Translucent

Chapter 43: The Greatest Gift

CORNELIUS

I had a dream before. Ghosts normally don't dream, or do they? It might be a figment or imagination too. Elisabeth laid on the mattress in the attic, exposed and vulnerable. Her pyjamas were on the floor. Undressing her wasn't a hassle. I never knew today's undergarments would be far simpler and thinner than those torture devices called corsets.

Her skin was illuminated by the flickering light of the fireplace. I drank in her features. The flame from the fireplace highlighted the contour of her slim, pale body. My eyes traced her curve, her breasts. God, she was hauntingly beautiful. Strange sensation tingled me at the sight of a nude lass. I welcomed the rare feeling–to feel what it's like to be a human, to long for a girl's touch. I almost forgot what a girl's body looked like. This revived humanly feeling couldn't be more surreal–her warm, tender skin brushing against mine, her breathing heavily beneath me in both pain and pleasure. Tears welled up in her eyes; her nails digging into the sides of my back.

Hunger consumed me when our skins met. The drive that I lost returned. Lust was a strange feeling indeed. I finally found myself again. Not fully a human, but at least this time I was free of pain.

A few hours later passed with us lying in each other's arms in silence after our release. I rubbed  my thumb along her sweaty shoulder. We always lied next to each other on her bed every night, but not like this. Having our bodies molded together in our purest forms and drowning ourselves in each other's gazes were something entirely new.

A glint of golden colour danced inside her gray pupils, reflecting the ray of fire. My eyes never left hers, in hopes I would capture everything of her in my memory: her smile, her laughter, her cries, her shifting expressions. She was everything I could imagine life would be.

Elisabeth suddenly took both of my hands, placing one on her chest, and another one on mine. The familiar feeling swept me over again. The beats pounded softly and content under my palm. Again, I was that twenty-one-year-old bloke in 1914. 

"One...two...three..." she whispered until she fell asleep.

I observed her closer. Elisabeth curled up on the floor, facing the fireplace. Her bare back faced me and her shoulders rising up and down. Suddenly she let out low sniffles that later grew to be sobs.

If there was one thing that pierced my cold, no-longer functioning heart, that would be seeing her cry.

"Don't go." she murmured in her sleep.

Elisabeth had been changing her sleeping position for the fourth time now. Knowing that the hard mattress didn't give her the comfort she needed, I wrapped the blanket around her and gently scooped her in my arms; her lean body fit perfectly in crook of my elbows. I laid her down on her bed after I made sure the corridor was empty and pulled the duvet up to her neck. Settling in the comfort of her own bed, she let out a sigh and continued to sleep soundly.

Her eyes fluttered, her full lips parted slightly, muttering inaudible words. The tears had left a trail from her eyes down to her cheek. I brushed a few strains of her brown hair away from her brow.

"It's impossible, isn't it?"

"What is?"

"Us."

She was right. I could never have her. Two fragile beings walking the Earth, against the forces of nature. There was nothing in this universe could make it all happen.

Even that lassie, Sophie, once had warned me way earlier. We talked a few times. She first invaded my head with her voice, which was faint and rather unclear like a broken radio. It was a warning, but it sounded more like a plea of a friend.

After Greg became another casualty of my powers, I was clouded with confusion that I tracked the only active medium I knew–Sophie. I begged for her to take care of Elisabeth, for I was proven failed to be a proper friend. In turn, Sophie came to apologise for her false presumptions towards me, and now it all made sense–why Sophie tried to warn me by invading my thoughts on Elisabeth's first day at school: Sophie's friends took their own lives and she feared I would do the same to Elisabeth. 

"So, you do love her." Sophie hummed. "What are you going to do now?"

We both knew the answer. We knew it was for the best.

"You really are different," Sophie replied.

I thought that was it: staying invisible in Elisabeth's presence for good would be a last resort. We could forget each other and move on, but with all her resilience, she found me again, and this time, I had to involve someone else out of the circle. "Recruiting" her mother was risky but it was the only way out.

"Stay, Corneli–" Elisabeth spoke in her sleep.

I reached her hand, but instead of touching her, I let my hand go through hers. She shivered slightly at the mist at her hand.

"Forgive me," I whispered.

I leaned closer and my lips met her cheek gently, which was warm and as soft as the Orga's grass on spring. Moonlight illuminated her pale face. God, I love her, so much that it hurt. I would do anything to see her smile again, to hear her laugh at her own joke, and talk endlessly about her days and everything about her era–

–yet the thought of not being able to have her scarred me.

I slid out of her bedroom and made my way to the darkness of the woods. Why did I do to deserve all of this? I almost said it out loud just when I slumped on my knees, panting an absent breath. Why, out of all souls, was I chosen to live an existence of pure misery?

From the very beginning, I had always been destined for pain and suffering. As though being born a Haywood, falling for Aileana, and now being a spirit wandering restlessly were not enough, Elisabeth came to my next existence. My entire life had been a series of endless punishments I never asked for yet I had to endure until I became numb of them.

I dug my fists into the earth, feeling the tremor rattling the ground and swaying the trees, grass, and branches violently under my skin as rage was seeping out of my chest through a cry of despair.

I was condemned to an eternity. As much as it sounded heavenly, there was no greater gift than life itself.