Note: For some reason I had REAL trouble keeping this all to one tense. Obviously the second part is in present tense, and the first is in past…but at first it was all meant to be past tense. And I kept switching!! Not good, Trisha!!! I think I am losing the plot, as I seem to recall having problems with tenses in some other writing I did recently. I have always been GREAT at getting tenses right. I hope I’m not about to die of a brain tumour!!

I also have to say that this new editor is DRIVING ME INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why, I ask you, WHY am I not permitted to use the curly thingy and the asterix??? You suck, editor!! You suck.

EDIT 11/05/07: It's been a while since I've read this. Now that I have, I see a few glaring errors. For one, the mother's hair being two different colours. Hence the edit! Hopefully it's closer to perfect now. :)

A Ghost’s Confession

I opened my eyes and stared into darkness. I knew I was frowning - I identified that familiar feeling of tightening skin on my forehead. I also recognised my thoughts: Where am I? Why is it dark? Am I stuck somewhere? If I reach out my hand, what will I touch?

Latching onto that last thought, I did reach out. It was something of an automatic gesture, but it was executed with trepidation. Wherever I was, I knew I didn't like it. I was afraid.

I had to get out.

With lips pressed together, I remembered my name, but it didn’t seem to fit me. Alyssa. I didn’t feel like an Alyssa. But then, I couldn't say what I did feel like. Perhaps I felt like limbo. Eternal suspension in the black.

But limbo fled as my fingertips touched a cold, rough surface. The shock of contact gave me that jolting sensation - the kind where you fell and then you landed heavily. I was touching brick, I discovered as I shuffled closer and placed my palm flat against it. I leaned forward and rested on it - cheek to brick. I let the inherent coolness soak through my skin. Really, though, my skin was cool enough on its own. I didn't feel warm the way a human should feel. I was missing my inner furnace.

A doorhandle fell into my hand and I twisted it. A spill of dim light filtered through a long, vertical crack as I pushed ahead.

A hallway revealed itself before me, and I knew somehow that I was meant to walk down it. I had to find something, someone. I was expected. I sensed somehow that I didn't want to meet the waiting thing. I advanced reluctantly, but greater than my quiet dread was my overwhelming desire to know. What was I going to do instead? Walk away? Sit in the dark? No. The only way was forward.

As I walked, ribbons of my hair floated up and about my face, pulled backwards and overhead by a silent breeze that swept over me. Red hair, like my mother’s. I recalled taking great pride in my hair, once upon a time. I had brushed it until it shone like rubies. The rubies set an impressive contrast with my burnished irises. Daddy’s irises. I couldn’t remember daddy now, except for his eyes.

With the silent breeze came coldness, snaking into my core, inviting me into a realm I felt distinctly too young to survive. Panic surged within me and I felt my gorge rising. Ahh, such a familiar feeling. One I had experienced not long ago, in a very different state of being if I recalled correctly. I could not remember the circumstances of that moment, but I knew that it had been a very different moment to this one. And there it was. A spark of recognition. My past was tied to my future. What I had experienced, I would see reflected in future events. A violent sense of déjà vu swept through me like a tsunami, and I knew somehow that some things were better left forgotten. Daddy might be on that list. And what of my mother?

I winced, for I could hear the gales in my head - my subconscious speaking to me in tongues I did not wish to understand. The gales carried with them a deep, numbing chill.

The hallway ended suddenly, and all the noise stopped. The gales had died, and I stood now before a gaping window. Through it I could see the glimmering city far below, stretching out interminably. To either side of me lay a doorway. I knew that I had to go through one of them. Knew it, somehow. But I could not move my feet. I was gazing at the window, out of it. Once again déjà vu gripped me, and I knew with sick certainty that I had been here before. I'd stared out this window before, on a night not so different from this one. And I had felt admiration then. Love. It was true that I loved this city. And I loved this view.

It always pained me to tear my eyes away.

