Another little bit from the story I'm writing. The protagonist is able to see ghosts and have relationships with them and is determined to find the reason why. The character Amberline is a ghost she has been in a doomed relationship with for a few months. I'd love suggestions and reviews of this, particularly if anyone can give me advice on what sensory imagery / descriptions I can use?
“You’ve got a very prickly personality,” said Amberline. Lightly sitting beside me on the bed, he took my hand, which I found to be a patronising and two-faced gesture.
“Don’t talk to me if you’ve got nothing constructive to say to me, please don’t talk to me.”
Amberline dropped my hand, and ran his own slowly through his hair. He leant his head against the window, his hair becoming one with the perfect drops of condensation, and he looked at me. A look that made me so angry, I could barely speak.
“You always have something bad to say! You never talk to me like an equal. You come in here, you sleep in my bed, you treat my home like a hotel, your-”
“If you only knew!” Interjected Amberline, his voice raised,
“If you had any idea how much I care for you, how it hurts me to see you doing this to yourself!”
“Doing what? Living my life? Feeling my feelings, being true to myself?
Amberline shook his head sadly,
“You don’t know what that means. Being true to yourself is nothing to do with feelings… no man got anywhere by following his emotions, you need to control your emotions or else follow a pattern of failure through life. To know yourself is to know your goal, your path, no matter what you think you feel, and to follow that to the end. For God’s sake, a kind and honest man is in love with you, why do you have to put yourself through this?”
“Through what?” I admit, I was angry. I was shaking, and shouting at Amberline. Why do people always think they know what’s best for you, yet can’t see what kind of a mess they themselves are in? The people with the most advice, and the most willing to dish it out are most often the most flawed of all.
“Amberline, you don’t understand. Whether or not Daniel is in love with me is of no consequence. All my life I have lived like this, and all I want are some simple answers. I need to know the truth. I’m a prisoner of lies and secrets, and I need my freedom. I won’t rest until I reach the bottom of this. God did not make me this way, and in my heart I know it is what made my father leave. How can I live like this?”
“Take my advice. Go to Daniel. Go to your mother’s house. Go to the man you love, and go to where you came from. All the truths that can set your future free are hidden in your past. You’re a prickly, sharp woman - a damaged woman. Let Daniel love you the way you should have been loved. Don’t be afraid because this fear is the one thing that will hold you back in your journey.”
“Amberline,” I said, opening the door to the fire escape, and in the icy October air, I said my last words to the ghost, who had once taken my breath away,
“Leave now. Leave me to my own life. Leave me to my own decisions, my own heart, and my own fears.”
I never saw Amberline again. Two, maybe three times I was sure I saw him that winter, and once I heard his voice in the alley behind Revenie’s. I still walked past there sometimes, my arm entwined with Daniel’s, following the winding past of Old Street down to the river, where I first said the words I’d never had the courage to say to a soul before.
