Pulse

Chapter 2

Cian

I strongly disliked rain.

I would have said "hate," but I was an okay person and according to my mother hate was a bad person word, because such things existed. Upon her making that statement, I had argued that I was above such human commodities, but that comment had left her solemn and had made me feel like the worst son in existence, and we're going to leave it at that.

A light drizzle had begun to fall, and I murmured under my breath, drawing the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head and hurrying my pace. I could see the boy in front of me. I should've felt bad about how young he was, but after two years of this, I rarely felt anything anymore. He was a ginger, and he was also a stick, a limited amount of muscle, if any at all, clinging to his bones. He skittered along the streets, head ducked, breathing hard. The scent of death, which I knew so well, was undeniable. What brought you to this, kid?

Suicide. Must be it. I felt it in my bones.

He turned a corner onto a vacant back street, and a cat yowled as it jumped out of his way. I followed him, my blood humming, the blades of my shoulders tingling a bit unpleasantly. I gritted my teeth, aware of what was coming.

He stopped moving. The streetlight above him flickered a moment. Cursing under my breath, then feeling the all too familiar sizzling of my tongue from it, I slipped into the shadows, just as he turned to survey his surroundings. Peering around the corner of some long-closed pastel laundromat, I saw him start to climb the fire escape to the roof. I shook my head, wondering why he didn't go for something less painful, but then again, it wasn't my decision as to how someone died.

Maybe if it had been, I would have changed a lot of the things I've witnessed.

Keep moving, Cian.

I kept moving.

He was at the top of the roof, and I nearly was, when suddenly I got a rush of unseasonable cold. I exhaled in disdain. "Vincent. Sylvester. Horne. Why must you show up at the worst times?" I glanced once more at the boy at the top of the roof, who was staring down from it, his final moments of hesitation, retrospection, inquiry. I'd seen it all before, heard the questions they ask in my own head: Is this how it all ends? Is this going to hurt? Do I really, really, want to die? I whirled towards Vinny. "I'm busy—"

I cut off at the apprehension on his face. He was a ghost, yes, but he looked paler than usual, more translucent. That only happened when he was concerned. "Vinny?"

"Cian, sorry to interrupt you, I just—something happened."

I squinted at him, pulling my hood up further over my face with my scarred fingers. Whatever it was, it had to be serious. Vinny, not being one of the living anymore, didn't get worked up over much. I was the only one he really talked to, since only I could seem to make any sort of connection with him at all. I knew my brother. He went out into the world and he watched everything go on without him, like the reels of a film, and he never said anything.

Yet, suddenly he was saying something?

"Something happened?" I asked.

Vinny nodded, ethereal blond hair moving more like water than hair. He had Mom's hair, fair and thin, and I'd gotten Dad's, caught between blond and brown and annoyingly thick. "Something happened."

"Can it wait?" I asked him, looking again toward the roof. The boy was no longer there. "Dagnabbit, Vinny, I've missed his death already."

"Fine. Do your soul thingy, and then we have got to—I mean got to—talk." I agreed by waving him off, and he faded off into the air, like mist rapidly dissipating. Once, I'd tried to get him to teach me how to do that, but the sad thing was it appeared to be a skill exclusively for ghosts. Unfair.