The Memories Within the Walls [Discontinued]

Within the Layers

People often misinterpret ghosts as the last remaining bits of life, the human soul that refuses to ascend into a new plane, the spirit that wants to cling and remain on material land.

That isn't the case.

Ghosts are not the remnants of the people they once were. Ghosts are the memories given life once their original owners set them free. Ghosts are the things that attach themselves to objects, or perhaps they're tied to them, or perhaps they're trapped with them for all eternity. Ghosts are not the living they once were. They were simply the lingering impressions of the lives they once had.

And the man tries to remember this as he startles awake, long pink hair sprawled out like a spiderweb on the dusty wooden floor, a fencing sword -- his prison -- an arm's reach away.

The last loop felt like a distant dream, hazy like the memories, hazy like the air that last night, when the fire devoured his oxygen, practically scooping them out of his lungs as he remained trapped, trapped in the room he loved once for its quiet, despised now for its peace. The room he made his undoing, the coffin he built for himself.

The last loop was like the loop before that. It was like the loop before that. He doesn't doubt that this loop will be the same.

As a memory, he only knows to repeat his mistakes. As a memory, he is unable to learn.

"Techno! You awake yet?" He hears, the hatch on the ground trembling with a force his brother could only possess in death.

"Yeah." He replies, and it feels painfully like a play for an audience of none, lines being repeated over and over, a force of habit unable to be broken. "You can come in," He adds, even though he knows it's useless, the floor tile flipping over even before he could finish, popping his head out from the floor below.

"God, it's so dusty in here." Wilbur coughs, waving his hand to clear the particles.

You always say that. Techno wanted to shout, but he knew the other would argue the same.

"What's dad making this time?" He asks instead, sitting up.

"Pancakes." His younger smiles. "A favourite of a birthday boy."

"It's not my birthday." It hasn't been his birthday in decades.

"A favourite of the deathday boy then?" Will's smile cracks for a second, a perfect porcelain giving way to pain. Regret. It begs the question if he must look the same.

"You need to stop saying that." Techno sighs, crawling over to come down. "It's kinda depressing."

"Well, I'm a depressing boy." His brother laughs, ducking back down as he swung his legs onto the ladder and began to climb down.

"Keep it to your music Wilbur." He grumbles, even though he would give anything to hear the strum of that guitar again. Anything but this silence, this absence of not only sound, but feeling.

- - -

Notes:

The reason the order seems kinda off is because I wrote the second chapter after this one. I planned the second chapter to be the third chapter but I messed up and so now you have this