Blood Ink

Chapter six

I stared blankly at the check written out for a deposite of ten thousand dollars. How the hell was I going to explain that I won ten thousand dollars and a free trip to Europe. I thought frantically.. then noticed that it probably wouldn't matter to anyone, but myself in this household.
I didn't even know what I had won it from, or if it was from some anonymous 'go fund me' page. I was confused. I didn't know what to think.. I just gulped and shook my head how it even happened made no-sense. It was probably one of those once in a lifetime universal 'coincidences.' I shrugged, and set the check down at my desk.What exactly could a twenty two year old do with ten thousand dollars? (I didn't really want to think about it.) I knew didn't have to tell my parents about it .. maybe pay off the ranking up student debt? I snorted. (My parents wouldn't care about some prize I'd won.) I sat down at my desk, now heavily taking into consideration the idea of getting a mug of hot chocolate. Most likely piling it high with mini marshmallows as they would melt and ooze into that perfect sweet white fluffy texture -on the rich chocolate. I stared at the sheet of paper with my random little sarcastic scribble. It was just a coincidence I thought to myself. It couldn't have been because of what I wrote on the page. To test my theory I grabbed a blank sheet of printer paper and wrote something impossible like 'I want to see cole.' On the page. I checked my watch counting at least five minutes, and nothing happened. A simple coincidence that's all it was. I looked at the check again. I sighed. I chewed the end of the pen, looked at the ruined page with some blood stains and decided to write the same thing on that page. Okay Melissa you're overreacting.. call this scribble a double checker to your anxiety that's making you feel crazy..
Pretty soon, I yawned and decided to call this insanity a universal coincidence and that what I was doing was ridiculous.

I stood up stretching, and flipped off my desk lamp. Taking a nap seemed like a great idea. At least, it would have been had I not almost shrieked at the sight of my brother sitting on the edge of my bed.
Holy shit I was officially loosing my mind this is was a complete hallucination. It wasn't real there was no way it could be real. I took a shaky breath trying frantically to relax at my brothers glum stature. He slumped against the bed, laying back on the covers. He seemed exasperated- exhausted even.
Cole, (there was no mistaking it) sat there staring down at his shoes and kicking at the rug on the floor. He was silent and he wasn't looking at me.

"Cole?" A slurred mumble escaped my lips confirming my current lunatic behavior. The more I indulged in the idea, that this hallucination could be real the crazier I felt.

He looked up at the sound of his name, he stared at me with a blank expression the same doe brown eyes I remembered. When he noticed I was looking directly at him; not at some random object behind him I saw the life in his eyes return.

"You can see me?" He asked quietly. Oh god, those are the exact words some kind of demon would say in a horror flick while trapped in an elevator of some sort. My stomach twisted.

I just stared chalking this up to some form of fever. Maybe, the hallucination was a result of stress? (If you have a rational explanation to my insanity brain- feel free to drop a line.) I began to think about the last time I had slept. A solid restful sleep hadn't happened since the last time.. I took Cole to school.. which was also the day he died. I blinked and shook my head thinking that maybe I was dreaming. (It was far fetched but anything remotely rational would do the trick, from all out institutionalizing myself) I counted to ten with my eyes closed but when I opened them he was still there. I sighed/groaned sort of accepting it.

"Well yeah I guess I can." I answer him. I was talking to a ghost, I'd officially lost it. This wasn't casper the friendly ghost either, it was my dead little brother! What in the whoo-ha was wrong with me?