Ghostly Attractions

- This has been edited several times, and I sure as hell am nowhere near finished with it so far, but after a review, I decided to give it more. I actually have a lot more written in a word document, but although I slaughtered it already, I am not sure how much more I can slaughter it.

Annabella Henderson.

The beach, despite the picture perfect image it represents gives me cause for concern. For, how can something so beautiful, be so deadly? Waves crash onto the sand, knocking little children over all the time, but all it takes is for one to be just that little bit too strong, and you could be washed out to sea. Water, despite it being beautiful; is dangerous. Water, is deadly, and for that reason it is safer to stay away from the beach. Not even is it just the water that could kill you, but it is also the sand and those things that wash up on the sand.

Pieces of glass, broken pieces of shells, and creatures with deadly stings wash up, and nestle their way into your skin. You move just the slightest, and there you’ll find your life source disappearing. A simple cut at the beach is more dangerous then any other place, for sand could get inside it, and germs could corrupt what is meant to be a small, easy to fix cut. Crimson blood will trickle for a long time before you realise that you are losing your life source at the beach. It will stain the sand around you, making it weak, and making you unable to do a thing to stop it. The blood may stop coming once you stop it, but the germs have already entered your system; they could be eating away at you now, and you’re powerless to stop them. So many people think that I am crazy, but that is why I despise the beach.

Not many people will admit to despising the beach in their lives, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. Some people don’t like sand, others the water and, even still for some it is that fear of sharks coming to eat you. Sharks are beautiful creatures; but they are far from the most deadly. The most deadly creature known to mankind, is mankind in itself. Murders are committed every day, and whether we know it or not, they are usually committed by those who believe they have nothing left. I had nothing left when I attacked Clara that night, and then, somehow I found my way back. I met him, and everything changed. Everything. Not just one tiny detail, but everything.

I’d always thought that to love someone was to surrender and bend to their wishes; but it is nothing like that. I had never known love until the day that I met him. That day changed everything forever, and even though I want to see that look of triumphant on his face as he watches the pain of every day life, I want to watch as he lives. I want to be with him as he lives. I however happen to know the impossibility of that action, and although it kills me, I have to live with it. I can continue with my life, and pretend that my heart never really ached in his presence; that he wasn’t the source of my tears at night; that he wasn’t the reason I threw away all caution to the wind and acted as though nothing mattered anymore.

The truth, is that there will never be another person like him, and as much as I want to pretend that I never found out who DesertedSoul was, I know that without knowing I would be even worse off than I already am. Sure, it hurts and it’s killing me slowly from the inside, but I wouldn’t be showing my feelings on the outside. Every time that he looked at me, I wouldn’t be acting like an idiot and losing my head along with everything else. I would be perfectly fine and capable of almost anything if I set my mind to it. Could I really do all of that now though? I do not believe so. That was the reason that I went to the beach that day; to clear my head and see things that I didn’t want to see in a different light – if that was at all possible. I may be afraid of touching the water, but it’s soothing; and I hate all that is soothing to the mind.

The feeling of sand running between your toes is horrible. It scratches, and you feel like you’re being eaten alive by some time little creature that you cannot see with your eyes. I hate it; but I can’t deny that it makes up for so many other things. It takes you to another place where you can’t feel a thing but that sand between your toes; even if it’s only for a few minutes, those few minutes are definitely worth it. Walking on the beach makes me feel nauseous at times also. With the hot sun pounding down on you, and the aching feeling on the sand between your toes, it makes you wonder whether it is really worth it anymore, but the answer to that incredibly stupid question, is yes; it is worth it. It will always be worth it whether I want to admit it to anyone else or not.

Sunglasses adorning my face as always, I shield myself from the sun and pull out a notebook to start writing; and that’s when I hear his voice.

“Hello, Annabella…” Travis sounded so uncertain it made me want to cry, but there isn’t a chance that I could. Just hearing his voice was enough to make my mind go in a million different directions at once; he drives me to the point of crazy without failure. It’s just how things go.

“Hello, sir.” So formal, I know but was there any other way that I could really address him? I wasn’t sure, and I doubt he’d approve of being called ‘DesertedSoul’ anywhere but on that site; he certainly hated it in the classroom at that one moment.

“Travis, please it’s a little…formal considering the setting, and considering…” He trailed off, but I don’t blame him, because in my head I was asking him to stop speaking.

