never there

“And what if it were? Don’t tell me a single joke annoys you. Look, don’t shift– I  wouldn’t enjoy cleaning up the mess you’d leave afterwards. I just wanted to listen to your – most certainly – interesting and exciting story. There’s no need to make such a big deal about it, Klyner. Please?”

He laughed dryly. 

           “Is that what your girlfriends say to you before they break up with you?”

“Why not? It’s not like telling it again would kill you. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who cares about what you say, so the only person who’ll actually become interested about this would be… me. But I mean, if you want, you just can roll your eyes once more and keep it to yourself, K.”

“It wasn’t important, or I would have told someone that I knew would listen. Never mind; you’re not worth it.”

“I think I got it, but just in case, tell me the whole thing again, please – I wasn’t listening.”

“I’m bored and hungry, does anyone want to cure me of at least one of these things please?”

Lucas peered over his shoulder at the stranger. It was pretty dark out so he couldn’t make out all of the person’s features, but from what he could see, the figure behind him was tall, buff, and animal like. Some kind of hybrid from what the ghost could tell. 

“I’m just not a fan of being stared at.” Lucas pointed out bluntly, not even bothering to make eye contact with the person. He also wasn’t a fan of being dead, but he kept that to himself for now. 

“I wasn’t staring; you caught me looking twice,” he stated bluntly. Why would anyone - especially he, of all people - stare at a ghost? They were a common enough occurrence; it wasn’t as though they’d ever been hidden from him.

Needless to say, Adam was beyond proud of his carefully-designed prank. In his mind, he had planned everything, taking into account every single possible flaw and how to fix it– that is, until the manby his side began makign remarks. Adam couldn’t stop the frown from taking over, as well as the eye roll. So first this guy interrupted the execution of the prank, and then criticized it? 

“Do people often invite you to parties? I wouldn’t be surprised if you answered with a ‘no’, since you’re a huge party pooper. No, I actually didn’t hink of that. You have no idea what this guy did to me, which compared to ingesting paint, is a little worse. Sane people are boring, that’s why I hatched this plan up“. The idea of drinking paint was’t beatiful to Adam’s eyes either, and slowly his damn conciousness start nibling at him. It woul also, somehow, end up affecting Hailey, seeing as she needed to be near water often. Goddammit.

”You’ve ruined the fun for me now, thanks a lot.“. It would take him another five hours to get rid of the paint, plus one more for making sure the pipes were totally clean.

”Are you going to help me undo the mess or are you gonna stand there, throwing your shitty, depressive, sarcastic comments at me and criticizing everything I do?“

He ignored the eye roll in a way only one who often rolled his eyes could, instead pushing on to the next words he was posed with. “I don’t know what he did to you, but if you’re preparing a prank instead of tearing out his throat, it must not have been that bad,” he said, looking over the supplies again. To him, all of this looked like nothing more than an absolute mess, not something that had been carefully planned out and enacted.

“If ruining the fun for you means that I don’t have to drink paint for the next four years of my life, so be it.” Kly’s tone remained dry, although the slightest hint of a smile - or perhaps a smirk - pulled at the corner of his lips. “You see, I could help you, but I could also watch you struggle through it. Don’t you have all the time in the world, vampire? You don’t need sleep; you don’t need food. There’s no reason that I can think of for you not being able to clean this up on your own.”

“Can I help you??”

Lucas had felt the person’s eyes glaring holes in his back for a couple of moments now. At first he thought they would eventually go away, but apparently not. And it was starting to bug him.

It was dark outside, and the wind had a particular icy chill to it. Not that he could actually feel it. His body wasn’t effected by the change in temperature – not anymore anyway. Not since he died and been brought back to this damned town.

“What’s the matter? You’ve never seen a ghost before?”

“Unfortunately, I have, but not any like you,” Kly said, a frown on his features. It seemed that if he wasn’t angry, he was frowning - smiling was rather foreign to him now, as silly as it seemed. “You’re a touchy one, aren’t you?” Most of the ghosts he’d seen were happy-go-lucky; they didn’t appear to care that they were dead. This one wasn’t quite the same as the rest.