🍭 Ghosted in Sugarshore 🍭

🧁 4. MAKE A SCULPTURE 🧁

"Are you sure?" I asked, unsure myself. "It can be just everything and anything."

"And I want just this one," Hale said, smiling mischievously. Smiling was her thing, always, but it was the variation that mattered. The difference between her happy and pity smile was greater than that between a smile and a frown of a regular candy-man. A mischievous smile was her favorite from what I've gathered, so it was suitable for the sculpture.

What wasn't suitable, however, was the rest of her pose. She was a ghost and she could float and she abused it. Her body hung upside down, her hair crazily fuzzy. Her one arm was stretched below her, her pinky finger pointed out to make it seem like she's supporting her whole weight with it, her other arm bent behind her neck and keeping one side of her hair in place.

Her legs were crazier, one curved slightly with a foot flexed and the other bent in a knee to cover up whatever was under her dress. The dress was still tightly pressed against her waist, but the skirt fell to her chest, exposing too much.

I looked at her through the green jelly. How was I supposed to turn it into that monstrosity?

I shook my head. "No, I can't do that. No way."

"I thought you could do anything," she teased.

"I can, but the jelly can't. And the artist is as capable as its art," I said. I took one of my oldest unsold sculptures, the pink cloud that resembled Hale. "Imagine that this is you, okay? Now, what if I do this?"

I took it off its stand and rolled it into a cylinder to resemble a girl more closely. I pulled on one side and made it extra thin to resemble her pinky finger. I looked at her with a know-it-all smile and placed the sculpture on its stand again.

Sad little cylinder collapsed into itself, bouncing off the table and crashing into the ground. It splashed all over and merged with the floor like a pancake under pressure. Hale burst into laughter as jelly burst into non-existing. At least she dropped the awful pose. My smug face ached with surprise. I will have the satisfaction of proving my point while scrubbing the slimy substance off the floor.

"You showed me now," she laughed, rolling in the air. "You so showed me, big boy."

I had her make a steadier pose, but she insisted on being upside down. She said her hair looked better that way. Her new position had both of her arms behind her head, making a stand for the sculpture, and her legs bent in her knees behind her, holding her skirt in place and making my job easier.

As I ran my fingers through jelly, I observed her. Not only for the sculpture's sake, but I also wanted to know her. She was just another ghost and they come and go, but I want to know them when they're here. Something I really like about sculpturing is that you can admire all the tiny aspects of someone that usually go unnoticed. Not only that you can, but you must. So, I did.

Hale was a cotton candy girl with fuzzy, crazily fluffy hair. It was dark pink, even without any sunlight. Her skin was pale pink, not only because of fading. She was beautiful.

"Hale, can I ask you something? It's a bit rude," I said.

"We're both rude, so it's fine," she said.

"How does death feel like?" I asked. The very same question I asked every ghost I adopted.

She had a white dress made of frosting, as most are, in a standard flowery fashion. However, the flowers were imperfect and uneven, in all shapes and sizes. It was hard to tell whether that was the result of sloppiness or a fashion statement.

"Death? Funny," she said. "It feels like nothing."

I raised my eyebrows. Every ghost told me a different story, but it always included something. Something more than nothing. But maybe nothing was more than everything.

"Nothing?" I repeated. "How to tell if something is alive, then?"

She looked alive at that moment. She looked real. Pretty little lips in a devilish smile, lightly violet eyes in a wink.

"Being alive isn't just not being dead," she said. "It's not just being alive either. It is being perceived as alive. No matter how alive you are, if others see you as dead, you are dead. That's it. And we think many alive things dead and dead things alive."

I believed her. Her look was more than her eyes. It was her. A few ghosts have as bright and as deep a look in their eyes. A few candy-men as well. She was see-through, almost nothing, but infinite. She had a look that said, "I will be here." And I believed it. She could fade away and still be here.

"I think everything is alive at some point," she said, looking at the pink jelly on the floor. "We just die in different ways."

No one had ever told me something like that. Every ghost I encountered had their own large poetic ideas about life. Hers was so simple, and yet, I believed her. I felt it was true. All her details were there. In her presence and my sculpture, but it wasn't enough.

She felt alive even now and that made me want to make her alive even more.