The sound of his voice was like heaven had let the angels go and given them to earth. I wanted to continue to listen to it for hours; weeks; months; years. Forever. I knew that I couldn’t, but I suppose one can dream about that sometimes. Perhaps not all the time; because if I were to listen to it all the time – in this situation, my head would surely implode. There wouldn’t be anything left, because I couldn’t even look at him properly. The sun was on him, and it made him look radiant; as though he was from hell rather than heaven, but I still saw him all the same. I couldn’t look at him, because tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, and made it almost impossible to hold the tears back as much as I needed to, but letting him see me cry would be the worst mistake of my life. Though, perhaps that has already been when I told him who GhostlyImpressions was. I can’t really decide, because every time I see him it kills me a little more inside.

An uncomfortable silence ensued, and I wasn’t sure how to break it; even though I knew that I had to. He was expecting me to speak, but speaking right then I was certain that my voice would be a little less than a croak.

“So…now what do we do…?” It sounded so simple; but it wasn’t. It never could be.

“I don’t know, but you’re playing on my mind. Especially when you didn’t answer me after the first email.” A little bit of sand beside me shifted, as he sat down – leaving quite a gap between us, but still I felt the need to move over a little more. I wanted to move closer, but it was impossible. Everything about us was impossible. I know that nothing can happen, so I don’t understand why he keeps trying to change that. I’ll leave if I need to.

“I just…couldn’t. It was still too much of a shock for me, and memory keep forcing themselves into my mind that I try to force away, but it never works. I think I hated Clara more then ever at that point in time also, but that is just me.” I didn’t know why I had said so much when he was just stating fact; I was babbling in an attempt to break the awkwardness between us; it wasn’t working.

“Ah…”

It never ceased to amaze me how a man who looked so amazing in a tie looked so out of place on the beach; I feel as though he needed to have a book of some sort in his hand or something. Perhaps it is just me.

“I am sorry; you know that, right? I mean…I never…” I could hear how awkward it was for him to speak; how long it appeared to take for him to force the words out, but was it really any different to the way that I was feeling inside? The way my heart kept stopping, and then pounding harder and faster; hoping that he wasn’t hearing it at all. I couldn’t have taken that at all.

“…never meant to find out who it was that I was, well…you know…that way.” Travis was taking so much time saying it; I knew that he wouldn’t be able to say it either, and maybe I was okay with that. I know that if asked I wouldn’t be able to say it to his face either. It feels so different to see him in such a different setting. Saying anything to him will hurt.

“I know, I didn’t expect it either. It just…happened…” I inclined my head in his direction, to show that I had understood what he was saying, but really, my head was spinning; and he was doing this to me. He was sitting too close, and he was talking too much about what couldn’t happen; he was making this harder.

It was impossible, or didn’t he see that? Or, maybe he did and he wanted to put it into my head that it was impossible. Either way, this moment needed to end, because I needed to leave before I couldn’t stop myself from crying any longer. That was when he spoke again.

”I thought you didn’t like the beach, and I never thought I’d run into you whilst here.” He said with a grin, and unable to help myself, I looked over at him properly for the first time since he’d found me in this very spot. He remembered something that I had told him so long ago, and surprised as I was, it made it easier to free my tongue all of a sudden; I could talk.

“I don’t. Though, sometimes I have to come here because I can forget things when I get here. Especially when I walk through the sand. It feels revolting and there is nothing worse, hence why I come here: because I can forget things when I’m here.” I was repeating myself, I always seemed to repeat myself in his presence, but he tied my tongue (and my stomach) into knots that just wouldn’t budge no matter how hard I tried to force them to split. It was just what he managed to do to me.

“Why are you here? You just don’t look comfortable on a beach like this, I feel like something is missing.”

The words hung in the air, and I let them stay there because waiting for his answer would irritate me.

When he finally left, I promised myself that I wouldn’t put myself in a situation where it was likely to be impossible to speak; or to think with a person. It was one of the hardest things to do, but then again if I were to do that, I would never fall in love all over again with someone as amazing as he was. There wouldn’t be another like him in this world, and I was just going to have to deal with that one day. For now though, I would have to deal with seeing him every day, and knowing that it was so very impossible. Right from the start, I should have known that it would be however. Glancing around the beach, I began to wonder why I had even been here. Why I had chosen this very spot; I was obviously in the view of those that I was trying to escape from. Nowhere was safe anymore, and I was going to have to try the long way to get over him. This was going to kill me.

Marilyn Lachey.

