I watch over the children playing on the playground. Their little feet struggling to keep them upright as they run after each other across the wood chips. A little boy named Jonah and his friend Aaron are playing tag by the jungle gym. It's nice to see the kids getting some fresh air. It's been so rainy the last few months that they haven't gotten out since it was snowing.
Of course I was here that whole time. I don't like leaving the park, it's nice here. The kind of place I'd never want to leave. I wish I knew.
I never got to go to the park when I was alive. The doctors would argue that I was never alive at all. When my mother was about to have me, something went wrong. Before they could do the C-section to save me, it was too late. I was choked by my own umbilical cord. I still have the scars around my neck to prove it, I usually have them covered by my jacket collar though.
That's how I ended up here, watching the living. In endless Limbo. Not dead, not alive. The rest-stop in-between. It's where all the souls go before death, if they had something attaching them here. Mothers watch their children grow up here. Angry souls seek revenge. Lost souls try to discover the secret of life before they loose it completely. It's where I've grown up my entire sixteen years.
The others say I'm here to experience life. To see what I have missed and accept my death, whatever that means.
Suddenly Jonah falls down. His knee scraping into the pieces of wood. He screams out, tears streaming down his cheeks. His older brother, Adrian, runs as fast as he can to the small boy, he tries to comfort him.
I have a younger sibling. Her name is Zoe. Cute little thing. Black hair, tan skin, the brightest green eyes, and a sense of humor that would make you fall on the floor laughing. She got my dad's Indian genes, in contrast to my mom's and my European genes. I still can't believe we're sisters. I visit her every Sunday afternoon, and wonder if she can sense that I'm watching her.
It's not like I can talk to her, or hug her, or be the big sister I want to be. She can't even see me, and I doubt she's visited my grave before.
I look back at the boys. Aaron is trying to get Jonah's bloody leg bandaged up with an over-sized band-aid. His mom always packs the biggest first-aid kit of all the moms. I believe it's Aaron who has the seizures, so she always has to be prepared for him to get hurt. Look at him though, he's still being a good older sibling despite that. I wish I had the chance to do that for my sister. I wish I could feel pain, like a real person.
"Kali!" Damian calls. I don't even turn around. I know he's only a few feet away.
"Hey Damian." he puts a hand on my shoulder. I wish I could feel that.
"Still watching the mortals?" I nod, out of the corner of my eye I can see the scars on his hand from his death-fall.
"Jonah's still crying." Damian laughs.
"He does that everyday, you'd think he'd suck it up by now." I nod scanning the crowd for a new entertainment. Damian notices and points to a little girl on the ladder next to the monkey bars. "Melissa's gonna do it today, I know it."
Melissa's a five-year-old with big curls in her blonde hair and a pink dress. She's always trying to climb across the monkey bars, but she's never even touched the bars.
I watch patiently as she stares down at the wood chips below the bars, trying to get the nerve to climb onto the bars. "She won't." I say.
I've watched her everyday, that frown is the one before she gives up. Sure enough she turns around and walks to the slide instead. Damian sighs.
"She looked like she would."
"Why are you here Damian? You hate the park." he pulls his hand off my shoulder.
"I thought you could use some company. You've been sad lately." I almost consider lying and saying that I'm fine, but he knows me too well.
"I never got a second of my life, Damian. It's not fair. I didn't do anything, and what do I get? A life where all I can do is watch. How is that fair?"
He raps himself around me, my face engulfed in the cotton fabric of his shirt.
"I want to live Damian, I want to feel pain and love and warmth and...and..." I swallow my tears, trying to continue. My throat seems to close up. "I want my chance, Damian." he rubs my black hair.
"It's not fair, Kali. But that's-" he stops, but I know what he was going to say "Life." but it's not. It's death.
He continues to hold me like that, to the sound of Jonah's sobs. "Do you want to go see that new movie?" he asks. Being dead we can sneak into any movie we want. It's not like they can kick us out if they can't even see us.
"No. I think I'll stay here." he hesitates, but he eventually turns and leaves. I watch as Jonah's mom comes and hugs him, making him feel all better.
