“I hope this guy is legit,” I groaned as I carefully carried a jar of generic peanut butter around the corner if the public library and into a dark ally. “Crazy guys are brilliant, right?”

I had been walking so slowly, and I was so focused on the peanut butter that I hadn’t noticed the throng of staring people behind me. I heard a few murmurs and a couple yells, but the basis of the whispers and clamors? Look at that floating jar of peanut butter!!! Since I was walking so guardedly, I gave them a chance to capture the phenomenon. The once dark alley was now lit and the sound of cameras going off began to ring like morning chimes. They were now recording me with their cell phones… “God, I miss my phone,” I sighed. I tried to move down the alley faster to avoid further attention. Even though I use to be one of them, I didn’t want to appeal to the ghost and alien theorists. Now that I was actually apart of the mysterious world of wandering spirits and ghouls, I felt an unexplainable responsibility to keep it all hidden. Still, I was doing a terrible job at that moment. Besides, being on TMZ would’ve been nice four months ago when people could actually see me. But now I was trying to uncover something big and that could only happen if I got this peanut butter to the statue at the end of the alley. Yet, I walked as slow as a slug. I had to, after all, I was a ghost and I could barely lift a pen.

“Quickly, girl!” A voice commanded. “I swear, you’ve been in that same spot for a ages.” Someone was lurking in the darker end of the alley. Someone snarky. But it wasn’t a natural snarky-ness. It was more like an “I’m hungry” snarky-ness.

“Clifford?” I whined.

“Yes, yes. Come, child. Hurry!” He snapped.
I just let out an annoyed sigh. “I’m not your Chinese food delivery girl.”

“Oh, well of course not, dummy. You’re delivering peanut butter, not fried rice and an egg roll.”
Boy that sounded good. I hadn’t eaten in one hundred and twenty-three days in counting. I could practically smell the cheap Asian lunch: the sauce, the oil. And I could taste the golden rice drenched in soy sauce. I never liked the hard noodley things mixed in the fried rice but at this rate I’d slurp it like spaghetti. When I finally snapped out of my Chinese buffet daydream, I said to Clifford “Can you at least get these people out of here? The pressure is killing me.”
With a flick of his hand, and a spark of green lights that reminded me of lightening bugs, the people lifelessly withdrew their cell phones and walked away. By the time they had disappeared behind the buildings I was standing before Clifford. I set down the jar. I was exhausted… er, spiritually exhausted. Leaning against the cinderblock wall, I got a good look at Clifford.
He didn’t look like the typical long-starry-robe-and-pointy-hat-with-a-wand-in-hand wizard. He appeared to be some geeky Yale professor who probably taught calculus or biology (I wouldn’t want someone like him teaching my biology class). His ginger hair curled beside his red ears and lay sweaty and matted to his forehead. He wore glasses that you could barely see his eyes through. A few freckles… or pimples. I couldn’t quite make it out in the dark evening. I did see his bright green Minecraft tee-shirt and white skinny jeans. If I hadn’t known any better I’d say he was born and bred at a comic convention. His height was average… for a fifteen year-old boy. This guy was clearly going on thirty. Suddenly I was glad he couldn’t make any physical contact with me. I mean, I’m cool with nerds and geeks but Clifford seemed like a completely vile creep. And to cut it short, the guy looked like an cliché eighties nerd.
“Finally,” he picked up the jar and hastily unscrewed the lid. He dug his pale finger deep into the pasty stuff and slurped it off. It kind of reminded me of the two girls one cup footage. Yuck. I scowled deeply. Luckily he couldn’t see me do it. Not because he was like the others and I appeared invisible, but because it was too dark to see such a translucent figure. I was just some spiritual hologram. “What is this preposterous concoction!?” He gasped.
“Peanut butter, like you wanted.” I retorted.
“I requested the Jif brand, you dummy.”

“Whatever, they’re the same.” Obviously my answer wasn’t the least bit sufficing to this nerdy wizard. He looked like he had just seen a… never mind. “The closest store was a Family Dollar. You saw how hard it was for me to walk twenty feet. You’ve got to be kidding me if you think I’d walk ten blocks from Walgreens.” He still looked disturbed. I’d never seen anyone so upset about a jar of peanut butter. “So, what now?”

Finally he began to move again. “We travel,” he set down the jar. “We time travel with this.” He gestured to the it. I began to walk away… I knew this guy was just some nerd who played way too much World of Warcraft or Wizard 101. “Come back, let me explain.”
I only did so because I remembered what he did to those people and the magical sparks that flew from his hand.

I can’t quote Clifford. Whatever he said was complete gibberish and would prove nearly impossible to interpret. I did get a basis though. Apparently, the peanut butter contains some ingredient that can be used for magical time travel.

I had an expression on my face that must’ve been easy to read (let alone, see) because he retorted “Well, if you don’t want to know how you died, then forget it.”

“I do,” I said, trying not to gag at the sight of him sucking the peanut paste off his boney finger. “So, how will we do this?”
“Well, I work my magic,” he cracked his knuckles and green sparks burst into space then vanished just as quickly. “Then we’ll be transported to a time period. After we find out what happened to you, m’lady” – I scowled – “we use the peanut butter to transport back.”

Sarcasm boiled deep inside me, thumping in my ghostly throat. You’d think I found this guy on Craigslist… Nonetheless, I nodded.
Clifford wiggled his fingers and his hands danced in the night. Emerald, sapphire and honey colored sparkles shot out at random then began to swirl, synchronized, like a tornado created by a garden unicorn… I’m not great with description, sorry. The garden-unicorny tornado grew until we both were engulfed in the thick twister of sparkles. Our surroundings dissolved into the sparkles and all I could see was the starry dome of morphed colors -- green, blue and yellow -- above our heads. It was beautiful. I turned toward Clifford to tell him how wonderful it all was, but he was doing his own thing; what looked like some horrible sixty’s disco dance with a finale that would’ve made you think he was on Dancing With The Geeks.

“Ta da!!!” He announced as the sparkly dome dispersed. The descending sparkles faded into white and burst into nothingness upon touching the ground.

I watched the glittery magic sink and evanesce into the soil. Then, I noticed it. “Where are we?”

The ground, I was able to recognize as a dirt road, was traced with what I think was rat poop. Above and beyond, there was… um, what seemed to be town. The buildings were made of wood, stone and… dirt?

Before he could answer the sound of pitter-patter caught both of our attentions. I sought to turn around and see what the noise was but then it happened. Someone ran through me. Even though I was a ghost, I could still feel pain. When someone runs through me it feels like a huge tug on my existence, like the very apparition of me is being yanked into a dimension of elsewhere. Maybe that’s where I belong. Elsewhere.
The person who ran through me was a little boy dressed in filthy rags and he wore sandals that were eroded so badly he was practically walking on his bare toes. “Get it, Walter, get it!” He shouted to another little boy. Walter was so close to running through me that I flinched. They were chasing after a boar with wooden spears in their muddy grasp.

I turned back to Clifford.

He was marveling at the town, and not in an astounded way. “I… uh,” he swallowed, but I knew his throat was as dry as the Sahara desert. “We are in Europe.”

“I thought we were time traveling. Not vacating in European Hooverville!”

“Europe. Sixteen hundreds.” He murmured.

I was quiet for a long time, internally panicking. “What!? Ugh… okay, let’s try this again. Where’s the peanut butter?”

“I thought you had it.” He pouted.

Great. I’m trapped in seventeenth century Europe with an incompetent wizard, and our only way out is peanut butter which won’t be invented until the 1900’s.