Fight With Fire

25

Is this what ghosts feel like? Wandering around abandoned buildings searching all their lives for nothing. They float around numb, detached from the world but still part of it. No one can see them cry or hear them scream. They live every day in painful silence. I envy them. I try to scream and the sound builds but gets stuck in my throat. I try to do something, anything, but the pressure builds and there is never any relief.

I feel like the weight that builds in my chest is dragging me down, deep down through the endless water leaving me alone drowning in the darkness. I try to cry but my head spins with invisible tears making me gag and fall over.

Everything has gone numb. First my mind went numb leaving me sleepwalking in my room until I came face to face with a girl that had messy hair everywhere and dark circles under eyes and blood across her cheeks. I punched and kicked at the mirror until I couldn't see an ounce of my reflection. I collapsed on the ground amidst the bloody shards of the mirror and watched the sun move across the sky.

I don't know who much time went by but the sky calmed me. It seemed so innocent and separate from the horrible life below it. I appreciate that the sky tried to warn me that morning. It mourned with me making sure that the sun didn't appear until an appropriate amount of time had passed. And when the sun finally filled the sky with light, it was in comfort and not in mockery.

I would've never known how horrible everything was in our society without Charlie. But there was nothing I could show him in return. And now he's gone.

At some point I went to the washroom and cleaned the blood from my face and took the glass shards out of my knuckles. To think there used to be a small boy filled with hope and creativity. Now he's nothing more than a fond memory and the blood stuck under my fingernails. The last evidence of his existence washes down the drain staining the sink slightly pink. Even in death he is treated like dirt.

I filled my iae a few times. Something about giving myself a different type of pain to focus on calmed me. I was doing something that made sense and had a purpose. I was hiding my iae so no one else would see it although I know that Charlie would be ashamed. Charlie's death didn't make sense and had no purpose. One word from a book I read echoes in my mind. Suicide. How ironic that I wouldn't have known or understood what Charlie did without Charlie. Maybe it was my job to give what he did a purpose. Let it inspire me to do better. Be stronger than I was. I don't know if I can be strong though. Charlie was always stronger than me. He tried to do something. He believed. Then he took his life before the council could because there was nothing more for him to do. Would it be brave if I followed in his footsteps or would I be even more of a coward?

I should get up and go do something. Go to a meal and force some food down my throat. Or go to a class and try to distract myself. But I can't do anything. Moving hurts my stiff limbs which have barely moved since I got back to my room. I'm starting to think that this is more than grief. Does grief leave your legs feeling like plastic prosthetics that can't move? Does grief make your arms feel like there are thousands of tiny rocks pulling them down? Does grief make it almost impossible to move without feeling like thousands of tiny pins are being pushed into your skin? I had known that my legs get tired but is there a reason for that? The thoughts that have been circling my head for the past few days start to fit together like pieces to a puzzle I didn't know I was solving.

I grind my teeth together as I try to get up. Gravity seems 10 time stronger and getting up is not an option. I sigh in frustration and roll off the bed and land on the floor with a thump. The fall hurt less than the constant pain that feels like being under the pressure of thousands of gallons of water while being torn apart by a pack of lions while my insides are on fire melting me from the inside out. I have fallen into the light of the moon streaming through the window. I crawl across the room and rip the door open. There is no one anywhere because it is the middle of the night. No one to stop me from getting to my destination. Hopefully it's late enough that the supervisors have gone to sleep.

As I crawl through the halls towards the stairwell, I mentally run through everything I know. John had said that climbing the building had something to do with my Aerdell. That means it has something to do with my legs. My legs become sore all the time but then magically feel better. Sometimes at lunch or when I go to the circle but there is always one thing that is common, one person that is always there. I get to the top of the stairs and take a deep breath. I can't walk down them so there is only one way to get down to level 55. Once I am parallel with the stairs, I cross my arms over my chest, close my eyes, and roll down the stairs. I try to keep my head up so I won't hit it on the stairs but after I slide across each landing the next set of stairs, I get too dizzy to know which is up and which is down. My arms are starting to move from pain to numb and once that happens, I won't be able to move.

I drag myself in front of his door rolling against it to get him to hear me outside. My gaze is blurry with tears and blood. I know I have broken at least a few bones because of the weird angles of my limbs. I am too numb to feel the pain in any of the many sore spots now covering my body. I am starting to feel like a real ghost. Separate from my body in my own reality. You know when you've been sitting on your foot and haven't moved for a long time and then you try to walk on it and it hurts and tingles? That is what I feel like rolling against his door except it feels like I haven't moved in 100 years and now I'm trying to carry an elephant on my back. The door opens slowly and light fills my vision outlining a figure. It reminds me of sitting in front of the spotlight with Charlie. Will I ever see Charlie again?

"Ella?" Finn asks hesitantly stepping forward. His worried green eyes are the last thing I see before everything goes dark.