Feeling dizzy with a strange mix of fear and grief, I turned to the right and contemplated the door waiting there. I reached out and touched the doorhandle. Immediately I yanked my hand away, wincing at the burning I had received. Hot. Too hot! I knew now that that door was not for me. But the sick feeling hadn't left me. In fact, it seemed to worsen now, somehow.

Attempting to swallow my nausea, I turned and stared at the other door. All my nerves seemed to scream. I clenched my jaw so that I thought my teeth might crumble, and reached out again, this time with far greater caution in my movements. As I touched this second doorhandle I started involuntarily, expecting further burning. But no burning came. This was my green light to proceed. I didn't feel any better, but I had no choice but to go ahead.

The door swung inward before me and I walked into the room beyond. Stopping, I quickly surveyed a starkly decorated living area. A dumpy couch sat draped with a red-and-white crocheted blanket. Shabby paintings hung on the walls – prints without glass or frame. A stained beige carpet stretched underfoot. I had been poor in life.

The scene unfolding before me was one I had lived through only briefly. I hadn't survived it. And now it was replaying itself in front of me. A roaring sound started in my head, yet even through the din I could hear sounds I had heard before.

There I sat on the couch, a former version of myself, head in my hands, shoulders shaking. Behind the couch stood a deranged figure, my mother only in body but no longer in mind, red hair flying wildly in all directions, shaking hand pointing a gun at the back of my head. She was shouting, shouting and spitting and crying, and while I could not make out the words clearly, I recognised some of what she said. I had heard them before. Her meaning was clear. Her intent was clear.

I didn’t even hear the gunshot when it sounded. But I saw its effect.

As I watched, my own head came apart and my hands fell from my face, now as dead as the rest of me. For a moment so brief yet so eternal, I hovered upright on the couch, face transformed and dented strangely as the bullet ripped through my skull and out my forehead. Then the moment passed and I fell forward, collapsing to the carpet in an unhappy tangle of dead limbs. A pool of blood began to form around my flowered head. My face looked alien as it stared sideways at me. The eyes, dark and huge and now slightly lopsided, sent a feeling of revulsion rippling through me as they watched me unseeing. Those eyes were crazily bright even in the glaze of death. I still heard nothing but I knew I was screaming. I knew also that a second gunshot sounded, and that my mother now made her own slow descent, falling to join me.

I fled into darkness and, for a time, knew nothing more.

------------------------------

Jenna takes my hand and squeezes. My ghostly hand. I have been silent only a moment, but the discomfort races in. I find it difficult to look into the other woman's eyes.

“Did you tell this to anybody before?” she asks softly.

I shake my head, and silence ensues. I’m not surprised. What can one ghost possibly say to another, in the aftermath of such a confession? She had asked me to share my story, of course. She can hardly complain that I did so. But I am not surprised that she now appears to flounder as for what thing to say, how to fill the silence.

I should have known that she’d come up with the goods, though. She’s been through her own hell, will be haunted by it the way I am by mine. She understands. Everyone here does. I should’ve known, but it takes her next words to remind me of it. She says, “You are a very brave soul, to have opened up to me.”

I smile a tremulous smile and dare to look her in the eyes. “I suppose I've already gained some strength from listening to some other brave souls.”

Jenna nods. “I’ve found it can be very therapeutic.”

I remove my hand from hers and work at straightening my hair, careful not to get my hands anywhere near the back of my head or my forehead. Those are places nobody can touch, and I don’t even wish to touch them myself. I feel them, live with them, and that is more than enough.

“And what about you?” I ask Jenna, trying again to distract myself. I clear my throat. “Have you ever told anybody your story?”

Jenna watches me briefly, and I see her smile falter and die. Moments pass, long moments. And then she says simply, “No.”

I hesitate only briefly. “Well…if you ever feel the need…” I know it is the wrong time to make that offer, but I can’t help myself.

Jenna smiles again, but it’s a far weaker smile than the last. “Maybe another time, Ally. Maybe another time.”

The End