South London Forever // George Karim

-nightmares and starving girls-

It was a ghost.

Freddie knew that, she knew that before she could see it, she knew it was a ghost because it was floating in the air in front of her, a cloud of colour in the inky blankness that was everything else.

She had to turn around, because that was how this works. She had about five seconds before she'd whip around and see the Type 2 looming above her. It was three seconds. Three seconds of peace she used to prepare herself for what she was about to see, using the image that never left her mind. One second now. She could feel the matter around her shifting and then Freddie was facing it.

Fear crept over her skin and left patches of horror and cold and she stumbled back with a long scream, but it wasn't coming from Freddie.

Well, it was, it was coming from the dream version of herself that did this same routine every time, but the Freddie dreaming of herself hitched a breath and tensed, unmoving in the terror.

Tears she couldn't feel the heat of spilled down her cheeks and the scream she heard come from herself but not really her was cut off.

Freddie opened the curtains and unwound the fiddly little knob, letting in the sounds of the city waking up. The brisk air followed suit, and Freddie picked her rings up from their spot on the windowsill, metal groves sliding over her knuckles as she stood in front of the view over the rooftops of south London.

Lockwood said you could see the park with its crunchy leaves and cobblestone paths, the one she walked through with Chai every few mornings to the store for bread and milk, because George always got the wrong bread, with too many seeds. Apparently it was healthier, or something.

She turned to her mattress on the floor, with its crumpled-up doona and patchwork crocheted blanket, a cold mug of tea from last night that she'd end up leaving there for a few more days on the bedside table next to her nearly finished copy of Black Beauty, not that the ending was a surprise, considering this was about her eleventh time reading it. She still cried about Ginger every time. It just wasn't fair.

She followed the raised parts of the carpet where they'd cut up strips of rug and pasted them down to lead the way to the little bathroom by the foot of her bed. After she brushed her teeth the disgusting flavour of mangoes still lingered. "Ugh, if Ant buys that bloody fruit toothpaste again, I'm going to make it his goddam Source."

"Woof?"

"Well, toothpaste isn't a big problem for you, is it?" Freddie asked the dog sarcastically, but he just hopped off her mattress and nudged her legs with another bark as the springs groaned back into place behind him. "It should be, your breath stinks."

Pulling off her fluffy pyjamas that she missed already, Freddie buttoned up her suit pants and brushed off the golden dog fur that she knew would be there despite the fact all her clothes hung up on the rack away from Chai's reach. Her white shirt was next and then a soft jumper that smelt like incense when she pulled it over her head. Freddie smiled a little.

"Come on," she called to Chai, and followed the carpet bumps [not that she really needed them anymore] to the staircase down. "Time for breakfast."

"Woof."

Freddie rolled her eyes at the dog and pulled the sleeves of her jumper down over her hands, the softness a stark contrast to the neat as a pin uniform she wore.

Her fluffy slippers weren't part of that uniform, obviously, but she wasn't about to go trudging around in gumboots when there weren't glass shards on the ground. At that thought, her toes curled, but she crept quietly past Lockwood's room where he would inevitably be hiding under his duvet until he smelt breakfast anyway.