Irene, My dead best friend [Wattys 2015]

Chapter 4: Irene, you are freaking me out.

“I can’t sleep,” she whispered, crawling into bed with me. I woke up cold, clutching the dress she was buried in

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That day, the series of weird events didn’t end there. Apart from the very obvious, gut wrenchingly creepy aspect of me not being able to feel her (I’m still adamant that I could not feel her, there is no way I hallucinated that) it was also appearing to be quite clear that she had a lot of other quite odd features as well. We had been walking for 15 minutes now, back home towards the mini lake, (I still had no idea how I was going to explain this abandoned female to my mother), there were other pressing questions on my mind.

For example, the fact that we’d been walking for so long and the constant crunch of the leaves under my feet was starting to irritate the absolute calm of our surrounding. It was during this slight irritation that I noticed that the crunch only seemed to be emanating from my feet. It was just my shoes that were stepping onto the dead fall leaves, or Rufus’s little paws touching the floor cause a slight rustle in the leaves. However, on my left, where Irene walked just slightly behind me, seeming to be in deep thought, I couldn’t hear one word from her. Not the leaves crunching under her feet (the very feet I couldn’t see under her tattered long gown) or the fact that even her dress rustling on the floor made no sound either.

My palms started to sweat again, this time not from fear of making a girl cry but out of what it was that was making this ridiculous phenomenon. Was I losing my mind? Maybe I haven’t slept enough? After all, that history test day before yesterday did take its toll on me. No, no, I’m quite sure I was missing the sound of a second pair of feet. How was I going to confirm this suspicion? I couldn’t just turn to her and demand that she pull up her gown just a bit so I could “see her feet”. That would definitely earn me another, “you’re a creep and you have a foot fetish” comment.

So I decided to ignore it, like I have done most of the things in my life, I ignored that fact that I couldn’t feel a human being OR that she’s probably floating mere inches off the ground. I could feel the rest of my body sweat; this was not a good feeling.

I decided that the best thing at this point would be to distract my mind from her “floating” and make small talk with her. I think I would feel a lot safer if I knew more about her.

“So Irene,” I said, turning around slightly, waiting for her to catch up with me(still not failing to notice that she made NO sound walking at all), “how old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“No, it’s okay,” she said catching up with me, her blue eyes dancing with light, “I’m 16, and you?”

“17. Do you like to read?”

Immediately, I could see her get excited. She clapped her hands together and an animated look appearing on her face, “Oh I just ADORE reading! I’m such a huge fan of Steinbeck and Arthur Blair…you know George Orwell, I’ve read everything by them!” she beamed up at me. Our height difference wasn’t all that much but interestingly with how excited she was, she looked quite like a little child.

“Oh, you’re into classics.” This was another thinker right here. Her clothes, mid 90’s gown on, she loves to read books all the way back to 1945, good authors nonetheless. I let out a silent prayer to God.

“Mhmm, what about you? Do you read, Jason?

“Yep, quite frequently. But I read some of the modern ones, you know J.K. Rowling, Phillip Pullman, I love their genre’s,” I replied thinking about the entire series of the Dark Trilogies and the Harry Potter series waiting on my bookshelf for me to read, probably for the millionth time.