Being murdered isn’t fun. Especially when it means leaving
behind a cup of hot lavender tea beside your rapidly cooling body; and the
whole stabbed-thrice-through the chest isn’t ideal either. I have to say, I
hope the blood smattered across my face won’t carry over, wherever I’m going.
It mars my good looks.
The guy
who killed me, Sir Gerald of House Sinister, rises to his feet, knife still
clutched in hand. I’m dead on the floor, but I’m also standing behind him,
watching. It’s the oddest of things, being a ghost. (If that’s even what I am.
At this point, it’s hard to say! Did you hear about the chicken that lived a
year without a head?)
Gerald
clambers back through the open painting. After Shirley and Joe and Harmony
died, I’d locked myself in the foyer and propped myself up on a plush purple
couch, practicing my breathing. In an attempt to better find my center, I’d
closed my eyes. Still, I curse, it was no excuse to not hear him come
in.
The
painting is stunning. I remember examining it when Gerald gave us the house
tour. The artist had a funny name, Mary Marie Marigold. True to her name, she’d
painted a far-off field of bright yellow flowers. The plaque beneath it reads Inevitable.
It isn’t
large, by any means. But big enough to fit a secret tunnel behind. The same one
Sir Gerald snuck through before he stabbed me senseless. He slams it shut
behind him, leaving blood smeared across the once pristine portrait. My
blood.
I trudge
past my body and through the swamp of red to the painting; if I blur the edges
of my peripheral and just focus on the brush strokes, it’s like I’m really
there. Thin grass scratching my ankles and soft petals brushing my face- but
it’s then I realize I don’t feel anything at all.
I reach
forward to touch the frame. I expect the cold chill of metal as I rest my
fingers against it, but they’re entirely numb. If I try to tug on it, my hand
passes through.
Shivering,
I press my palm against the portrait. It shimmers seamlessly but does not
budge.
If my
throat wasn’t ripped out and strewn across the floor, I would have cried. If my
lungs weren’t hung from the ceiling, I would have screamed. But as it stood, I
was merely a ghost.
I swam
across the room to the door, still locked by my own hand. I reach for the key,
but the metal contorts itself each time I draw near.
Help!
I mouth, until I find I haven’t any lips. My eyes dart around the room,
until I find I haven’t any eyes. I lift my hands to bang against the
door, but now, now, there isn’t anything connecting my fingers to my
mind.
I am
lighter than air. I am air. And then-
I am
nothing.
I
hope my friends find me, I think for a final time, before I don’t have the
mind to think at all.
Points: 146
Reviews: 13
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