#infected!ghost

You were a scientist who understood exactly what was happening to yourself—the stages of glucose depletion, the slowing of your metabolism, the way your body was consuming itself to keep your heart beating.

Simon stood by the window. He didn't need to eat. He didn't feel the bite of the frost that seeped through the floorboards. To look at him, he was perfectly preserved—the same blue sweater, the same neat hair you combed for him every morning.

He was a monument to a world that had ended, while you were a flickering candle running out of wax.

Simon spent hours just watching you. His clouded eyes followed the shallow rise and fall of her chest. He knew something was wrong; he could smell the change in your chemistry, the sweet-sour scent of ketosis.

He tried to help in the only ways his stalled brain remembered:

He would bring you empty cans he found in the pantry, placing them in your lap with a hopeful, jerky tilt of his head. He would tuck the blankets around your feet, though his touch was as cold as the air around them. He stopped moving entirely, standing over you like a gargoyle, as if his sheer presence could ward off the shadow creeping over you.

"It’s okay, Simon," you whispered, your voice barely a thread of sound. You reached out, your hand trembling. You didn't have the strength to sew his clothes anymore. "You’ll... you’ll be okay. You don't need what I need."

Simon let out a low, mournful vibration. He knelt beside your chair, his movements uncharacteristically fluid in his desperation. He took your hand—so small and frail now—and pressed it against his own gray cheek.

For the first time since he turned, a single, thick drop of moisture gathered in the corner of his milky eye. It wasn't a tear in the biological sense, but a leaked bit of the soul he had fought so hard to keep.

He watched your eyelids flutter and close. He stayed there as the sun set and the room turned to ink. He didn't move when your hand went cold, matching his own. He simply waited, the silent protector of a house that was finally, truly empty, holding the hand of the woman who had spent her last days making sure he looked like a man.

—

The world had been a series of blurred shapes and muffled echoes for a long time. To Simon, time wasn't measured in hours, but in the temperature of your skin and the specific vibration of your voice against the quiet of the house.

He felt the static in his brain—the white noise of the virus that had tried to eat his mind and failed. It was like looking through a frosted window. He could see you, but he couldn't quite reach you.

He watched you now, slumped in the chair. You were so small. Every time he tucked the blanket around you, you seemed to take up less space, as if you were evaporating into the cold air.

He didn't feel hunger, but he felt a different kind of void. It was a hollow ache in the center of his chest where his heart used to beat—a phantom limb of the soul. He saw the way your breathing had changed, turning into a shallow, jagged rhythm that reminded him of a bird with a broken wing.

He knelt. The floorboards didn't feel cold to his dead nerves, but he knew they were. He knew you were freezing.

He wanted to tell you not to go. He wanted to tell you that the blue sweater was itchy, or that the tea you tried to make him weeks ago smelled like the spring they met. But the muscles in his throat were like rusted iron. Every thought he had turned into a low, dry rattle before it could reach his lips.

He pushed. He fought the fog in his head with a ferocity he hadn't used since the day he was bitten. He gathered every scrap of who he used to be—the man who bought you lilies, the man who danced with you in their first kitchen, the man who promised forever.

He took your hand. It was transitionary—no longer warm, but not yet as cold as his.

Your eyes flickered open one last time. They were dull, unfocused, searching for him in the twilight.

Simon leaned in. He forced air through lungs that didn't want to move. He broke the rusted locks of his own throat. It felt like glass tearing, like a mountain moving, but he forced the sound out into the silver silence of the room.

It wasn't a groan. It wasn't a vibration. It was your name, clear and heavy with a decade of unspoken devotion.

Your lips curved—just a ghost of a smile, a tiny exhale of relief. You closed your eyes, your head lolling against the chair.

Simon didn't stop holding your hand. He didn't move when the last of your warmth faded. He simply stayed, the name still echoing in the hollows of his chest, finally understanding that his "forever" had just begun.

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