From the moment I was born everyone had thought that I was dead, and I had thought for the longest time that they were right; that I was dead because I did not move like the others, and because I was somehow able to think despite never eating.

Then I learned better, for one of them said that a dead one can't think and is gone from this world forever, therefore how could I be dead? Well, that started me on my mission to try and show them that I was not dead.

They never touched me, for touching the dead is forbidden and against the law. People would come and sit and read to the children that seemed to be always around me in the room, but none of them ever touched me; they all know that that is forbidden. It is also forbidden to bury the dead, for then their memories are gone as well as their presence.

The dead are not supposed to grow, but grow I have because they had to extend the bed to at least twice its size, and without touching me. That was quite a feat.

I had tried to sit up like I had seen the children doing, but while I could move up a little, it wasn't noticed, and my muscles and gravity wouldn't let me go very far.

I tried blinking my eyes, but that didn't work very well. By the time I closed them, or opened them, they thought that that was how I had always been, therefore all I could do was move my arm in hopes of grabbing someone or something that came close.

Two days after I started moving my right arm an earthquake hit and my arm fell off my chest to my side; I was so close!

Two days after the earthquake I got my arm to the side of the bed. No one noticed, but it was there, and if one of the children bumped against the right part of the bed, I might be able to grab them.

I had to wait another two days before my chance came; that was when one of the short haired boys finally pushed another against the bed. Naturally the old woman chided the boys quickly, thinking no serious harm had been done, but he had come close enough for me to grab one of the straps that went from his pants over his shoulders. I had grabbed it, somehow, and I wasn't going to let go.

He started to walk away from the bed, unaware of my presence on his back, only to find himself hindered. He looked behind him and noticed my arm, guessed correctly as to what I was doing, and started screaming.

The woman noticed, too. She tried to disentangle him from my hand, but I was holding tightly onto him: she couldn't dismiss it as an accident this time. She had to know then that I was alive and not dead as she and the others supposed.

She stopped trying to get him untangled, but the boy kept trying to escape my grasp. The other children backed away from me and the boy I was holding, then, and lined up against the opposite wall, looks of terror in their eyes. They had never seen such a thing.

The boy kept struggling as the woman tried to calm him, trying to figure out what to do.

He kept crying out and tried to struggle from my grasp, but I had to let them know that I was alive, that I lived! I couldn't have them thinking me dead now, I wanted to be treated like the rest!

He kept struggling and crying out, yet somehow I kept my hold. The woman then walked over to the desk, the only other thing in the room, and leaned on it.

"Bring me the priest!" All the children groaned and cried, for the priest only came to pronounce someone dead. "He's not going to be pronounced dead," She told them soothingly. "The priest is just coming to disentangle the two of them." That's right; priests were the only ones allowed to touch the dead, but not the living. The priests might as well be dead themselves.

The child kept struggling against me, trying to break free, but I kept my hold. I kept it even after the priest came in and smiled his haunting smile that stilled even the struggling child. "You've been chosen, you must become a priest." He told the child, who started crying anew then. In his eyes his life might as well of been over right then: he would never marry, have children, and have a job away from his house, or even associate with the friends he once knew. To him his life was over, now he too was dead.

The priest smiled as he pried my hand away from his strap and put it back on the bed. "I will take you to your training now." The child had stopped crying now, but the children against the wall hadn't moved from it, or at all for that matter. They too might as well have been dead!

The old woman blinked and protested. "Now? But he hasn't-"

"We will finish his schooling. Why do you think we put the children in with the dead?"

The old woman opened her mouth to protest, again. This hadn't been my intention! I hadn't wanted him to become a priest! I just didn't want everyone to keep thinking me as dead. I felt tears welling up in my eyes for the first time, and knew for sure that I couldn't be dead.

"Can I touch her?" The boy asked the priest.

He nodded and smiled, but it wasn't haunting this time, it looked like how a father would smile at a son. It was a smile that thought that the boy would be thankful and reverent towards me.

Instead the little boy came over to me, looked at me for a moment, and climbed up on the bed.

