It was a weightless that I first remembered… a weightlessness, and a strange sense of non-existence. It was as if I was dreaming… but aware. It was like I was floating in an endless void, absent from reality, as if reality, to me, was a mere distant distant fantasy.
Then, there was a sound. A soft sound, that was familiar, as if I had heard it before, even prior to the weightlessness and the sense of being nothing.
The sound was… a voice: “Wake up,” it called. “Wake up. Wake up.”
A light poured down over me, and the weightlessness parted from me. Instead, the weight of the world and ever more, it seemed like, took its place and began to press down upon me.
Wake up. Wake up!
Reality began to seep through, following the light, and it started to take form. At first, it was all blurry, distorted, just a simplistic colour: pale. Then, it started to clear, as if a heavy fog was being lifted, so I could see the truth.
The truth? Well, the first truth I saw was a light hanging overneath me. The second truth was I could not feel my body, but I felt reality press down on me - on my soul - slowly crushing me.
I looked down and saw my body: stripped, barren from any sort of clothing - pale as the light. I looked down at my hands, and I raised them, bringing them to my eyes. They were right in front of me, yet they felt countless miles away, void from feeling. I felt entranced by this, by this lack of self-feeling. It was as if I was disconnected from my body, yet still in control. I continued to study my hands, trying to study and make sense of every detail; but they were bare. They were perfect. Too perfect.
Wake up.
The voice had pulled me from my hands. I looked around to see where its source of origin was… yet it seemed like it was emanating from everywhere. Everywhere in the place where I was: a pale, perfect room. Unscratched, nor any dirt whatsoever. Not even a speck. It felt wrong, like such perfect should not even exist.
I began to sit up, for I was lying down on a table akin to the room, and my hands: pale and perfect. I started to examine this vessel of mine. It looked soft, yet angular and slender. Both curvaceous, yet lithe. Hauntingly beautiful. I saw no scratches, no stretch marks, no bruises. Just a perfect pale.
“Hello,” the voice said suddenly.
I gazed up, around at the pale, thinking something had changed. I was wrong. The perfect was unaltered. Undisturbed.
“Hello?” I said; my voice silken soft, like the gentle strum of a harp.
“Hi!” An orb of the same hue of everything suddenly appeared - instantaneously materializing out of thin air. It started to whirl and float around me in a frantic, yet curious speed.
I, in a similar mindset to its speed, kept my gaze upon it - studying it as it seemingly studied me. A faultless sphere, I deduced, without the hindering of imperfection.
“You must be Ghost!” It finally said.
“Ghost?” I asked. What did it mean by Ghost?
It halted, staying buoyant within the air.
“Oh? You don’t know, do you?”
I was confused by this remark, unsure of what it meant by it, unsure of what I did not know.
“Don’t know what?”
A nervous chuckle carried through, then silence stole its place - though only for a few moments. Regardless, it weighed down on me with the crushing world.
After the silence broke the voice started to sound dissonant. The first imperfection.
“Well, how do I put it… well, um… you see, Ghost is your name! Now it is… well, erm… you see! Well, technically you are dead!”
Dead? What was dead? It felt like a big word that I was lacking. A word on which I could not fathom.
“Dead?” I asked.
“Oh!” The voice squeaked, growing more atonal. “Oh, dear, dear, dear! This is not good… not good… um… well, we’ll have to come back to that later… um… you probably want my name! My name! My name is Melody! I am Melody! I am supposed to be your… assistant… in a strange, abstract sense. Think me more as a… guide. Yes! A guide!”
“A guide? What do you mean?”
The sphere started to whizz around the room, touching corner to corner, as if it was checking them, regardless for them being peerless. Quickly, it circled around me and stopped once in front of me. Then the pale of the room started to melt off, like a new flower was blooming forth from a long and dreadful winter.
