The Amperage of a Ghost

Each night, the machine took a little more. He could feel it, a hollowing out that started behind his eyes and worked its way down his spine. He called it job fatigue. He told himself it was the repetition, the endless cycle of taking a ticket, resetting the dial, and watching another hopeful face contort with concentration as they tried to coax the needle into the red.

The game was simple. For one ticket, you placed your hands on the smaller spheres. Artie would turn the rheostat, and the machine would hum to life, a low thrum that vibrated through the wooden floor. The big copper ball in the centre would build a charge, making the hairs on your arms stand up. The goal was to endure the tingling, the prickling sense of your own electricity turning against you, until the needle on the brass gauge hit one hundred. Nobody ever did. They’d always pull away with a yelp and a laugh, their nerves shot, and he’d hand them a plastic keychain for their trouble.

He’d been running The Static Tamer for… how long? The seasons bled into one another, a smear of humid summers and biting autumns. The carnival was the only constant, a travelling island of noise and light. He remembered joining, he thought. A grey town, a bus station. The memory was thin, like a worn-out photograph.

"One try, please." A woman stood on the other side of the counter. She was young, maybe early twenties, with dark hair tied back in a messy knot. She pushed a crumpled ticket towards him. He took it, his fingers brushing hers. There was a jolt, a genuine spark that had nothing to do with the machine. He flinched.

"Sorry," he mumbled, smoothing the ticket. "Been a long night."

"It’s fine." She smiled, placing her hands on the polished steel spheres. "Alright, zap me."

He turned the dial. The familiar hum deepened, and the copper sphere seemed to shimmer under the yellow light. He watched the gauge. The woman—Traci, she’d said her name was when she bought the ticket—didn't flinch. Her expression was calm, her eyes focused on the central sphere. The needle climbed. Sixty. Seventy. He could feel the energy shift in the small booth, the air growing tight and electric.

Eighty. Eighty-five. She was going to do it. No one ever got this close.

Her knuckles were white. A faint scent of ozone filled the air. Ninety. Ninety-one. He felt a strange pulling sensation in his own chest, a weird echo of the machine's work.

At ninety-three, she gasped and pulled her hands away, shaking them vigorously. "Whoa. That's intense. Feels like my fillings are vibrating."

"You did well," he said, the words automatic. "Better than most." He reached below the counter, his hand hovering over the bins of cheap prizes. His fingers, of their own accord, closed around a small, cloudy glass horse.

He handed it to her. As she took it, her gaze fell on his wrist. "That's a neat scar. How'd you get it?"

He looked down. A pale, crescent-shaped mark on the inside of his left wrist. He’d seen it a thousand times, a meaningless part of his own geography. But her question was a key turning in a rusted lock.

The Taste of Pine Sap

The world tilted. The smell of fried onions and diesel was replaced by sharp, clean pine. He felt bark scraping his palms, the precariousness of a high branch, and the gut-lurching sensation of a fall. A girl's laughter, bright and clear. The snap of a branch. Pain, hot and sudden in his wrist, and the sight of blood welling up, shockingly red against his skin. *Artie, you clumsy oaf!* The voice was fond, teasing.

He blinked. The carnival sounds crashed back in. He was leaning heavily against the counter, the glass horse still in his hand. The woman, Traci, was looking at him with concern.

"Are you okay? You went completely pale."

"Fine," he croaked, his throat dry. He forced the glass horse into her hand. "Here. Your prize." His own hand was trembling. He had no memory of a tree, or a fall, or a girl with a bright laugh. And yet, the feeling of the bark under his nails, the scent of pine sap… it was more real than the particle board counter he was gripping.

She thanked him and left, disappearing into the river of people flowing through the midway. Artie stared after her, then looked at his hands. He picked up one of the prizes, a plastic compass where the needle just spun uselessly. He held it, closed his eyes, and tried to feel something. Nothing. He picked up another, a garish keychain of a cartoon alien.

As his skin touched the plastic, he felt a flicker. A memory, not his own. The frustration of trying to solve a maths problem, the satisfying *click* when the answer finally came. It was a faint echo, but it was there. The prize wasn't just plastic; it was a feeling. A moment. Siphoned off and encased.

His gaze swept across the shelves of junk. The glass animals, the puzzle rings, the rubber monsters. They weren't prizes. They were an archive. A catalogue of tiny moments stolen from the people who played the game. And the grand prizes, the ones no one ever won? He looked up at the top shelf, at a multi-faceted crystal swan that refracted the light into a hundred tiny rainbows.

He looked back at his own scar. *Artie, you clumsy oaf!*

The machine wasn't just taking from the customers. The ambient charge, the constant exposure… it was taking from him, too. A slow, steady erosion of self. The grey town, the bus station—were those his memories, or just leftover scraps from someone else? How much of the man named Artie was left? How much had been ground down, converted into amperage, and given away in the form of a cloudy glass horse?

The humming of the machine was no longer a comfort. It was the sound of a parasite, feeding.