What am I going to do? I choke up with grief with every word that I try to speak, and so I just don’t bother. I keep my mouth closed as the tears continuously cascade down my cheeks; I didn’t expect this to happen, and now that it has, I don’t know how I’m going to get through it. Everyone talks about it, about how hard it would feel to lose your best friend. And, fair enough it happens to so many of us, but not like this. She’s gone. Forever. Taken away by higher power that forced that inferno blaze to kill so many, and it broke my heart. Not in the way that most would think; for we weren’t together, but do you know how it feels to lose your best friend?

It feels like a knife has twisted its way into your chest, poked it’s way into your heart and twisted. And twisted. And twisted until it could no longer twist because you doubled over in pain. It makes you cry out in agony for what is no longer there, but what you desperately need to feel one again. It kills you. A piece of me died that night. The night that Annabella Kendrick Henderson died in the fire that had the whole street on edge. The night that the world lost the most beautiful soul.

I remember it, and I shouldn’t. I want to block it out, but that isn’t possible. For a second, I thought that she had survived, but the flames were too much. Too hot. Too intense. Too busy murdering the entire family. There wasn’t anything that anyone could do but try and save their own homes. Sure, I know that it seems callous, but I couldn’t do it. For a little while there, I wanted my house to burn to a crisp. So that I wouldn’t have to be here any longer, and listen to everyone tell me how sorry they are that I lost my best friend. They aren’t sorry that she died; none of them knew her the way I did. She was utterly self-less, and the kindest soul this world has ever given us. I wanted to kill every single person that had ever spoken a bad word about her, and then turned around and told me how sorry they are that she’s gone.

All those cows at school never cared; if they did they wouldn’t have talked behind her back every day without fail. They wouldn’t have done a thing to make her life hell. They would have accepted her for the beautiful soul that she is, and told her that everyday. They would have made sure that she was happy, and right with what she was saying. They would have talked to her. Not just to her, but constantly. She would have had more then myself, and the guys as her friends. I hate them, and everything that they represent. More then that, I hate them for what they did to her. To Annabella.

That night, when the flames started I had only just stopped texting her. She told me that she was feeling light-headed, and that she ought to go and sleep; or get something to eat. I told her that I’d be here, and that I hope it wasn’t anything serious. She has a low immune system, and illness is apparently one of those things that seem to just stick with her. Putting the phone down, I went downstairs and tried to turn the television on; and it was then that I smelt the smoke. That acidic stench that something electrical was burning outside was wafting in through the open window, I didn’t know what I was going to do; everyone else was asleep, and I was trying to breathe.

“Dad! Someone’s house is burning down!” I shouted up the stairs to him, and I stood and watched, my legs shaking anxiously as he ambled his way downstairs; I wanted to scream at him to hurry up, but I could not do that, this was a serious situation.

With the door open, I could see the flames down the end of the street, licking it’s way around the brick building, the home burning to the ground as people tried to get closer, only to be pushed back by the firemen. It was in those few instants, as the street filled with the acidic smell of it all that time stopped, and I realised whose house it was. My head began to spin, my knees weak but I forced myself not to collapse; I couldn’t do this. I had to know if she was safe.

“Marilyn, you can’t go down there!” Dad’s voice screamed in my ear, but I barely heard him. Why didn’t anyone understand the seriousness of it? It was Annabella’s house. It wasn’t just one of the stupid idiots that didn’t do anything, it was my best friend’s home, and it was collapsing in a firestorm right before my eyes.

I didn’t understand his words, why couldn’t I go down there? Didn’t he understand that I couldn’t live without her? She is the only one that understands me and who I am, and now that her home is burning to the ground, and the firemen are cowering in fear of the flames are lapping at the home of the most amazing girl in this world, I want to scream to world that I hate them. They have to save her. It’s not just a matter of losing another brilliant soul, it’s more than that and no one will ever really understand it. They never knew her; and I just hope that they have a chance to know her before her time is up. They’ll be missing out on a hell of a lot if they don’t.

It was then, as I leaned against Dad and tried to breathe that I heard her scream. It pierced through the air, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight. Goosebumps crept upon my skin, and I shivered when I realised what was going on. She was there; in the house. She was dying; burning right before me. The tears began, and I screamed. My voice cutting through the air, making the birds in the distance take flight as the house caved to the ground, the flames folding onto each other. Why did this happen to me? Why, this once did it happen? It was hell, and I was slowly dying inside with every passing minute.