The wall in front of me showed a woman, who was sitting up on a pale table, staring right at me, and a pale orb, too, was in front of her. Her body was also flawless and pale, just like mine. Both curvaceous and slender. Her face was composed of sharp angles and hard features. She had hair that was the colour of beautiful, deep sunsets, hanging low over the horizon - and it was woven tightly in such a wondrous braid, not a hair was in the slightest form of disarray.
She was beautiful, and perfect, flawless, save for her eyes. Her eyes were mismatched, as if whoever put them there did not have a pair of the same colour, so they had to put in place two of different colours. One was a golden amber, akin to a high risen sun, gleaming over a day of sheer bliss; while the other was a dark blue, equivalent to a deep ocean that held ancient mysteries no mortal ever unearthed.
Solitarily, the eyes had an an elegance unmatched; but when seen together, they seemed inharmonious. Wrong. Regardless of the error, I felt enthralled by them - and I had a suspicion that she too was spellbound to my eyes. It was strange.
I stood up from where I was sitting, to get a better look at the flawed gems of her eyes; but she too stood from her table. Instantaneously, as if she knew my actions prior to their occurrence, and she had the audacity to merely copy me. Or, perhaps, I was copying her without realization.
I started to step closer to her and she did the same. I walked as closely as I could, until there was a barrier, arresting me from touching her. She too walked and stood as closely as she could, but she seemed trapped on the other side of the barrier, as well. I rose my hand, and she in turn did with hers. I wavered it around, and she did the same. Perfectly synchronized. Each act was instantaneously copied flawlessly. In tune. Never causing error to beat.
“Who is she?” I asked, and assuming by the motion of her lips, she pondered that very question, as well.
“Well,” said the voice. “She is you.”
She is me? How is that possible? Then she began to fade and the only remains of her and where she stood was a wall of darkness.
“She wasn’t real, you see. That was a mirror - a copy of you projecting back to yourself. That’s what you look like.”
I glared back at the orb. “That is what I look like?” I touched my face, though unfeeling of anything.
“Yes, it is. Do you not like what you look like?”
“No,” said I, retracting my hand from my face, thinking about the mismatched eyes - my eyes - and their flaw. “It is just the eyes. The eyes seem rather out of place. Dissimilar.”
“Ah! Well! They are very beautiful eyes! I say that they are a very beautiful set of eyes. The most beautiful!”
Beauty when alone, yes. Each eye is beautiful. Though when placed together, they seemed wrong.
I turned my gaze back to the dark wall, thinking about the mirror of myself. The hair, the face, the eyes. They were mine and mine alone.
As I pondered on the image of myself, a noise screeched across the room - reverberating across its very walls. It was a bitter sound that shattered my thoughts of self-beauty, and turned into thoughts of surprise and alarm. Danger that rumbled ahead. The sphere started to distort, shifting in and out of the materialistic realm, as if it were losing itself to the noise.
The walls too semed affected by the noise, and began to morph through colour, where I caught the occasional, yet fragmented glimpse of myself. The room shifted to pieces of darkness, light, and a furious crimson that seemed enraged - ready to attack me.
“What is going on?” I asked, as I tried to understand what was occurring. First, weightlessness; now, a crimson of fury, flashing between light, dark and fragmented copies of myself. Plunged into distortion and chaos. Imperfect. Even the voice dipped into the seething cauldron of malformation and fragmentation.
“H— he— sa— sa— err— err— error— please— please— please— Ghost— Vada—.”
Vada. That word I heard clearer than the others, as if it were a lighthouse admits the seething distortion. Vada felt familiar and kind, like whatever stood behind Vada was something I could embrace myself in. It was feeling even when I could not feel.
“Vada,” I said under my breath, trying to hear the word from my own voice, amidst the crazed distortion. “Vada.”
The chaos started to dim from myself, though still, in the background, it wailed in its cacophony of uncertainty.
I closed my eyes, entrapping myself in darkness.
“Vada.”
Vada.
Silence. Silence stole away the havoc, and I opened my eyes to still find myself in darkness; but lonesome I was not. There was a woman, who stood in front of me. Bare as myself.
