Gaseous Girl and the Winds of Time 2: Interrogation and Soliloquy
She's a flying brick with the power to control one of the fundamental states of matter, but no one takes her seriously. That's about to change.
Previously on Gaseous Girl and the Winds of Time, our heroine had begun an investigation of missing actress Pamela Percy, only to discover that Pamela hadn’t just disappeared, she had completely vanished from the timeline. This week, she continues her investigation by looking up an old friend…
Madeleine’s boots scuffed noisily on the carpet of the dusty auditorium. Her hand brushed against a metal railing, and she felt a slight spark. Static electricity. Wasn’t that fun. Madeleine would’ve preferred to meet her source in a bright coffee shop, with lots of people milling about with their lattes and conversation, but unfortunately her source was a ghost. He was therefore contractually obligated to meet her in creepy places like abandoned theaters or crumbling mansions. The place couldn’t even be brightly lit; ghosts weren’t keen on shiny lights, apparently. This particular theatre was so dark that she could barely make out the pale outline of her source floating eerily about the stage. “Why have you disturbed my spirit from its eternal slumber?” the ghost intoned.
“Oh, stuff it,” Madeleine said. “It’s me, remember? I’m not a Halloween tourist. I know who you are. You’re the Baleful Burglar, a two-bit graverobber from 1800-something who tried to break into an ancient tomb, forgot to read the hieroglyphs warning about the curses, and got condemned by a mummy to roam the Earth forever, blah blah blah. Should’ve paid attention. Reap what you sow, and all that. My heart bleeds.”
“You take all the fun out of things,” howled the Baleful Burglar.
“Story of my life. So .Here’s the deal. You know people on the other side. Anyone you know who’s been ripped out of the time space continuum lately?”
He considered. “There was a Miss Pamela…”
“Percy, yeah. She’s my client. She’s a ghost now too. Thing is, no one remembers her being alive. No one. You see my problem. You can’t have a ghost when the living person didn’t exist, and I hate when people suddenly go non-existent without reason. So. You’ve been around. You know anyone else who had the same thing happen?”
The Baleful Burglar sat down grumpily in a chair. “I do not see why I should divulge the eternal secrets of the great beyond.”
Madeleine glared. She hated using her powers for such skeezy things as interrogation, but she didn’t see how she could get him to talk otherwise. You couldn’t threaten a ghost physically. You couldn’t offer to go easy on him later, put in a good word with the police. He was already dead. The worst had pretty well happened. But there were a few things you could do. “You want to keep haunting this theatre, yeah? Nice place, perfectly creepy, just the thing? Suppose this theatre caught fire.”
“You would not dare,” said the ghost, alarmed.
“Wanna bet? I’m Gaseous Girl. One burp, and this place goes.” She swiveled towards a nearby curtain. “Ten seconds.”
“You would not dare.”
“Five seconds.” She grabbed a soda can from her belt, the one she kept for emergencies, and took a quick drink as a primer. She felt the bubbles fizzing all the way down. “Better talk, or your haunt’s getting torched.”
“You would be committing an arson!” the Baleful Burglar protested. “That is a crime!”
“Public service. This place is condemned anyway. No one would care. Three.”
“I would haunt your dreams forever in retribution for this outrage!”
Madeleine rolled her eyes. “From ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, good Lord, deliver us. One. That’s it.” She prepared to blast fire at the curtain.
“Stop!” cried the Baleful Burglar. “I will tell you. I knew of one other person who suffered the same fate as Miss Percy. His name was Edward Brook-Wilkins, and he haunts the cemetery on Seventh Street.”
“Of course he does,” Madeleine sighed. “Would it kill you people to haunt someplace non-creepy?” She paused, as the Baleful Burglar looked insulted. “Okay, fine, sorry. Thanks for the information. See you around.”
Madeleine turned and flew out of the theatre. She had put on a slight burst of super-speed at the end, so she missed the Baleful Burglar’s final words. “Sooner than you think, Gaseous Girl. Sooner than you think.”
This is what it's like to be Gaseous Girl, right now.
You're a flying brick. You can also breath fire. That should be impressive.
You survived a car thrown at your head. It was a tiny little blue smart car but it still counts. You walked away, but the car? Scrap. That should be impressive.
You can fly, so traffic jams mean nothing for you. You can wave at planes from the outside. That should be impressive.
It isn't.
No one takes you seriously.
Everyone's a comedian, and everyone's riffing off the same thing. Gas jokes. Always.
The Walking Whoopie Cushion, they call you. Super Stinker. She Who Dealt It.
You explain that your main power isn't just limited to gastric emissions, that it means you could manipulate one of the four fundamental states of matter, if you were so inclined. You're a walking chemical weapon, you could explain.
They never get it.
What really harrows your soul is that even the villains don't respect you.
Not Lady Wagnerian. Not the Malevolent Med-Student. Not even Crudmuffin, and that hurts. The man makes exploding baked goods, but he doesn't respect you. That. Hurts.
So you've got something to prove. You will make them take you seriously.
You take risks you shouldn't, push yourself too far, because even too far isn't quite enough yet.
And so, when you could go to a quiet cemetery to track down an elderly ghost who may know about the missing person case you're on...you put that off.
Instead, you respond to an emergency call to attack the Shrieking Tree Demon.
It's taken down better heroes than you. You're a flying brick, but you're not invulnerable. Some things still hurt.
Natalie is invulnerable, and she's on the way. You could wait for her.
But really, you can't.
Because Natalie gets respect. Gaseous Girl doesn't.
So you throw yourself at the Shrieking Tree Demon, breathing fire. It smacks you away into the stratosphere like a Ping-Pong ball.
Still, you think, finally, as ice forms over your boots, as you pass out from lack of air, maybe they'll respect you.
You’ll probably never know, though.