Hopelessy Devoted

Chapter Eleven: Realization

I stare at the wall and wish to cry, but no tears fall from my eyes. I seen Daryl's fate, felt it, and still I cannot believe. I don't want to believe this is my life. To live forever and never die.

"How...how was I able to see and talk to you then...no one could see or hear me."

"The thing about being dead is, it takes a while to master that skill. I wanted to get out of this hell for years. Days in and out I would lay up in my bed, never tired, never in pain, never feeling anything. But every night I would watch your Aunt Genevieve run the road and wish that I could talk to her. When she moved out, I once more  went back to my bed and never looked up. Every night for years I sat up at the time I died and would watch out the window, hoping that it was all a dream and I would see a way to get out of this hell. And then...then as if by a miracle, I saw you run a while back. I loved you from the moment I saw you running in the moonlight. I longed to meet you, but couldn't find a way to leave my damn property."

He looks so sad and I place a hand on his leg. Looking up at me, he continues.

"That night Zach brought you here and raped you, I stood in the room trying my hardest to get his attention- to scare him away from you. Kind of like how you did at school today. What I didn't know was that when you die, your first few encounters with the living can't go recognized unless they ask you for something- some kind of question or plea. When you were walking home that night and looked back at my window and saw me- you said so much for the help. Well, because of that, I finally got the ability to communicate and be seen by everyone. Because that night as you laid in my room begging for help, I swore on my soul that I would do everything in my power to take care of you and look after you until you wished me away." His eyes gaze into mine and I realize that maybe this is the truth. Maybe things like this happen to everyone. "When you died, I brought you to the house as fast as I could. I laid you in your bed so that when you woke up from whatever nightmare you put yerself in, you'd end up here. In a safe place."

Looking at the room around me, Daryl is right. It is a safe place.

"So my Daddy found me dead in here?"

"Not quite. I brought your soul back here. I can't physically pick your body up and move it. The police found you because of a tip line- it was all I could do." He grimly looks down at his hands and much like me, he feels the pain in my chest.

"Will they find Zach guilty?"

"I believe so."

"Daryl..."

"Yeah."

"If I was pregnant when I died...what happened to my baby?" His eyes close and all I can expect him to say, is read in his posture.

"Babies have different fates when they die. God gathers their souls before any other spirit can- it's to preserve their purity and innocence."

"Well...nphh, I guess that's how I would have wanted this anyway. At least my baby is in a good place." Wiping my eyes, even though there are no actual tears, I lean into his body and try to process all of this. "If I come back like you did- will people recognize me?"

"No. They'll see you as someone new. Like me. I used to be blonde and brown eyed. I had a crooked nose and gapped teeth. When we encounter the living, we get a whole new body."

"Kind of like reincarnation?"

"Yeah, only thing is is we're always dead- we never have a beating heart or filled lungs, a thinking brain. We're just a husk of everyone's feeble imaginations. We are like the guiding lights to people's souls. Every so often, we'll find a dying soul and it is sort of our duty to great that soul after the pass to send them in the right direction. It's like when people say Cardinals are people visiting from heaven- only we never have gone to heaven in the first place, we just reassure the recently dead."

"So that's all we do for the rest of our days?"

"Yes- though some have taken a liking to reliving their lives. They make themselves comfortable amongst the living and live a life until they 'pass away' and then start life over as a new person, once more making a new life for themselves. I personally call them the Hopelessly Devoted, but that's just me." I could relive every day as someone different and no one would know... I don't understand it. I can't accept these terms.

"Who is a Hopelessly Devoted around here?"

"Well, fee starters there's Principle Hoverath. He's been doing this since before me. That's why he seems a little Confederate-ey to me. Used to serve in the Confederate army back in the Civil War. Besides being kind of a racist asshole, he's one of the better ones. How ever, there are bad Hopelessly Devotees. They're called Flesh Gaits. Flesh Gaits are derivatives of the Native American's Skinwalkers- only they are even more merciless. They will kill for no reason what so ever. So most recently, their attacks have been getting worse...so I have taken it upon myself to keep them away from people by killing them. I send them to Hell- where they should be. Beware of them- they can also harm us. And if they get the chance, they will take it and you will forever exist in a universe of nothingness. Complete utter darkness between Heaven and Hell."

Well as if being dead wasn't bad enough. Now I have to worry about being sent to eternal darkness.