Her body was plump, a pearish shape. Ample from an addition padding of flesh. There were scars, and stretches marks. Birthmarks and bruises. All scattered across her body, as if someone spilled them upon her. Her visage was a roundish shape, complimenting her body. Her hair was long and wild, and it was the hue of coffee brown. Her eyes were a blue-teal colour, like that of sapphires, though cracked and chipped.
She was imperfect, imperfect as I ever saw; but she was beyond beautiful. Beyond words to describe. She was like a painting on which the artist did not want to create something of perfection, but something of importance and magnificent, departed the many flaws to the work of art.
I started to walk towards the woman of beauteous composition, and instead of an immediate copying, she remained planted, though staring at me in the darkness. Her sapphires were wide, they drew in wonderment and they sparkled with a familiar delight… as if I had seen them countless times before.
Her mouth began to move, as if she was trying to say something, though devoid she was from noise. The motion seemed soft and fluid. Her words must have been genuine, of her heart, yet I could not hear them. Regardless, she repeated the same motion time and time again. Well, two motions that seemed to be amalgamating a singular word. A big word. Though despite the lack of audio her lips drew up cards of accustomation, it was almost as if I could read them.
Shadow. They said. Shadow.
What could Shadow mean? I felt clueless, though my curiosity was soon overwashed by the imperfections beauty of this woman. As I continued to examine her, I caught the first scent: a sweet, mellow smell that made me think of a scarlet; but not a scarlet of anger nor rage. This scarlet seemed different. It felt big, and wonderful, and terrifying. I did not feel accustomed towards it, but it was something I had felt many times prior. It was a feeling that I simultaneously loathed, yet had lust for. It was a feeling that I wanted to cast away, but keep ever so close to me. I made me feel divided, as if I could not trust my very self.
As I contemplated the scarlet, the smell began to disform into harsh tones that made grey foam up within my mind. A grey that was all consuming, a grey that was followed by bright oranges and yellows of wavering destruction.
The woman started to melt away into darkness - the last of her I saw were her sapphires of sparkling delight. The darkness followed after her, subsiding away from me, melting away into an inky ooze. Then into nothing.
I found myself once again in the room that was once pale. Instead, the room pulsated in crimson, peering down at me as if I had sinned; and the sphere had disappeared from the realm of matter. The stench of harsh grey hung heavily like a great weight across the room.
“Melody?” I asked, trying to fathom what was occurring.
There was no response. It was only silence, the scent of grey, and a room of throbbing red.
“Melody? What is going on?” I asked once more. There was a silence that followed subsequently to my question, but a response flared up moments after. Although it was not a response I was anticipating.
The wall ahead of me began to open forth, leading to what resembled a cavern eclipsed in a thick veil of darkness. I gazed down at the darkness, questioning the meaning of such an occurrence.
“Melody—.”
I was abruptly sliced off by a frantic squeal from the voice: “Get out! Get out of there, Ghost! You need to go now!”
The darkness flickered away, and the cavern was a lengthy corridor that pounded with the same rhythmic crimson as the room. In trust, I ran down the corridor. I ran down as the crimson glared down upon me in a judgemental look, though without any eyes, flawless or imperfect. There were no eyes, but I still felt the hand of judgment heave down upon me. I ran, and I ran, and I ran, until I came to the end of the corridor. The finish line. I was congratulated for my efforts to finish line, I was greeted with the strangest thing that I have ever seen: a door. A door of wood, make of peeling green and stamped with a tarnishing, brass ‘C’. The doorknob was a dull-golden colour, having been turned and touched through many years.
I followed the traditions of those before, placing my hand upon the knob; turning it to open the door. I only opened the door a sliver, and light began to pour through. Though unlike the pale light, the light was soft and gave off the hue of a deep sun, like my hair. I further opened the door to find a rather alien room. A room, prior, I did not think possible.
It was a room with red walls, but the red did not pulsate in anger. Instead, the red was stagnant and of a darker quality, making that feeling of accustomation rather than the guilt of sin.