I don't remember my mom. I never saw her. I've visited her before, but it's not the same if she doesn't hug you when you're upset.
"It's not fair." I yell.
I punch the tree, but since I'm a spirit my hand goes straight through.
"Angry?" a spirit asks. I turn around to a boy. His hair is jet black, he's wearing a black T-shirt and jeans.
"Oh, sorry. I just lost myself for a second."
"It's okay," he sits down next to me and I sit down next to him. "I'm Austin." Austin, Austin, Austin, where have I heard that name before.
"Kali."
"Cool name, why are you so angry?" he doesn't get it does he?
"I'm dead." I mutter.
"I'm sorry, I should have figured that one out." I shrug, he must be new.
"Want to go walk?" I shrug.
"Sure, why not."
We walk by the edge of the lake, our hands in our pockets. Not because we're cold, because it's normal. The one normal gesture we can have. I'm surprised how much we have in common. He likes Spider-man movies, and he says chinese food is good like I thought it would be. I also find out that he has a twin sister, a living sister, named Magenta.
I tell him about my family, my mom, my dad, and my younger sister. The ones who forgot me.
"I'm so sorry, Kali. It must be hard to see your family."
"It's okay, I don't mind. I didn't really know them."
He looks into my eyes, or tries to, he doesn't seem to be able to look right into them. I suddenly notice a lot weird about him. He has no scars from his death, me and Damian both have them.
Maybe he's a suicide attempt, if he used drugs that would explain the lack of scars and eye contact. I have a couple friends who did that, and it's about the same reactions. They can't believe they're dead and the drugs cause a sort of blindness when you reach Limbo.
"How long ago did you die?" I ask.
He hesitates, "Just recently." he stops there to say "I don't want to talk about it."
"It's okay, I felt the same way after I realized I was dead. I was three." he smiles, his warm brown eyes filling me with a flicker of happiness. "I couldn't figure out why the girl's on the playground wouldn't play with me, that's when the other spirits told me. Freaked the girls out though, I ended up haunting them."
"Haunting?" he asks.
"It's a ghost thing, when we get angry we can short-out electrical appliances, levitate stuff, and sometimes the more powerful spirits can show their presence."
Austin raises an eyebrow, "Seriously?" I nod.
"We mostly do it for fun." I slap a hand over my forehead, "I almost forgot, there's a haunting tonight at the old McDonald mansion. Do you want to come with me? It's really good for meeting the other spirits." he shakes his head.
"No, I shouldn't. I want to visit my mom tonight, make sure she's okay."
"Okay." I say, making it sound like no big deal. Of course I was kind of bummed, I really wanted to go with him. Hauntings are like ghost prom.
It's really great the rest of the walk, he's super sweet and interesting. When we finally make it back to the playground it's sunset so we split ways. Still really bummed.
I make it to the McDonald house just in time for the haunting. In the parlor is a group of spirits preparing for the scares,
"Okay spirits, we've got thirty minutes until they get here." Harold says. "Gwen you and James are on quakes." he checks his clipboard "Mabel and Holly, floating objects." I see Mabel and Holly's identical brown hair bounce up and down as they high five.
"Simon, cold breeze." Simon sighs and leans back on the velvet couch. "Jake, Helen, Ryan, and Tom, technical errors. Remember be careful, leave nothing to chance." the technical errors are very important, we try not to get caught. If we don't do it we get caught, if we do it too much they won't come back. It's a very envied job on hauntings. I can't help but to be jealous.
"Kali, Taylor, and Damian you're on mysterious voices. Good luck guys," most of the spirits start going to their places, "And one last thing." the group of spirits stops and looks to Harold, a small group pokes their heads out of the wall.
"They're bringing a Seer, I don't know if he can actually sense us, but be careful."
"Who is it?" someone yells.
"I can't remember, some boy and his twin sister." Seers are a small threat. Most of them are fakers, but only we can tell. Seers are people who can sense ghosts, their thoughts, feelings, position. I don't really take the threat literally, I haven't seem a real seer.