My scream continued to cut through the air, and I wanted to stop breathing at that point in time. I wanted nothing more than this whole nightmare to end; I wanted her to come running from the place laughing. I wanted it to be a joke. It wasn’t funny, but it would be more acceptable then all of this hell. I don’t think I’ll be able to get through anything without her. She just has to be around somewhere.

When people say they’ve lost their best friend, you immediately feel sorry for them, and try to comfort them; say that it wasn’t their fault, and that they will eventually come to their senses. It wasn’t like that for me. None of that could happen, because I didn’t lose her because of a stupid little argument that seemed important at the time; I lost her forever. She died, and I couldn’t save her even if I had tried. I was heartbroken.

Later, as the days passed in silence, and nothing made sense anymore I realised that there wasn’t a thing that I could do. She was gone, and I was still alive. I had to live with that fact, and it was a scary thought. For, was there really a world out there without my best friend? One that was worth living? Would I ever feel as though my many secrets were going to be kept any longer? When Annabella said that she’d take my secrets to the grave, I didn’t think she meant it would happen so suddenly. And, now that she is indeed gone, I have nothing to do, and the pain the I feel is killing me slowly be surely. I can’t deal with this. I want her back. I want Annabella back.

She was taken prematurely from this world, and did anyone stop to consider the fact that she was needed down here on earth rather than watching from above with her smile fading slowly watching as everything down here falls apart. I want to scream at her to come back to this world, and stop making us suffer; but I appear to be the only one that understood who she was; and who misses her with everything inside of me.

Travis Nolan.

I woke up in the middle of the night with an aching pain in my chest that just wouldn’t go away. It hurt so much that it brought me to tears, and I lay there for hours trying to breathe through it. What happened to me? Why am I feeling this pain? It is so sudden, and so painful that I don’t know how to deal with it. It came out of nowhere, and now, it hurts more then anything that I have ever felt before. I want to cry, but the pain of it all makes me wonder where it came from. I know everything was fine before I went to sleep that night, but, after it, I didn’t know a thing. I don’t understand it; my heart is killing me, almost as though a part of me died.

I had never felt this pain before; not even when they died; I didn’t feel as though a part of me had been killed in the process. I didn’t feel a thing. I was numb; and that’s all I could feel no matter what, I just hated this more then I ever had before in my life. There didn’t seem to be any reason for this pain, and sitting up caused agony; it was intense. I could feel tears pricking at my eyes as my heart tore in two, and part of it stopped beating. At that point, I wanted it to stop completely. I wanted this pain to end. I felt as though someone had pushed their hand into my chest and had pulled my heart in two; literally. One by one, the silent tears rolled down my cheeks as the pain intensified. Some say that those your heart belongs to are those whose pains kill you more than your own. I want that to be a fallacy, because she has to be okay. Nothing can be wrong with her.

I could hardly breathe, and then, all of a sudden the pain stopped and I could breathe all over again. I tried to get up, but my head felt as though it were still spinning and so I stayed where I was, and lay back against the pillows. I wanted to sleep, but nothing was going to make that happen just this minute. It hurt; more then it ever could before. I wanted to cry, but that wasn’t going to happen. In the end, I drifted back to sleep. That night I dreamt of her. The ghost of Annabella was back.

She stood there, at the foot of my bed and I could hear her sobs, the tears visible in those haunting gray eyes that I love so much. It wasn’t possible, but it was real. Nothing was more possible then that, and now all the pain was getting worse. She was mouthing something, and as I tried to move closer to her, she back away, and screamed loudly, her voice hoarse. Something was wrong; so very wrong. She went through the window, and when she returned, she smashed the glass, and I screamed out her name as loud as I could. Trying to make her hear him, but nothing worked. She was gone, and I was in agonizing pain.

It wasn’t until a week later that I found out the truth. That, Annabella was no more, and that was when a part of me died. Nothing was set in stone anymore, and all I could think about was the fact that she was there, and that she was always going to be unless I could stop it. I needed to do something, but what, I wasn’t sure. All the memories that I had, all the conversations we shared were going through my mind all so often, and it hurt. I tried not to cry, and I tried to act like it wasn’t hurting me; but that wasn’t possible. It was killing me inside.

I said that night that it was impossible for something to be wrong with her; I was wrong. I had never been more wrong in my entire life. She was gone; she ceased to exist unto those who never knew her, and for those and did it was hell. They all died that night, but the only one that I cared about was her.