The floor was a colour foreign to what I had seen prior: a fair tan colour, like that of rolling dunes of a barren desert. Strange, it was, to see such colours underneath my feet, rather than a crimson or a pale.
There were orange hands of flame waving at me in welcome. Gentle, controlled hands that did not wish harm. They wanted to only greet.
There was a dark table in the centre of the room, and there were two chairs casually idling by the table; facing towards the fire. They were a darker red, just like the walls; but one of the chairs, the furthest from me, held something of most peculiar quality: myself.
At first glance, I was mistaken to think that she was another mirror, though lacking in any act of copying was the first article to guide me from the pondering of another mirror-self.
She was clad in a long coat of darkness, rather than being bare like myself. It seemed to embrace her. Gently hugging her every curve. Her head was upon her breast, obscuring my vision from the details of her portrait. Her hair, still fashioned in a braid similar to mine and painted in the sunset colour of my own, was ragged. Much like the imperfectious beauty, it was wild, with stray wires of hair standing upright, rather than all of it being perfectly sculpted together. The brush-like end of the ponytail of the braid held a dissimilar colour than the rest of her hair: a blue, that seemed to be reminiscent of an unclouded sky.
I was curious, in fact, to see such a version of myself - even if it were myself. I was unsure, for the imperfections of her seemed alien to myself; plus why would such a duplicate rest in such an odd place?
A spark of curiosity began to flicker in myself, so, seeing no harm in the act, I advanced towards the duplicate at a comfortable pace; but as I stepped in the room she glanced up at me, and I leaned towards the idea that she was not me.
She held the same facial structure as myself, but she smiled a terrible smile. One that was stitched in, in an ungraceful and seemingly painful fashion. Tigh, trapping any form of speech to escape from those woven lips; but a few strands had been snapped in twine, leaving a few gaps, though not enough for her lips to part. Her skin looked to be made of brittle porcelain matter, that had been crackled, like a neglected doll. Some porcelain sections were missing, leaving damages that allowed the viewer to see a void leading into her.
Regardless of her visual defects, her eyes were features highly virtuous. It was as if they were forged by the very light of the gleaming moon, which monsters and romance blossom in the cold dance of the night. They were of an astral silver, gleaming bright from the wavering hands of the deep orange flame.
It was like she was a singular side of a coin while I was the other. Her features were imperfect, save for her eyes of bella luna; I honed features of perfection, save for my eyes of ill-matched colour.
I stared her down, while she stared up at me. The wicked smile that was carved into her face made the thought that she knew events of terrible consequence and their outcome waltz within my head in fret.
We gave each other many moments of study, until suddenly she began to shake, as if she was under the possession of a beast beyond our world; yet she still wore that dreadful smile. She gripped the arms of her chair with such strength I thought she was going to tear them apart.
Then, a voice, coursing, seeming to simultaneously emanate from everywhere and nowhere, spoke in harsh tones: “Murderer! Murderer!” Then a sinister cackling stole its place, and the walls of deep red, the floor of foreign tan, and the wavering hands of flame all turned to ash and darkness, rolling away from the duplicate and myself.
Soon, we found in a place of darkness and silence, though unlike that of where I saw the women of beauty beyond. The sky was a murky shadow, swirling with dark clouds above; the ground was a somber dark green; and there were mounds of stone standing like guardians in the earth, carved into shapes, etching with writings and strange digits of which the meanings I could not fathom.
The silver-eyed version of myself stood, for the chair had turned to the ash of nothing. Still, her terrible smile was upon her face, and a crazed look twinkled in her perfect eyes. She circled around me, staring me down, as if she was readying to pounce me, like that of a feline of mania.
Regardless, I kept my imperfect eyes fixated upon her, awaiting for her to respond in a physical manner. Though I was mistaken, for the voice of everywhere and nowhere had returned.
“Sisters die,
“True love lies,
“And the madwoman breathes no more.
