Sort of Dead

3 - How I First Met A Spirit

Now, home-schooling has both its benefits and demerits. I'm an introvert for the most part - unless you want to talk to me about the various ways to extract blood from a dying bear, in which case you are most welcome, but I doubt you'd be interested - so home-schooling never really bothered me as much as it should have. Plus, that meant I didn't ever have to see the jocks ever again, which is a big relief. Whoo.

Still, at times, I get so bored that I just don't know what I am doing with my life. I think I am legitimately wasting it chasing rodents (literally; there are quite a lot of them in my uncle's Titanic goth of a house, which is where I spend a lot of my time).

Sometimes I think all this loneliness has left me delusional. Because, you see, I talk to people that other people can't see.

Ghosts, you might call them. Even though that would be wrong.

The people that I talk to, they're not dead. They were never alive, as a matter of fact. They are just . . . there. Spirits. Yes.

The first time I discovered I could talk to them was when I was six. So - well - I guess it isn't loneliness that drove me to insanity. Guess I was born insane.

Oh, that reminds me. I have to tell you the story of my birth; it's really wicked and will clear up a lot of things for you.

But let me finish this small one first. Remind me later.

So. How I first met a spirit. I have a vivid memory, I remember it pretty well. The day was sunny - I hate global warming - and I was sitting in my uncle's mansion's yard's patio. He's very prosperous. His mansion is larger than my twelve year old life.

Now, I was just sitting there, looking up at the sun, boiling it with my smoldering gaze - I dunno, looking directly at that fiery fire-ball never bothered me, though Mum said it's unusual and I should never do that in public, when I heard a rustle.

Now, there's a good rustle and a bad rustle. Good rustles soothe you, kinda calm you down. Then there are bad rustles, the irritating ones. Like when a student in the examination hall continuously turns pages impolitely, to the point where the sound is so sharp it makes your ears weep. Right. This one was an irritating rustle.

At least, that's what I thought. Because it wasn't really a rustle at all; turned out, it was a spirit just casually gallivanting about, hissing their habitual hiss. I don't know why, but yeah, spirits hiss. A lot.

I didn't know that at the time, though, so I paused my stare-contest with the sun, promising we'd duel another time, and looked over to where the rustle-hiss was coming from.

And I saw it, the spirit.

It was a "she", just in case you were wondering. I have named her - uhm, names are hard - say, "S" (Es). Yeah, okay. So, this "Es" spirit freaked me out, initially. I must have jumped ten feet into the air when I first saw her, just floating in mid-air, rustle-hissing and chasing a pink butterfly.

Spirits are partly transparent and partly translucent. So I guess what I mean is, they are three-fourth transparent. And if that doesn't help you distinguish them - not that you're ever going to see them, I have never met anyone other than myself who can see spirits - then certainly the colorful outline over their pearly body will. Yes, their outline is traced as if by an invisible multi-colored marker, which glows at all times.

Very creepy the first time I saw it. But then Es had smiled.

Now we're the best of friends. Her rustle-hisses do not annoy me anymore.

Even right now, she's sitting right by my side, hissing sprightly in my ear.