Spirit Surrogacy

The ghost drifted nearer to Lois—and the reporter found she couldn't move. It was like lying in her bed at night, after just awakening from a nightmare. She could feel all of her limbs, the pounding of her heart, the slight panting of her breath...eyes wide to see the darkness...but her commands to her limbs never seemed to result in them actually moving, so she just laid there, paralyzed, until she fell back to sleep...

Except Lois was wide awake, standing in her kitchen, and now very aware of her nudity as the cloud drifted toward her. The humanoid shape was falling away, losing coherence, face and limbs dissolving into shapelessness, all except for the domed belly—that the reporter could now make out as clear as day, the skin taut and grey, with hints of veins underneath, the belly button protruding.

Lois shook, instincts screaming as the belly drifted nearer and nearer...and her head and neck moved to track it, without her wanting to.

It was level with her own flat stomach now, the popped belly button level with her own, recessed navel. Part of her wanted to run, to flee, to just move, but she couldn't do anything as ghost navel hovered, only the width of a sheet of paper from her own...and Lois' eyes widened as she saw a thin white thread, burning bright, extend out of that gray mass and pass into her own warm pink flesh.

Suddenly, Lois found she could move—hands clenching and unclenching instinctively as manual control resumed. Automatically, she placed a hand on her stomach, where the "thread" had connected them for that brief moment...but she felt nothing. Not even a soreness.

Then the ghost began to lose even what cohesion it had, the grey belly fading. Not deflating, exactly, just...coming apart, like a cloud being blown by an invisible wind. It seemed to be shrinking, too...or maybe just losing mass. Lois stared at it, not quite comprehending what had happened...and then she heard Louise' voice, very clear.

She waits to be born, now.

And like that, the ghost was gone. Lois looked around to find she was alone, standing naked in the kitchen with an empty glass bottle.