“Hearts are broken,
“Silence has spoken,
“She was only a whore.
“Gaze upon the resting place of the Ghost known once as Shadow Cheshire D’Alton.”
Then the other me stopped in her tracks, and she tilted her shattered head. She outstretched a hand, pointing at one of the carved mounds of stone.
My gaze followed to where she was pointing, and I first saw stone carved like a heart. It was smaller than the rest of the mounds, like a child amongst grown-ups; and strange words were written on it:
In Loving Memory of Frost Alice D’Alton.
Always Tucked Away In Our Hearts,
But We Wish We Had You In Our Arms.
17-11-1870. 24-12-1875.
This was the first time I had ever seen this mound, but within myself I felt that I have seen it many times before, and deep down inside I knew the deeper meaning. A meaning of a deep, stabbing grief that has weighed like luggage upon my very essence. Though I did not know who Frost was, nor the significance of such a place for her.
I looked at the mound beside it, one that had the same shape and side as the majority of the mounds; but upon it was carved:
Shadow Cheshire D’Alton.
Brilliant Woman That Was Damned as a Killer.
28-4-1863. 28-9-1895.
I studied the strange carvings of the stone, for the kiss of curiosity had ensnared me. It was as if I was looking at something that I should not have been; but the optical was seductive, in the fashion of forbidden knowledge.
“What does this mean?” I asked aloud, thinking that the other me held answers; but when I looked back I saw that she was no more. Instead, a figure, cloaked in a dripping darkness, stood where she once was. I could not see any paintings of expression upon the person, for I could not deduce any features on them. Only leaking darkness I could fathom from it.
It simply stood: unmoving in any sort of way, akin to a statue, though I could tell that it was watching me. Watching me out of its darkness. Though the purpose of its watchfulness i did not know.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am Death,” answered the figure. “I am that who collects those whose time is dry from living. I am the guide to the life of the next - whether that be of the next mortal being, or a land beyond reality. Where corpses, dried up and forgotten, lay bury underneath the headstones and the heaps of dirt, I must dig up their discarded remains. But you, dear child, are something different. You have a tombstone yourself, yet you stand before it. I can see you, and thus you can see me, yet I cannot touch nor collect you. You are neither living nor are you dead.”
I was confused by Death’s words. Living? Dead? It was as if a curtain was draped over the deeper meaning of those words. A curtain that I could not lift. No matter how hard I attempted.
“Instead,” Death spoke once more. “You are a Ghost, though to the eyes of the living you are like them: they can touch you, they can feel you, they can see you. But you cannot feel their touch: not the warmth of a hug, nor the sanctuary of a kiss, for you are a Ghost. A Ghost of dear Shadow.”
Before I could respond to those strange words of Death, flecks of bright oranges and shimmering reds began to dot upon the darkness of Death. Within moments the flecks became waving hands of fire, soon engulfing him in an inferno of vibrant oranges and yellows. The flames began to tower high, soon reaching to the darkness of the sky, and like oil, the sky ignited and the scent of consuming grey waft over once more.
Soon the land was a passionate and furious blaze. The fires started to lick underneath my feet, trying to taste me, to see if I would be appropriate to devour. The world was on fire, and I looked up to hear screams of thousands crying, yet seeing not even a silhouette out in the fire. No, instead of seeing people caught in fire, I saw one man standing in the blaze. Smiling. A dreadful smile.
He was draped in darkness, though instead of Death’s darkness, it was long and sharp. Organized rather than dripping. He had hair that was a shortly cropped silver, and hair neatly trimmed upon his broad face. He stood tall, unwavering, as if the fire was not there. To him, nothing was there, save for myself. He peered right into me with eyes of a furious blood-colour. A crimson of sinister judgement, as if I had wrongfully sinned; yet his mouth said otherwise. His mouth state pleasure. Then his mouth began to speak.
“Wake up, Dear Sister. Wake up!”
Wake up!
