1/8/11
Ghosts
It’s not killing that is difficult – actually killing a man (the act) is not a tricky thing. We’re so fragile. The human body can be 99% healthy and while and still die. A twist here, a break there, and it’s over. No, killing is not difficult; it’s living with the consequences that is so damn hard.
The ghosts had been building up for a while, presumably, so when they started showing up he couldn’t say he was really surprised. The ethereal figures were silent, just staring at him, looking as they did in the moment of their death. Some with half a face, others burned horribly, shrapnel embedded in their skin. A few looked perfectly whole, only the poison in their veins betraying their outwardly healthy appearance.
He had no idea there had been so many. He remembered the first few, of course. Nobody forgets their first. But now there were faces he barely recognized… children, women, and grown men alongside the elderly and a few that were barely crawling.
He saw them mostly in the morning, when he was just waking, or in the evenings as he was drifting off to sleep. They seemed to have an affinity for the dreamlands. The land they could never again enter and longed to rest in.
Sometimes he caught a glimpse of them in the mirror, shaving, or brushing his teeth. They stayed mostly in the dark (though a few of the more recent ones grew bold and appeared in the day light).
And then one day he woke up and couldn’t feel his legs. It felt just like all those tantric yogis claimed that an out-of-body experience was supposed to feel. Drifting upwards toward the ceiling, he looked down to see his own body lying on the bed, shocked into silence by the form of the young, thin man standing over his lifeless corpse. And in the morning light, he elbowed his way through the other forms, to stand behind the young man who had ended his suffering, wanting to thank him, but he never stood still.
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