She’s so fucking beautiful. I haven’t seen anything like her before,ever. I swear to whatever dark thing that watches me, she is carved from the last scraps of light this rotting world has to offer. I’ve seen her three times and each time I think it’ll be enough to hold me over, to quiet the screaming inside my skull. However, it only gets worse. It claws at my ribs; it howls for her. She walks around, oblivious… to the hole she’s dug in my chest and how I’d scrape myself raw just to catch a wisp of her perfume in the wind.
There have been so many times I’ve imagined her silver hair wrapped tight around my fist. Holding her still so she can’t pull away. I’ve dreamed about her mouth crushed against mine, desperate and bruising, until we’re both gasping for the same stolen breath. I want to survive on the taste of her, and her alone.
There’s something about her, something not quite human. The dead hover around her like moths to a flame, drawn to a lightonly they can see. She speaks to them in hushed tones, the same as old friends. I’ve seen it. The way her lips move in the quiet, when she thinks no one’s watching.
But, every night I feel her under my skin. The fact she speaks to ghosts doesn’t deter me. I lie awake with my hand gripping tightly around my cock. I can clearly imagine what her sweat will taste like when I’ve chased and caught her. Fuck… I can even hear the noises she’ll make when she realises there’s nowhere left to run.
There’s a hunger deep inside me that won’t stop clawing its way through my veins. I would happily get on my knees for this woman. I’d chew through fucking glass if it meant I could bury my face between her thighs and hear her say my name.
Before the last eight months of this year rots away. I’ll crawl to her door if I have to, my knees bloody on the pavement and when she opens it, I’ll pull her into me so tight she’ll never be able to leave. I’ll bury myself so deep inside her she won’t remember a world without me.
Mo chainteoir beag taibhsí.(My little ghost talker.)
Every night this week I’ve dragged myself under this piss-yellow library light. Hunched over stacks of rotting books and ghost stories that are getting me nowhere. I’ve read every dusty myth of ghosts and unnatural beings until the words swim in front of my eyes. Still, I’ve had no luck whatsoever in finding anything on my little ghost talker.
No trail, not even a half-rotted rumour. It’s as though she slipped out of hell itself just for me, a secret stitched into my bones that only I’m meant to find. It should make me feel special. Instead, it’s killing me. Every page I turn feels like another piece of my skin peeling off.
On the other hand, maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way, and it’s not about the stories at all. What if it’s the dead that keep her hidden because she’s too precious for the world to know about.
Fuck, I need to find a way in. There has to be a crack somewhere,a door left open. I can’t give up.I won’t.If I stop looking, this hunger will eat me alive from the inside. There has to be something somewhere, but where? Where the fuck do I dig next? I’d carve the truth out of a corpse if I thought it would help.
Every night I fail, she slips a little further from my grasp, like smoke through my fingers. The weight of it claws at me, relentlessly. I swear on whatever dark thing that passes through my soul, I’ll find something. I have to… because if I don’t, I’ll lose her and whatever’s left of me will go with her.
For now, I will watch her closely. So close that I can feel the ghosts clinging to her hair. Then hopefully I might learn something. I've seen the dead slip through her like water through a sieve, and I need to know why. Why do they gather, hushed and reverent, when she thinks no one’s watching. Why do they treat her like a doorway, like she’s the last thing they will remember before the dark takes them for good.
The last encounter I had with her; I watched her appear in a haze of black fog just as an old lady’s life guttered out. One final breath, then her, slipping in like smoke, brushing her fingers across what was left of the woman's soul, as if she was collecting it. A quiet thief of endings. My nerves burning like live wires, every inch of me sparking. Astonished and aroused all at once, I ached to reach out to her. However, in the fraction of a second it took to lift my arm, she was gone, before I could even taste the air she left behind. It was as though she was never there at all, just a shadow with a heartbeat.
It was in that moment that I realised that if I want to see her, really see her, I need more dead people. Simple as that. As luckwould have it, I wear the fucking scrubs. I hold the power in my hands every night I clock in for my shift.
I’m a nurse in the emergency department but even that won’t cut it anymore. This town’s, too safe and too fucking dull. There are a few car wrecks, a stroke or two. But, that’s not enough. Not enough for her to reveal herself to me. I need some fragile patients, who under my watch, come in breathing and leave cold.
Maybe I should switch to oncology? Or palliative? Or geriatrics? The old ones drop like flies if you just look at them hard enough. Just a little nudge here, a slow drip there. It wouldn’t take much… they’re already halfway gone.
Caught up in my own head, I stand up and pace the table. Jesus. Fuck. Listen to me, my hands were made for pulling people back from death and now I’m dreaming about tipping them over just so I can see her again. The thing is… I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop. Maybe if I try hard enough, if I provide the perfect soul for her, she’ll finally turn around and see me.
When she does,geallaim nach ligfidh mé di sleamhnú uaim choíche.(I swear I’ll never let her slip away.)
Do you ever get the feeling like someone’s watching you? Not just at one particular moment, but all the time, as if there’s a pair of eyes stitched into the back of your neck, like you can feel someone’s breath prickle down your spine. That’s how it’s been for me these past few days. Maybe longer, if I’m honest with myself.
I keep reminding myself it’s just shadows. That my mind is playing tricks. Especially with this secret rattling around in my head. Every so often I see something, just at the edge of my vision, a shape slipping behind a tree, or shadow melting into a doorway. It’s always gone by the time I turn around. Still… I swear it’s real.
This is serious, I think I’m losing the plot. I try to shake it off, force a laugh, tell myself I’m imagining it. I talk to the dead for God’s sake, so what’s a stray shadow or two?
Tá sé seo difriúil.(This is different.)
It’s making me jumpy; jumpier than usual. I keep glancing over my shoulder like someeejit(idiot), scanning the streetlights, checking dark windows. Maybe I should tell someone. Who though? Who the hell do you tell when you think the living are more dangerous than the dead?
What if someone has finally pieced it together? What if they have discovered what I am… a banshee. Or is it just some nosy bastard sniffing around for a ghost story to brag to their friends over a pint. Well, if that’s all they want, they can fuck right off. I’m not here to dance for anyone’s amusement. I’m nobody’s clown.
They don’t see the cost, they never do. They want the thrill, the chill up their spine when they tell the tale. They don’t feel the dead pressing into them at three in the morning. They don’t lie awake with the last breaths of strangers swirling like smoke in their lungs. If someone thinks I’m going to perform for them, they’re in for a nasty shock. I’ve spent too long hiding in plain sight to let some creep ruin it now.
Let them watch. I’m not afraid of shadows. I’m only afraid of what I might have to do if they get too close.
With so many rumours swirling around my existence, I've even started believing some of them myself. Most of them are a load of shite, of course. Old wives’ tales spun in the dark to scare children into behaving. Yes, my scream can cause death, but I don’t waste it on just anyone. I’m not a weapon for hire, no matter what fools whisper behind closed doors.
My scream serves as the last tether to this mortal plane; it eases souls through into the afterlife. Not that anyone ever sees it that way. All they hear is the screams and remember the dead left in their wake. However, I only use it for the souls who are ready to leave, caught between this existence and whatever waits beyond.
If I didn’t do it, some of them would stay trapped in that grey place between the world of flesh and the world of dust. Purgatory. It’s worse than any hellfire that sermon has ever painted. It's an eternity of standing beside the living. Screaming and begging into the void to be seen or heard, but forever invisible.