In an instant the fires began to swirl into clouds of nothing, and so did he, until there was nothing more than ever darkness. The world was lifted off of me, and I began to float in that ever void. I felt like I was nothing. Nothing once more.
Until, I heard the soft speaking of a voice which gave me hope.
Shadow?
Shadow?
The darkness was parted by a column of gleaming silver, and I felt as if I had drowned; barely raising in time for breath. My body felt heavy, and stick from the sweat of terror. I felt my body throb in the rhythm of my heart. I was, practically, gasping for air. I felt… alive.
I looked up in the gloom, and the silver light of the moon, to see the shape of a girl. A young girl, who shared residence with me at my lodgings. 757C Oxford Street. I was back there, in the shadows of my room. Safe and alive.
I looked up at the girl to see her slender body; her pale skin; freckled at the nose and cheekbones; her lanky hair of strawberry-blonde; streaked with honey; and her moon-coloured eyes, peering down at me.
She looked rather frightened - clutching an old teddy bear of mine, from when I was a simplistic child, close to her breast, holding it as if it was going to protect her. She looked childlike, though in truth she was a young woman.
“Loki?” I questioned her presence, for I suspected it was rather late. Deep into the night. “What is the matter?”
“I had a nightmare,” she whimpered in her little, soft voice.
“Was it about Silverwood and Melody?”
She nodded. Clutching her teddy bear harder.
“Would you like to sleep with me?” Asked I.
“Yes.”
“Come here.”
Loki had endured so much pain, so much suffering throughout her life. Whenever I see sadness scratch across her visage my heart shatters into a million pieces of fragile glass that wounds me from the inside out. I cannot fathom the entirety of what circles and seethes within her head, but I do understand that it is a lifetime of a pale darkness, lost without the kindness of love and understanding. Something I have taken for granted for so many years, simply because of the hours of my darkness. Thinking that my suffering was above the suffering of everyone else’s. Though when I see the vibrancy of childlike wonder, and a smile lavishingly painted across her face, the worlds of now and beyond seem to light up, as if terror and evil were concepts only present in fantasy.
I felt as if she was a child of my own, and I her mother, regardless of a vow I overtook so long ago, to never dabble in the articles of family and children. It is funny how reality can unfold, regardless of the plans you make of it.
I have only known Loki for half a year, meeting her stranded in the bitter cold, near that of my point of mourning, of a pain that has lasted for a time that has felt like eternity.
Loki slowly shuffled her feet across the floor, and she climbed into my bed. She felt her way through the darkness - touching my ankle, my hip, and smearing her hand across her face - apologizing for the instance. I did not feel sour for the fact. In reality, I felt content each time she touched me, for every time she did I felt that I was alive.
She then nestled into me, like a friendly cat, and I wrapped my arms around her - feeling her boney body press against mine. I felt her warmth, despite her slenderness, radiate clearly from her body, and a sense of peace trickled into my heart.
Shortly, she drifted off into the embrace of sleep; but I stayed awake until dawn rose over the horizon. I listened to the sound of her breathing, pondering on what she was dreaming about. Serenity seemed to be about her, and this I felt calm myself.
Though deep in the back of my mind, flashes and images of my nightmare flared up, and questions. So many questions.
Did I see my demise? Did I see the aftermath of my downfall, even still unknown to me?
That night, it was the second of June, 1895. On the tombstone, so I recalled, it claimed that I would perish on the twenty-eighth day of September of that very year. A date on which I was familiar with. A date which one who I lied to was born. One who I lied to about love, when in truth I merely loved their darkness; but that is a tale for another time.
Vada. Vada was indeed real, or once was. You see, without knowing at the moment, I had killed Vada. She was a woman who I once loved, and was loved after the parting of our roses of romance; but I was happy for her happiness with another; though a fool, I was, for I had told Vada about a place called the Dark Carnival. I sent her to her doom, like those before which I had sent to their terrible, grizzly fate. I am sorry, Dear Vada. I am sorry, Dear Sister. I am sorry for my imperfections.
