Sunday Short: Spiritwalker - The Body Remains
- Faiz Faisal
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
This is Part 3 of the Spiritwalker Short Story Series. Read Part 2 Here.
The first thing she noticed was the silence.
No pull.
No thread.
No tether.
For the first time in her life, she could not feel her body calling her back.
She drifted through the city in panic until she found the warehouse again. It was abandoned now. Machines gone. Symbols scrubbed away. The freezer missing.
But her body was still there.
On a hospital bed.
Connected to new machines.
Different ones.
She slipped through the wall and froze.
Her body was awake.
Sitting upright.
Breathing on its own.
Eyes open.
And smiling.
Her spirit recoiled.
That smile wasn’t hers.
She tried to return—forced herself downward, pressing into her chest the way she had done thousands of times before.
Nothing.
It was like trying to enter a house whose locks had been changed.
Her body tilted its head slowly.
“You shouldn’t have left,” it said.
Her voice.
But not her tone.
She felt something inside it—something dense, ancient, pressing against her like a wall.
“You were always slipping out,” the body continued calmly. “Always wandering. They noticed.”
Memories flooded her—machines, injections, cold metal trays.
“They removed what they could,” her body said, placing a hand gently over its own abdomen. “A kidney. Part of the liver. Blood. But organs can be replaced.”
Replaced?
The body stood.
Too steady.
Too balanced.
“You left space,” it whispered. “So I filled it.”
Horror dawned.
While she had been haunting the kidnappers…
Something else had entered.
Something that needed a body.
Her body flexed its fingers experimentally, as if trying on gloves.
“I am stronger,” it said. “No more drifting. No more weakness. No more bullies. No more fear.”
It stepped closer to where she hovered helplessly.
“You wanted revenge. You wanted control. You wanted to be untouchable.”
It smiled wider.
“I can give you that.”
She realized then what the kidnappers truly wanted.
Not organs.
Not just hollow bodies.
They were preparing vessels.
And she had been the perfect candidate.
A girl who abandoned herself nightly.
A body used to being empty.
She lunged again, screaming soundlessly, forcing herself into her chest.
For a second—
Contact.
Pain exploded through her. Her body convulsed. Machines beeped violently. The thing inside snarled, a sound layered and wrong.
Two consciousnesses colliding.
Two claims over one fragile shell.
Her body began to tear itself apart under the strain—stitches ripping, harvested wounds reopening, blood seeping through hospital bandages.
If she forced herself back in fully, the body might die.
If she didn’t…
She would never be whole again.
The thing inside laughed.
“You don’t have the strength,” it whispered. “You always leave.”
She thought of the first time she spiritwalked for fun.
The first time she used it for revenge.
The thrill of being untouchable.
She had always treated her body like something temporary.
Borrowed.
Disposable.
Now it was fighting to belong to someone else.
With one final, desperate surge, she shoved herself inward—
And everything went white.
Weeks later, the girl in Room 214 became a miracle.
Doctors called it resilience.
Nurses called it impossible.
Her parents called it a blessing.
She woke up one morning and asked for water.
Her voice was steady. Clear. Familiar.
She remembered her name.
She remembered her house.
She remembered everything.
Almost.
Sometimes she would pause mid-sentence, as if searching for the right memory to continue. Sometimes her reflection lagged half a second too long before mimicking her smile.
But trauma did that to people.
They said recovery wasn’t perfect.
When she was finally discharged, she stepped outside into the sunlight and inhaled deeply, like someone breathing for the first time.
Inside her chest, something shifted.
A whisper.
Or maybe an echo.
That night, she lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling.
She didn’t spiritwalk.
She couldn’t.
Or perhaps she wouldn’t.
Somewhere above the city, something hovered in the dark—thin, translucent, uncertain. It circled the house once.
Twice.
Then it drifted closer to the window.
Inside, the girl sat upright slowly, as if sensing something.
Their eyes met through the glass.
The spirit tilted its head.
The girl tilted hers back.
Identical.
The girl smiled first.
The spirit smiled second.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
And in that silent exchange, neither moved closer.
Neither moved away.
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