ghost

>> stutter

 I don't like them innocent
I don't want no face fresh
Want them wearing leather
Begging, let me be your taste test  
- Ghost by Halsey

The boy hardly existed. He flicked his lighter up and down whenever he wanted to smoke, he did when he wanted to be heard otherwise he was never listened too. For all the books he read and kept no one asked where he got them from or what they were about. So deadly silent that if it wasn't for his tattoos you would never have seen him. His face was engulfed in a skull tattoo that almost humanised his black eyes, sharpened his already razor cheekbones, his mouth looked stitched with ink and yet through the mask of it all he was still beautiful. Not a beauty you recognised at first but one that took a while to realise and once you did you never doubted it for as long as you lived.

The boy hardly existed. No one noticed him and no one would miss him if he fell off the surface of the planet. He ate the food, slept in the bed, read on the couch and he was invisible to anyone who passed by him. If he was transparent people would pass through him without a second thought. When the boy turned seventeen he was legally an adult so he was technically not allowed to eat the orphanage's food, sleep in the bed or even read on the couch. He knew that he had a file somewhere in the orphanage's office that barely contained a full page of information about the boy who didn't even exist.

***

One night the boy with no name, no family and no past went to the office and with his tattoo free hands, the only part of his body that you could see that wasn't covered in tattoos. The lighter that he always carried with him to burn the cigarettes that he never smoked around his books, glinted like an eye in the darkness. The office was unlocked, it always was. After all who would want to steal some random kid's file and burn his entire record so that he technically never even existed?

The boy approached the unlocked drawer of files and opened it. Inside were thick heavy folders stuffed with pages and pages of children that actually were noted as someone in the community. The boy began filing through the sets of paper documents, trying to find a needle in a haystack. As an hour passed finally he came to a single piece of paper that had his name on it, birth certificate and some smaller insignificant information about him. With his lighter in hand, the sheet of papers in the other, the small flame began to burn the boy's existence. In one moment the paper and ink began to be eaten. Eaten and turned to ash on the desk. The boy was not worried about getting burnt by the growing flames, it would be little pain for the fact that he would forever be a ghost the rest of his life.

A ghost. Yes a ghost. Doomed to all eternity to be seen and yet never remembered. The boy glanced upon the flames that had almost completely consumed his life which had been summed up in a few pages. Once there was only a tiny square of paper for him to hold onto the boy dropped the paper in the fireplace, covered it with logs and lit them on fire too. Turning around, his bag heavy with books on his shoulder, he blew his past and the ashes away with his breath. And silent like the dead and the face no one possessed, he closed the door of the orphanage and was no more. A ghost. A shadow that would never understand what it was to be remembered. A ghost. There and gone again. Ghost.