Friend Of The Dead

The Death: 1

Here, where the world is quiet;

Here, where all trouble seems

Dead winds' and spent waves' riot

In doubtful dreams of dreams;

I watch the green field growing

For reaping folk and sowing,

For harvest-time and mowing,

A sleepy world of streams.

They went on by to their businesses. Dead faces, lined foreheads, wrinkled clothes; they all walked on without a clue. Did they know one of their own was willingly giving up her life? Even if they did, would they care? They were all so motionless, their day to day lives lived without every truly understanding the depth of darkness their small town harbors. I watched them walk on, go to the same diner, have the same meals, watch the same football game, see the same people every day. And they wanted it that way. I used to look at Forks and see a town embroidered with nature, the musky scent of pinewood hanging over every crevice of the green town, surrounded by woods on all sides. I found Forks---albeit haunted---peaceful.

But now all I saw were memories. I guess there was a sense of irony to it, I've had the ability to see ghosts for eight years, and never have I felt so haunted by one. Not with Hunter, not with the beady-eyed ghost, not even with Athena, who haunted my nightmares daily.

I was haunted by a living person, someone who woke up in the morning with no clue of the hold they have on me. Sometimes it got so dark in there, in my head, whenever I thought of the emptiness that moved within my soul.

I was walking through a ghost town, with my own living ghost.

I am tired of tears and laughter,

And men that laugh and weep;

Of what may come hereafter

For men that sow to reap:

I am weary of days and hours,

Blown buds of barren flowers,

Desires and dreams and powers

And everything but sleep.

"Sophie?" Bella knocked on the door, her knuckles tentative against the wood.

"Sophie I'm coming in," I heard her footsteps behind me, walking three steps into the room, and then stopping.

I moved to look behind me from where I sat on the floor, watching her expression turn from cautious to baffled.

"Sophie . . . what have you . . . what did you do?" I guess I could understand where her confusion came from. My room, once an artistic domain of sketches taped to the wall and paintings large and small stacked on top of each other, was now bearing no evidence of such thing having ever existed. The walls, before hidden behind various sketches and watercolour paintings, were now back to their original grey colour, dull as the day I'd arrived here. The paintings---portraits and landscapes and still-lives---were removed from the corner of my room and placed inside the cardboard boxes, same with the sketches and sketchpads, brushes and paints and pencils, anything I'd ever used to create art with. Now my room looked like any regular room, with no creativity in it.