cheerfully. “My name is Alex,” he replies, a little peeved — but then his frown cracks into a smile. And just like that, we hit it off. We click instantly. Hotdogs. Photo booths. Stupid teenage laughter. I feel briefly weightless. Reckless. Almost alive, which is a stretch for someone like me, even on a good day. He invites me back to his place. My brain goes into overdrive imagining awkward nudity, bruised egos, and a small parade of emotional carnage, complete with regret, apologetic text messages, and at least one ugly cry in the shower. I shake the thoughts away. No. He’s a friend. Just a friend. Plus, as much as my ego enjoys the fantasy that I might still be vaguely desirable, the reality is I’m probably more ‘meh’ than irresistible. I arrive at his apartment. The door is ajar. I hear him laughing with an older man. I say hello, but he moves through me like fog and opens the door to the apartment next door. I don’t quite know how to feel about his, so I sit on the bed and sob. Once the tears start, I can’t stop them. They crash onto the bedsheets beneath me, sudden and violent, like something breaking loose rather than falling. Then — “Amanda.” I jump — it’s Alex. I wipe at my face too quickly, like I can erasure the evidence. I don’t want him to that I’m crying. That I’m unstable. A blubbering mess of a person held together by soggy tissues and denial. He apologises and passes me a gift. It feels dense in my hands, solid. I tear it open and there is it — the boxy 80’s relic Nancy Wheeler was using to communicate with spirits. Because why would it be anything else? “You can get in touch with me anytime now,” he says. I frown. “You don’t need the machine,” he says gently. “You already see what others don’t.” Confusion prickles. My brain tries to file this under Compliment, but the folder jams, cabinet sticks, and something sparks behind my eyes. “Amanda… do I really have to spell it out?” He looks at me with something like sadness. Like tenderness. Like goodbye. A faint static creeps into the air — that in-between radio sound, where a voice almost exists. My thoughts start lining up like nervous witnesses. Charlotte losing focus. People not quite hearing me. Alex walking through me. Nancy’s machine screaming when I leaned in. My lifelong talent for being present but slightly… off. Like I’ve been standing half a step out of my own life for years. I glance at my hands. They look thinner. Lighter. Slightly unfinished around the edges, like breath on glass. “Oh,” I say quietly. Alex smiles. Sad. Soft. “You’ve been talking to the living this whole time.” The truth doesn’t crash into me. It seeps. Like milk escaping a broken car. Slow. Inevitable. Slightly ridiculous. Impossible to mop up properly. I think of all the near-misses. All the almosts. All the conversations that slid past me like fog through fingers. All the rooms I’ve been haunting without realising I’d died in them. I’m not lost. I’m not broken. I’m just… already on the other side of the door, waving politely while everyone else carries on inside. The static thickens. The room softens at the edges. Alex’s voice reaches me like it’s travelling through water. “You don’t need machines, Amanda. You’ve always been tuned in. You just never noticed what station you were on.” I laugh — a cracked, surprised laugh that sounds like myself and someone else at the same time. Trust me to spend my entire existence overthinking the living and completely miss the minor detail of being dead. I fade, not like a melodramatic ghost — no swirling, no wailing — but like a forgotten thought, slipping gently out of the room. The last thing I hear is the quiet hum of the static. And for once, it sounds almost like home.