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For so long, I called myself Ghost, but now I really feel like one. Like I’m drifting between the realms of being alive and being dead, cursed to wander forever because I fucked up the one thing I promised I would do.
I don’t even know where I’m going, and I don’t even really care. I just keep walking, letting my feet carry me out of the guys’ neighborhood and down the road.
The streets are mostly empty at this time of night, and it’s quiet except for the occasional passing car or the rustle of the leaves in the trees.
That starts to change a little when my surroundings do. I walk and walk until I hit a shittier part of town, and it’s much more alive and awake here.
It makes sense that all the respectable people are in bed, while the criminals and thugs and lowlifes are all up and about.
“Hey.”
A rasped voice cuts into the haze of my thoughts, and I turn my head to see a man in torn and dirty clothes coming over to me. I think maybe he has a beard, but I can’t really focus on him at all.
“You got any change, girlie?” he asks me, and I reach into the pocket of my skirt and pull out a couple coins I find there, passing them to him without even really thinking about it at all.
Two women walk down the street in high heels, and one of them laughs at something the other one says.
For some reason, that sparks a memory in my head of the way Hannah used to laugh. She was quieter than me a lot of the time, but her laugh was always loud and bright. I used to think that she laughed with her whole spirit, the joy spilling out of her because it couldn’t be contained.
I think about the way she would carefully dissect her sandwiches and eat them in pieces. Layer by layer, bread, meat, cheese, bread. I used to give her shit for it, teasing her about eating like a fussy old lady, and she’d give me shit right back, calling me an animal for eating all the ingredients at once.
I think about her brushing her hair out, and the way she’d braid it at night, hoping in the morning when she took the braids out there would be luscious waves in her sandy brown hair, like the women we saw on TV. It worked for about an hour, before her terminally straight hair went back to its natural state.
I remember telling her that half the girls we knew with curly hair wished they had hair as straight as hers, and she teased me for trying to give her a “the grass is always greener” speech. In the end it made her smile though, so that was good enough for me.
I remember the first time she tried to cook dinner, and how she set a towel on fire and we dumped it in the sink, and then buried it out in the postage stamp of a backyard we had then, making sure our dad would never find out.
Even though the kitchen still smelled like burnt shit when he came home, he didn’t say anything.
There are so fucking many memories. From when we were younger, growing up together and inseparable, to when we were taken by those men and used as a way for our dad to atone for his stupidity. I see Hannah’s face in my mind over and over, happy and sad and angry and scared. I see her standing up for me when some kid at school called me a bitch, and I see her crying when some idiot broke her heart.
I want to feel something as they all run through my mind. Happiness at remembering the good times or even sadness that I’ll never see her destroy a sandwich again.
Anything.
But there’s nothing. It’s like I’m watching a slide show from someone else’s life, standing behind a wall of glass and watching it all play out.
I’m broken.
I’ve always kind of wondered if I was broken before, but I had shit to do and no time to really think about it too much. But now I know. Now I really am. I’m not sure how to live anymore, and honestly, I’m not even sure if I want to.
Hannah is—was—my reason.
Even when I thought she was dead the first time, I kept going because I wanted to avenge her.
Losing her again after getting her back? I don’t know how to resurface after that. I don’t know how to keep myself from drowning in the darkness and numb silence, and it’s hard to come up with reasons why I should try.
A neon sign catches my attention, breaking through the loop of memories as I walk by what looks like a shitty dive bar.
There are a few people hanging out outside, leaning against the side of the building smoking cigarettes.
They eye me as I walk in, but I don’t pay them any attention, just walking inside and going up to the bar, still numb all over.
“Get you something?” the bartender asks. He’s tall and broad, but that’s about all I notice before I stop caring.
“Whiskey,” I manage to tell him. My tongue feels thick and clumsy in my mouth. The word feels weird, like even talking has become too hard to do.
He just nods and gets a bottle down from the shelf behind him, slopping a generous measure into a glass before shoving it in my direction.
I wrap my hands around it and knock back the drink in one motion. It barely burns going down, just a slight warmth that settles in my stomach when I’m finished.
If the bartender thinks there’s something wrong, he doesn’t ask. Just lifts the bottle and raises an eyebrow.
I nod, and he pours again.
I drink the next drink just as quickly, not even tasting it. I don’t know if it’s good whiskey or drain cleaner shit, and I don’t care.
Someone else comes into the bar, stealing the bartender’s attention for a second, and when he looks back to me, I push the glass toward him and meet his eyes.
“Another.”
