GHOST - SHORT STORIES

AM I NO GOOD?

There's a sickening silence. The absence of all noise providing a momentary reminder for your lungs to draw in a breath.

Somewhere, in the depths of your mind, you remember this all feeling different.

It feels like a distant memory. So foreign and so old that it doesn't feel as though it was ever real.

How could things have ever felt good when now they just feel so ...

Shit.

The past is a quiet whisper in your ear; particular notes of its lullaby tugging at your heartstrings. Soliloquies of how you still love him.

Except the encompassing warmth that once was married to that feeling, now is nothing but a cold and isolating pain.

The poets write that love is painful; but you'd never believed them before now.

He moves upon the sofa. The sound of his jacket against the upholstery breaking the otherwise emptiness. It half makes you jump; and half fills you with rage. The lump in your throat, eyes stinging with tears kind.

How dare he move when things are so fragile? How flippantly he readjusts his position when the tension is akin to thick smoke that has nowhere to go other than this room?

Can't he just fucking say something?

Can't he just fucking admit that things have completely and utterly fallen apart?

Can't he just fucking admit that it's his fault?

I hear you, YN. I'm sorry you've had to beg me to love you the way you deserve to be loved. I'm sorry you've told me a million times that you're hurting, and I haven't kept my promises to change.

Does someone have to be religious to pray to hear those string of words? If you yell loud enough, will one of the thousands of Gods hear your desperate plea?

You've given up your soul and nothing's changed, so what is there left to do now?

You wonder, as Ghost shifts on the sofa yet again, if he's thinking the same thing as you.

Knowing that this is the end. If he can tell that you're at your wits end now.

Does it feel any different to him?

What would hurt more? Ghost being unaware of his actions; unaware of how you're feeling, unable to read you as if you hadn't read each other thousands upon thousands of times?

Or Ghost knowing exactly what he's doing to you; making an active choice time and time again to let you down; to hurt you; to consciously decide that you're not worth the effort?

With your mouth suddenly filling with saliva and your stomach turning something violent, you force the thought away.

Both options are fucking sickening.

Waiting for him to speak feels useless. Despite the consistent pattern of you having to be the first one to talk; the first one to communicate, you still cling to that pathetic hope that he'll change.

That he'll start with an apology. That he'll say all the things you want to hear because he means the words. The words that could be anything for all you fucking care.

As long as it soothes the gaping wound upon you that he's left unattended.

Your view of the kitchen backsplash is blurred with the tears that you're fighting, so tirelessly, to keep from falling. Fingertips pressing into your hips where your hands rest.

It reminds you of being sat in the doctor's office, or the dentist's chair. The pain inflicted by their instruments lessened as you dig your fingernails into flesh. Creating pain to take away from where it hurts elsewhere.