"
This is an amazing story. I just don't see the reason into writing this unless you were bored. Writing a story about the life of a almost-dead person is pretty intense, but great just the same. Hopefully, the reason of Austin's death will be revealed at some point.
Question. Can only spirits meet contact with other spirits? I mean, Kali's fist went straight through the tree. Why are seers a threat anyways? If the can sense a ghost's presence, so what? LIGHTBULB! Maybe this means that this is the start of a plot?
Anyways, I love where this is going! Keep on writing!
They can see through the Limbo to the ghosts, do you want spoil the fun?
Hey there, Stella here! This is such a cool idea! I loved how they're just sitting there watching the whole thing going on, and the idea that they aunt people for fun! What a great concept
One thing that did get to me was- how is this different from normal life, if they can walk and talk and watch movies and touch each other? They're just trapped on the other side, but they seem to have fun except when they're sad. I didn't really understand what the punishment or the downside was, apart from not being able to interact with your families. Are their emotions dulled? Or are the negative ones heightened? I just couldn't really understand the point in Limbo if it's just literally like life on the other side- I felt that there had to be some hitch which we haven't yet seen.
The last line was a little bit awkward- I wonder if that's Austin?! It just felt a little bit too obvious like "AHA A BOY AND HIS TWIN SISTER". Why wouldn't they just say, "Twins, or something" or "A couple of kids". I just didn't like the line at all, it felt really awkward.
But mainly, I don't have too much to complain about at this early stage apart from that main "what is Limbo" question. I loved the community spirit between all the ghosts- I'm a sucker for that kind of thing in stories.
Hope I helped, drop me a note if you need anything!
-Stella x
In my world Limbo is the section between death and life. It's when a person has a connection to the living world and needs to resolve it, until then they can't really die. But they can't really interfere with the living world except for the haunting which is special and limited.
Amazing I only found one error your sentence is continuous and in the following quote you
need a comma not a period.
'he put his hand on my shoulder. I wish I could feel that.' see? Its the period after shoulder that needs a comma in its place. That's pretty much it! You did really well. Its easy to follow the story line and feel what the characters feel. This is amazing work! I'm fascinated! I really got the wow factor! Keep up the good work! Your on the write track! Hahaha! Fabulous work! Honestly your doing very well! this is one of the best stories I've read in my lifetime!
-Krystal6
Hi Willow, I’m June,
I think this is an interesting concept-- a stillborn child growing up on the outside of a proper life is not an idea I’ve seen before, so I like it. However, I feel like your method of storytelling leaves a bit to be desired. The narrator’s voice feels choppy and fragmented because a lot of the sentences are, well, fragments! I think you should elaborate on these and connect others so that the story has a more fluid flow to it.
The way you currently have your description structured makes me feel inclined to call it an info dump. Instead of the information being gradually delivered with compliments of sensory detail (I can smell the scent of spilled juice on the playground, I can feel the wind shift behind me, etc), it feels like you’re just telling us this story, as opposed to “showing” us, which is a crucial detail in holding your reader’s interest. Including extra detail enables your audience to better connect, better relate-- for all we care, this narrator could just be an observer of the playground (which sounds bordeline creepy!), so you should connect him to the place with descriptiveness of longing, of a want to belong, interact, etc.
Another small thing I want to point out is dialogue punctuation-- we have a great topic in the knowledge base here that talks a lot about it, which I would suggest you read. But basically, dialogue is part of a sentence, and the quotation marks just indicate the part that was said aloud. Thus,
Because this sentence is continuous, a comma would be the proper punctuation to use within that quotation mark.
Feel free to drop me a line if you need any help. Do keep writing! You have interesting ideas, and I’d love to see where you go with this.
June
First off:
Sarah
"Hauntings are like ghost prom."
Love it! That one sentence made me smile.
Okay, so I really love the concept and idea of this story. It's super cute and the details about the ghosts are very creative.
The only thing that I have to critique on is that the flow of the story was a little choppy and the details were a bit scarce. But that's the only thing that bothered me, personally.
Over all, I love it and I'm going to go ahead and read the next part!