✓ DYING MOURNINGS, original

thirteen : birds flying home

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𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍 : 𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐃𝐒 𝐅𝐋𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐇𝐎𝐌𝐄

(𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠)

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Brent Maxwell presented himself to me in the gray, dead and fading. He was unlike the other ghosts I'd encountered. His image was blurry, like some dazzling mirage made of sand and sun and dreams.

But that was never the case and I knew better. I blinked away my stunned expression and crept out of line for the bathroom to approach the ghost. He continued to glitch in and out of the gray, his body shifting and blurring as I got closer but his voice was still clear.

"What's going on?" he asked me, looking around. "Why am I here? Where am I?"

I'd never seen a spirit like him, jumpy and scattered. He wasn't present but I stalked forward anyway, my brows furrowing with every stutter and pixelated glance he gave the house.

"I was...I was..."

He was still wearing what he had been moments before. Had it been ten minutes? Fifteen, maybe? He looked so normal, save for the paleness to his skin and the darkness in his eyes that all ghosts seemed to gather when they crossed into the gray.

"I was just upstairs..." he murmured, trailing off as his eyes roamed the unmoving bodies around him. Not even a fly buzzed by or the wind, not even a breath save for my own. The smoke from cigarettes and joints was in the air, completely still. "Why is...what's going on?"

I stepped closer, forcing him to focus and look at me as I snapped, "Where's your body?"

You knew what to do. You'd done it before. You can do it now.

"Brent, come on, man," I snapped my fingers and his dazed expression met my hard one. "Where's your body?"

"My–my what?" he breathed through a hiss. His eyes were getting wider, and he clutched a hand to his chest as if expecting it to be moving. "How are you here? How are we talking? Why is everyone fucking frozen?! What the hell is going on–?!"

"Brent..." I didn't know how to say it. How did you tell someone they're dead? That they'll never talk to their parents again, they'll never see their son, see their brother or friend? I wanted to reach out and touch him but I kept my hands to my sides. "Tell me where your body is, I...I can help you, okay? But you gotta tell me where you were before this."

He chewed on his bottom lip before nodding and pointing towards the stairs. I followed him as he drifted across the room and I had to jog to keep up on the staircase. I made sure to stop in the kitchen, frantically searching for a knife before finding one near the stove and racing after him and up another flight of stairs and into a pretty bedroom.

His eyes were wide and unstaring as I took in the scene. Bridgette was frozen next to his body on the bed, her mouth open on a scream that would not be heard until the gray faded. His shirt was off, his pants undone but not off. There was a frothy substance coming out of his mouth, all frozen and unmoving.

"Bridge and I..." he was whispering so softly I almost didn't hear him. "...we were hooking up and I took something, some random pills someone downstairs gave me. I–I didn't think much about it but...I..."