Danny woke up one morning and he couldn't get out of bed.

Just. . . couldn't.

It wasn't that he was tied down to the mattress, or that there was something wrong with his legs and he couldn't stand up. It was that he couldn't care enough to get his arms to move and push him up to a sitting position. He just. . . couldn't. His alarm clock was still blaring in his ears and he couldn't get up to shut it off. But it wasn't loud enough for him to miss the sound of the bedsprings in the next room creaking as someone got up, then their door opening, and then his door opening, and then Jazz came in, rubbing the sleep out of her red-rimmed eyes, and whacked her palm against the snooze button on his alarm clock.

"Jeez, Danny, how could you sleep through that?" She reprimanded groggily, mistakenly thinking that he hadn't shut it off because he hadn't heard. She moved to shake him awake when she paused, hand on his shoulder, and noticed his icy blue eyes were already wide open and staring at her. Staring, but not really seeing. His eyes were flat and lifeless. Danny's eyes were absent of any trace of Danny.

"How?" Danny whispered, and Jazz's how-could-you-wake-me-up-so-early glare turned into something different. Something softer. But Danny didn't notice, since he was already looking back up at the blank, white plaster of the ceiling. Letting himself be absorbed by the task of memorizing it.

Jazz didn't say anything to him, and it wasn't because she didn't understand the question. The vague, one-word inquiry would have been a mystery to all but two other humans in the entire world. The entire universe. Even Jazz didn't entirely understand. She just knew that there was no safe answer to this question-that-wasn't-a-question, nothing she could say to this quiet scream that wouldn't make him beg for a different reply. Jazz just left the room, went downstairs, and told her parents that Danny was sick. Really sick. That he'd thrown up on her and now he was sleeping so he should really stay home and everyone should really just leave him alone and let him sleep.

Danny would probably thank her for saying that later, but for now he couldn't even bring himself to care. He just lay still, looking at the white field above him and not even seeing it. At some point he turned and looked out the window, then at the foot of his bed, and finally at some of the posters on his wall. They all looked just the same as the blank ceiling. Not even pictures of him and his friends and family, propped up on his dresser, brought out a different reaction.

Time passed. Someone- Jazz?- walked into his room and turned on the radio. Then they left. Danny couldn't look over to see who it was. Just. . . couldn't. The new Dumpty Humpty single started playing, and Danny couldn't listen to that so he stood up and twisted the knob that changed the station. Even when he was standing up, though, it was just like lying down. He didn't really care enough to move. It just happened. Then a slow love song came on, sung by someone who really believed what they were singing, and it was too beautiful for Danny to listen to so he changed the station again. A pop song came on. To happy for him to hear. Then a sad song about someone who had lost everything, and Danny listened to that for a while. But he switched it off after a few verses. He would have felt guilty about listening to it, if he'd been feeling anything, because he couldn't listen to such a sad song when he wasn't feeling sad. He couldn't feel sad.

Just. . . couldn't.

After a while Danny realized he was still standing in front of the radio, staring at nothing and everything at the same time, and he got back into bed. Not because he wanted to, but because his body moved without him controlling it. It wasn't like he particularly wanted to be back in bed. He couldn't want anything right now.

Just. . . couldn't.

And when the Box Ghost showed up, like he always did, he poked his head through the wall, raised his arms in a (would-be) threatening pose, opened his mouth to yell his scary (read, annoying) catchphrase, and. . . stopped. He looked at Danny for a while, noticing how Danny just started back at him with flat blue irises, and turned around and left. He must have said something to the other ghosts afterwards, because that day was the first ghost-attack free day in years.

Maybe he didn't need to say anything.

Because all the ghosts had been there.

They'd been struck by everything, all just stopped doing anything and wondered. . .

How?

How does the world keep turning every day?

How can people die without everything just. . . stopping?

How can people be so happy when the end is coming some day?

How can ghosts keep going after they've figured it out?

How can they keep on after they've realized that someday, they won't be there anymore, that someday they'll just run out of life or energy or whatever and just stop?

How can anything stop being?

How can ghosts be more scared of death than humans are?

How?

. . .

Tomorrow, Danny would be back to normal.

He'd be back to himself, and he'd grumble at his alarm clock, and laugh with his friends, and gripe about his homework. He'd smile when his favorite song came on the car radio, and he'd hug his parents and sister and friends and know that everything was, somehow, going to be ok, because even though his friends and family were just humans and didn't realize how completely finite their existence was like ghosts or halfas, they believed everything would be fine. And tomorrow, Danny would believe it too. But not today. Today he couldn't.

Just. . . couldn't.