The Lost

Another little project I found on my computer, but this is just the prologue, so let me know if any of you guys would like me to continue.. It will probably have a possible romance angle, once the story gets started, so give it a chance.

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Prologue

When someone dies, especially in a tragic way, everyone has something 'nice' they have to make a point to say. Usually that's how it goes. Usually. But as i watched the detectives canvas the neighborhood, somehow the taboo seemed to disappear. Conversations of the man lying in his own fluids drifted to me as the breeze whipped through me. Something in the air gave them confidence to break the taboo, almost as if his death set them free. In many of their voices, approval rang loud and clear in a satisfaction that I could only equate to the manner of his death, his brutal death.

The question is, what had this man done to have people speak about him with such hatred, and relief? What was he in their eyes?

As I drifted over the crime scene, I took in every detail again. The way the ceiling fan gently blew the papers on his desk. The way the books on the bookcase gleamed under the light, almost as if they were polished. The decor of the room, which was undeniably masculine, had deep burgundy walls, rich dark wood furnishings, and luxurious leather chairs that set across from the oversized desk. The desk screamed 'I demand attention'.

His body laid face down. If you looked, without really seeing, your mind would process it as just a man lying down on the floor, in a puddle of drying blood. But if you stared at it long enough, your mind would gradually clear, allowing you to slowly grasp what was before you. Suddenly the fact that you could see a wound in his back was apparent, followed by your realization that you could see clear through that wound, which was 8 inches long, straight into the blood matted carpet. But what took the longest to emerge into your consciousness was the fact that the wound was neat and clean. Neat as in, someone taken their time carving this man's chest like a pumpkin. And clean, as in the wound showed no traces of the liquid life force that was all around him, as if the edges had been cauterized.

The police techs below me were busy collecting evidence, or anything that looked like evidence. The detectives surveyed the scene with a grimace permanently etched onto their faces, trying to make sense of the hell in front of them.

But in reality, that 'sense' would never be found. That's why I'm here. My name is Arianna Brooks, but you can call me Ari. You see, I was a detective, a damn good one i might add, but that all changed when i died. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a good detective, I'm just minus the badge, the gun and well, a body. It's hard to be on the NYPD's pay roll when you're dead. Actually it's hard to do anything when you're dead.

If I'm dead, how am I talking to you, you might ask. Well see, I'm a ghost, but I'm not your normal ghost. Normal ghost fall under the categories annoying and stationary. Annoying because all they talk about is the past, and stationary because they are usually confined to an area, normally where they died or where they feel at home, (depending on the death) until their time to pass on. But I'm special; I follow under neither of these categories.

My abnormal qualities are the reason I'm here hovering over this man's body. I'm what my fellow ghosts call the Liberator. Why? Because I set them free.

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Whatcha think?