Both the priest and the old woman protested and told him to get off, but he wouldn't move. "I have something to say to her!" He declared to the two as he looked down at my face, touched it, moved it so that he was looking at me in the eyes. "Why did you grab me? Did you know that I would become a priest? Why do you want me to become a priest?! Why did you pick me?! Don't you know that my life is over as much as yours is now?!"

I did know. I did know that I didn't want him to become what I had, dead to the world; still moving, but otherwise dead. I felt the tears that had been collecting in my eyes spill over and trickle down my face. He gasped. "She can't be dead." He told the priest.

"That's impossible." The priest laughed nervously. "Why do you say that?"

"The dead don't cry, do they?"

"What?!" He asked as he came over and saw the tears running down my face. "Just water."

I was so frustrated I wanted to scream, but instead more tears just kept welling in my eyes and spilling over, flowing down my face as the priest gasped. "You have brought her back to life; you have reconnected her spirit and body!" He looked awed. "You are the one the priests have been waiting for. You will make our position more than it is now; you will teach us how to awaken the dead, you will-"

The boy started crying. "But she wasn't ever dead, she was alive, we are the ones who are dead."

"Dear boy, you are horribly mistaken, you have awakened her-"

He shook his head. "Don't you understand? She's alive, we're dead. We're dead." He started crying again and laid down next to me. "I want to live too. She and the others are all that we have left, all that we have left of the world. We are dead, they are not." He started crying, and crying, and crying some more. The children and the old woman left quickly. The priest didn't know what to do, he just stood there, trying to convince the boy that he wasn't dead as his own mind started convincing him otherwise. He was starting to think himself as dead too, and me as alive, somehow.

That was not what I had had in mind! I wanted to be alive! I didn't want them to think of me as alive and themselves as dead!

I started crying again and felt the little boy sit up and look at me once more. "You want to be one of us, don't you? You've been trying to get us to realize that you've been alive all this time, haven't you? You grabbed me to show everyone that you're as alive as the rest, only now you know that we are dead.

It is good to be you, to be alive. We are all just shadows in this empty world living out our lives as you know the truth; you are alive. And while none of us knew that we are dead, now you know, and now so do I." I wanted to scream again, for I knew he was mistaken, that he was alive, that I was alive, but I didn't know how to say it, how to put it into words.

He sighed and laid back down next to me. It was good to feel warmth other than my own beside me, but not like this, not like this!

The priest just stood there open-mouthed, not knowing what to do or say. The boy started crying, as did I. I knew he was not dead, but how to convince him of it?!

I moved my arm towards him, slowly. I felt him move and I felt him smile against my skin as he pulled my arm over towards his body.

That got the priest agitated. "Come." He told the boy softly. "We will train you, we will-" The boy sat up and hissed at the priest. "I will stay with my sister! She is alive, she has awakened me to the truth! We are more alive than you ever will be!" The priest made a grab at him, but I knew that if the priest succeeded in grabbing the boy, that I would never see him again.

Somehow I found the strength to move my arm and grab the priest's arm and pull it back from grabbing the boy who was burrowing further and further into my side. The priest looked down at my arm in surprise. He had to know that I wasn't dead now.

I turned my head towards the boy, trying to tell him with my eyes that he wasn't dead, that death was a choice, and somehow he heard me.

"How can you say I'm not dead when you're alive and-" He gasped at the truth. "We have both been alive, but some in this world make themselves die, and if I were to succumb to this life, I would be dead. If you hadn't grabbed me, you would be dead as well because that would be giving up." I slowly nodded, and he nodded back and understood. He looked up at the priest. "I will come with you after I help her live. We must show the others that they are alive, too, that they can live, that they are living." The boy smiled and looked down at me. "I will help you live; you won't ever be dead again."

I started crying anew as his smile got bigger. "That's a start. You won't ever be dead again, and neither will anyone else. We will show them the way. We will show them the truth."

I smiled then, my first true full-fledged smile. That was when I officially started living, in my eyes, that was the moment when I woke up and looked at the world in entirely different colors than what I had seen before.

I wasn't dead anymore, and now all we had to do was convince the rest of the world that they weren't dead, either.