Where We Go

Chapter 6 - Cold Waters

Alek

I see dead people. 

And it's really annoying.

But useful at times. Nana just died? I've got you. Wanna say 'sup to Tupac? I've got you. Wanna ask Albert Einstein about that one theory he did? I've got you. For all my life, I've had the best of the greatest to guide me. Jane Austen would help me with my essays. If we were doing a unit on William Shakespeare, I always got the best grades in the class. Why? The man himself would lend a hand. Alan Turing would lean over my shoulder in the middle of math class. Even Hitler himself dropped by once, but I shooed him off.

Don't ask me why. It runs in the family. 

Great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother Annalisa started it. She wrote in her diaries that she was plagued by strange people that nobody else could see. Once she had children who could see them too, she began to realize that she might not be insane. Once her mother showed up, she knew she wasn't. Still, in her diaries, she wrote of the pain of incessant noise, the sleepless nights spent praying to be liberated from the fear, the constant feeling of being watched.

But that was one thousand years ago. 

And the curse hasn't gotten much better.

And this goddamn motherfucking Russian lady won't leave me alone.

I saw her bobbing around Nova earlier, babbling in her native tongue. But I soon as I looked at her, she came over to me. Now she won't leave me the fuck alone.

I need to learn Russian.

ЗЗдесь есть убийца.

Он убил меня.

Быть осторожен.

Он тебя знает.

She seems pretty calm about the whole, y'know, being dead thing. (Shut up. I like musicals.) Dead people always know they're dead, in the same way you know that you're alive. You feel your heart beating, your blood pumping, your lungs working to inhale. Exhale. You'd notice, wouldn't you, if it all stopped. No hunger, no pain, no fear, no nothing. I've heard it's boring as fuck.

My sister is giving me these weird looks - Why do you have some babbling Russian fuck following your dumb ass around?

Ah, sisters. Gotta love 'em.

I shake my head at her - Why should I know? - and turn back to my poetry homework.

Here in the forest, dark and deep

I offer you eternal sleep.

With this, you shall never weep.

And none shall ever make a peep.

The ghost seems to nod in agreement as she speaks. 

Mariebelle

The boy sits at his desk. Under his breath, he reads aloud from a book. I don't understand the words, but I understand the meaning. Death.

Death is a meaning that I understand very well.

He mutters faster, and though the words themselves mean nothing to me, I can feel his sadness as he says them. In him, I sense someone like me.

Lost.

Afraid.

Stuck in his ways.

A life-ruiner, destroyer of the sacred. I know that he is disgusted with himself. I know all too well the tears that begin to flow faster down his cheeks. I know - intimately - as one would know oneself - the feeling he has: that he is not good enough, that he must be good enough, that he will never be good enough.