ghost

'Please don't give up on me now.'

She remembers a voice, low and lulling but with a weary trail, speaking those exact words to her. She remembers eyes like chips of jade — fading, always fading now — staring back at her, into her, pleading with her to not give up. Cassia had held her twin sister’s hands in her own and had pressed a trembling kiss to her knuckles as she sobbed her goodbye. She’d turned away. She’d given up. She’d run. Could she run from Arthur now the way she had with Cassandra?

Her hands fisted themselves into the material of his shirt, pulling him closer to her in answer. No.

She wouldn’t run again. The collapse of the first time had been enough to cripple her. This wouldn’t balm the Cassandra-shaped wound inside of her, but it would be a step forward and a step made all the difference.

Nodding once, she kept herself tethered to Arthur as if they were each other’s anchors and blinked back her tears before she spoke. ‘Everything changed after he left,’ she started, continuing on like she’d never stopped even when the break in her voice told otherwise. ‘Not right away. I guess it took a little while to set in. I think we all just didn’t want to believe it. Looking back now I could see it coming clear as fucking day, but back then? It just seemed like one day he woke up and decided he didn’t want to be with us anymore. Mom .. she took it the hardest.’

Warily, incredibly so, she let the sadness of that memory seep into Arthur. She let it swim in his heart until it plunged the depths of him and then continued on with only a pause. ‘She really loved him, you know? She really did. I thought I already knew how much, but it wasn’t until he left that I found out.’ Almost absentmindedly, she traced abstract figures into the hollow of Arthur’s back as she recounted her story, like she needed the soothing gesture to keep them firmly rooted.

'We had this sitting room window that overlooked the walkway up to the house. One of those where you could see whoever was coming up to the door,' she explained needlessly, the image of those wooden slats and forest green walls floating into her mind. 'When he left, Mom would just .. sit there and wait. Wait. Wait to see my dad coming up the walkway to greet her at the door. He never came. She never saw him and all Cassandra and I saw was her back to us as she fucking waited.’ 

And there, nestled in the words she just spat, was another emotion for Arthur to latch onto. Resentment. Resentment for the twins’ mother and her emotional abandonment of her own children. Cassia and Cassandra had tried to pull her back from the pit she’d been sinking into, but their mother refused their attentions. Thus a chasm was formed between the girls and their mother, one that had proved impossible to cross.

She took a moment to let the resentment settle into something more focused, more controlled, before she went on. ‘To this day, I don’t know what happened. What made her leave that damn window and go back out into the world. Believe me, I asked, but she wasn’t good with answers. Not anymore. Not for my sister and I. And I was stupid enough to think that maybe things might be getting better. Yeah, she still wasn’t really acting like our mom anymore, but we figured that she just needed time. She just needed time to find us, to find herself again.’

Cassia went quiet and still for a long beat, fighting to keep the tears and seething feelings at bay as she bit out, ‘But instead, she found him.’

When she started her story again, his hand subconsciously gripped the back of her shirt and his eyes closed. He was readying himself for what's coming next. The world silence around him except for the sound of her pained voice as he listened and clung to each word coming out of her lips. When he felt the emotion creep inside him, it was barely as surprising as the first. It had no kick, didn't make his heart skip a beat. The emotion was very much welcome to him. It was an emotion he had lived with his whole life. An emotion he directed to his mother, to his father, to everyone around him, and especially to himself. It was the reason why he was now nothing than a walking dead man. The emotion he just got from her clouded his thoughts, but not with hers, but with his own. Memories of the life he lived. A past he just wants to not exist.

He balled his fist and clenched his jaw as he let the emotion sink in and the memories just fade even for a while. At the mention of him, he took a shaky breath. He knew him. He met him just a few moments ago and instantly he knew that man is not worthy being a pat of her life. He could already feel anger bubbling in him. "That bastard . . . "

The first thought that sprung forth was exactly that. This was all a mistake, a stupidly horrendous one, and she need only glimpse the burgeoning anguish in her dear friend’s face to know exactly how profoundly she had already fucked up. She can’t remember the last time she hasn’t felt like she’s poised at the edge of a great darkness, a sickness beyond the idyllic childhood that was eventually turned to shambles. It’s in her nature to be introspective, to find all within that is lacking and the emptiness she’s felt that was birthed by her father’s abandonment that had spread within her to the depths of that chasm. The silence of her dead heart is evidence of that.

