ghost

>> haunt

 It's alright, it's okay
I didn't need my sanity anyway  
- Come and Be Alone With Me by The Jungle Giants

I didn't own anything. Nothing. Everything that the orphanage had given me was still in my very vacant room. Even my beloved books were still stacked by my made bed. I had no money and no job. Not that I was going to be getting a job looking like a skeleton. Everyone was scared of my face, because it technically wasn't my face. They could stare at me all they liked but they would never see past the tattoos. They would spend their entire lives envisioning my face but never seeing it. When asked who that creepy teenager was with the terrifying tattoos who stole our copy of Slaughterhouse 5, no one would be able to answer.

It was quiet ironic. An irony that I found entertaining and twisted. Everyone has seen me, somewhere. And yet you will never know me. Because I am Ghost. I do not exist.

The local library was only a twenty minute walk from the orphanage and it was open till late for university students. So keeping my hood up, hands in my pockets I went to the old classics aisle, the one with writers like Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare. There were a few people studying and stacking books but they didn't pay me attention.

Reaching up to grab a collection of works off the shelf I felt a presence by my side. It was a girl. I knew that without even looking. They always had a way of announcing themselves without even speaking. Turning slightly so that I could see from under my hood I saw that she was a red head and she liked The Vaccines.
"Excuse me" she murmured to me and moved in the direction of Hamlet. As she pulled away she got a glance of me.

She squeaked in response and her eyes widened. Inclining my head to the side I asked silently, 'Something wrong?' The girl could not decide whether to stop staring, scream or run away. She chose the last one. Turning on her heel she fled from me. Vapid control freak. You could always tell someone's personality by the way they reacted to my tattoos. This red head who probably didn't even listen to The Vaccines was definitely a vapid control freak.

***

The bag was empty and sitting lonely among the other more expensive and flashier bags and I thought that it needed a friend. Picking it up and putting my collection of books inside it I slung it over my shoulder and decided that I should try pickpocketing for a bit of money for some coffee. I hadn't had coffee in 3 hours. How I wasn't dying I don't know.

The other upside of being Ghost, pickpocketing was easy. And you never took anything that someone noticed you had taken until you were far, far away. A few coins out of the bottom of people pockets, a mere five dollar note, it was small and I had twenty dollars in my hand by the time I reached the coffee shop at the end of the street.

Ordering a black coffee from the nervous school teacher I sat down at a booth in the very back. It was good to choose a spot in the shop where you could observe everything. I liked to watch people. Don't think I do that in a creepy way. It's interesting to see how people react to certain things and live their lives. For example the nervous school teacher was trying to get a few more dollar signs working at night after school to pay for her son's education. It was obviously her son because there was a pictured of him in the register draw that she worked at.

The Gothic looking girl with too many piercings to fit on her face was drinking tea because she had been kicked out of home and she always drank tea before she went to bed. The twins giggling to each other in the booth opposite were talking about me. They took turns in staring at me before sneaking a look over the top of their Spice Pumpkin Lattes.

Life would consist of this for a while. People, coffee, books, hands in pockets, living in the shadows. It was how I had lived most of my life just in a wider environment. And it was good. Dammit it for the lack of safety but it was good. It was good to be Ghost.