Crave For You

01: Broken Doll

Sofia

I am in a car with a ghost.

The ghost occupies the front seat, the steering wheel squeezed beneath his deadly grip on the leather. His knuckles are bruised as if he had recently been in a conflict that involved a strenuous effort to result in such injuries. His slate grey pupils fall every minute on the rear-view mirror which shows a huddled figure of a girl in the backseat, hugging her knees close to her chest.

Grey meets viridian. Clashing familiarity forms between both before it is broken when the ghost smiles. His smile reflects a set of straight white teeth, the left canine crooked from when the girl punched him in the first semester. That was how they first met. He carries the sign proudly. He shouldn't have but that's what made the girl in the backseat fall in love with him.

I know that girl was me. This one is me too. But at the same time, it isn't. This isn't me but a part of myself that is stuck in a horrible nightmare. I have been hit, I have been shot, I have been maimed or something else has gone terribly wrong for me to be in this car with this ghost.

"Go away...go away..." I mutter under my breath, keeping my eyes locked on the ghost. My hands join together into a praying pose. "Go away. Please go away."

My strained voice, spoken in a chorus of words that refuse to be a subject of his goal, brings a frown upon the ghost's forehead. His jaw sets tight as the car rolls down a road, coming to a swift halt before a pair of magnificent gates topped with the figurine of a golden eagle in flight. The ghost doesn't need the intercom to permit him forward. The gates part for him like he is their master. I jolt in the seat as the ghost drives the car down a semi-circular driveway, killing his engine when the vehicle stops in front of a skyscraper that kisses the dusty clouds above.

The thudding of my heart is loud, fearsome, and erratic, and it only makes me realize how scared I am of this ghost. He won't vanish.

His large body unhooks the seatbelt from around his torso, stepping down the car with the door held open by a man about his age in a uniform who nods at him. The ghost is dressed well, in an outfit I never saw him wear for daily tasks. He was always a jeans and T-shirt guy.

Now, the three-piece he is in exudes confidence and power in every step. The fabric of his black shirt molds to his muscular frame, his waistcoat firmly fitted too. I follow his body's path, cringing in my seat when he stops near the door across from me.

I drag myself as far as possible, sticking like glue to the door behind me, my clammy palms dragging with a noise along the leather seat. The ghost pulls the door open and a burst of warm air knocks down the coolness that the AC accumulated.

"No!" I shout when the ghost crouches by the door, his eyes the most gentle and without a hint of malice.

A finely shaped crooked brow rises to his hairline.

"Sofia," he says my name, not in a ghostly voice but one that coils my stomach, my mind replaying the other times I had heard the same voice speak. My eyelids hurt. I slam my palms to my ears, shaking my head.

"It's not real, it's not real." My own voice sounds like it has been amplified. "You're not real."

My eyes force themselves shut, silent murmurs of prayers escaping my parted lips, begging the God I hadn't been baptized for to come and save me.

I have had my life upturned in a matter of hours. I am an orphan, a girl without a family, a woman who jilted her fiancé, a traitor to an empire of venomous snakes. Crusty blood still coats underneath my fingernails, brain matter is splattered all over me, and blood makes me dirty.