Arthur wanted to know the truth of her, he wanted to see past the still waters into the deep, but seeing him now and how this was already affecting him told Cassia what she thought she needed to know.

Tapering off the emotion she was transferring to him, she appeared shamefaced and crestfallen, unable to look him in the eyes as her own glimmered with unshed tears. Shaking her head, she took another step back, her hands balled into fists at her sides. ‘I’m .. I’m sorry, Arthur,’ she softly offered, voice low and meek as she turned away from him and then turned back to him again. ‘This was a mistake and I’m sorry.’

He took a quick step forward and wrapped her in a hug, a tight and wanting hug. It hurts, yes. It's a bit too much for him, yes. But he wants to understand. He wants to know why she always felt this way. He doesn't to see her hurting and crying and doesn't even know why. He hugged her tightly as he silently sobbed, his tears wetting her shoulders. "Please . . . don't give up on me now. I can do this." he said, "Just . . . I want to understand."

What a strange realisation to make just as she was about to meet death once again. It shouldn’t have mattered, really. Cassia was already dead, after all, so what was one more trip to The Inbetween? She knew the place well enough already — the soft shuffling of The Blinded’s feet going nowhere, low sorrowful sounds, a coldness as profound as the winter that stole into dead hearts and scraped souls hollow — and she would suffer it with grace if she had to. All it took was one look at Arthur to unmake her entirely.

She didn’t want to die.

There he stood, her little piece of frayed humanity and strange longing, and she could’ve cried at the emotions the ghost sensed running rampant in the man’s mind. And she did. His terror, his self-loathing seething as he watched on, helpless. She could feel it all and more than anything she wanted to absolve this guilt from him, wanted to hold his face in her cold hands and promise him that none of this was his fault. Her tears spilled forth freely, blurring her vision, and perhaps that was the smallest favour if she couldn’t see his stricken face as clearly as she had been.

She didn’t want to die.

The ache in her bones and body kept her attention in place, even as the sharp sting of the demon’s talon embedding itself under the skin of her neck made her want to cry out. There was no way out of this, no last second defences to utilise against the creature and as this sunk pitifully into her stomach, her mind only focused on one thing:

She didn’t want to die .. but she didn’t want Arthur to die even more.

Once more, the ghost mustered the last bits of her failing strength and directed it to him; like a needle straight into his veins pumping adrenaline into him to get his legs out of the locked state they were in. And with the lights surging frenetically in the hallway in time with her words, she cried out, ‘ARTHUR, RUN!’

"Those words are beautiful." the demon said, looking straight into Arthur's eyes. "Now it's time for the real fun." She said then did the most horrible thing he could imagine. The hallway became silent except for the sound of the demon's laugh and Cassia's neck slowly breaking. His mouth fell open, tears began flowing, his stomach twisting, as he stared as the monster twisted the ghost's head once. Twice. Thrice, as easy as opening a water bottle. The final sound of her dying scream hung in his ears and image of the bones of her neck protruding from the skin of her throat. And with the final twist, the monster pulled her head off with the horrifying sound of ripping skin. The silence grew more and a shiver went down his spine at the realization that she is dead. She is dead and he was too scared to do something.

Too close. Please God no, he’s too fucking close.

The ghost didn’t get the chance to yell out to him. The pain bloomed in her chest the moment the demon took a swipe at her with its talons, tearing skin from muscle, blood running in steady rivulets from the wounds. Her agonised scream seemed to echo back to her in the space of the hellish hallway, her eyes screwed tightly shut as her arms flailed at either sides of her. That was when she felt the fingers on her right hand catch on something jagged, sharp. Acting only on instinct, her hand clutched the object tightly, realising only precious seconds after as the object bit into her skin painfully that it was a thick shard of glass. 

Didn’t matter. Cassia swiped at the demon’s neck first and once it was sufficiently stunned by this reprisal, she continued stabbing at it; chest, neck, face, anything within reach. With her other hand, she charged another current, surging out the electricity through her palm as she placed it against the demon’s chest and sent it flying back with the jolt.

Every nerve ending felt like it was on fire, like someone had doused them with gasoline and set a match to them. Her chest wound was crippling, still pulsing with blood and pain, and now her trembling hand was sliced to ribbons — the glass had managed to cut through down to the tendons of some of her fingers and her palm gushed red from the sharp gash cutting right across — and her strength was beginning to fail her. Even still, she tried pushing through, slowly clambering to try to rise from her crumpled perch on the ground.