sounds, curls

My. My hands. Shaking. My hands are shaking.

I heard the strange thin sound of the waterfall before I could see or feel anything. Then I heard sounds. All wavy and so liquid I could almost feel them running through my fingers and splashing back into the sea of all sounds to have ever existed. In fact, I was liquid. I was running through my own fingers, getting away. Getting away and dissolving into thin air. Thin air or what would. Be the nothingness of liquids.

Whatever it was, it was weird. I’m not trying to put anyone off. You’ll never feel anything better.  But that? O-of! I just had chill run down my spine.

I walked to the side of the road to see better. There were people and sounds and colors. I could still not quite feel anything and the sounds pouring and spilling into one another made little to no sense but the colors. The colors were impressive.

It turned out that I was drawn to gray. Gray was the most dominant. Flashy lights – so white, I suppose – took the silver. Red had the bronze. Red was alright but the gray gave so much comfort.

My feet were starting to give signals. They were cold, wet, and muddy – nothing pleasant. I wanted them to be normal, stop acting annoying so. I gave them a job – we were now walking. In which direction I don’t know. There was some movement of air and that’s where I was going.

The colors were becoming shapes. There was more and more gray – it was the right direction to walk in. I figured I existed in the right place.

As much as I didn’t have a clue about feeling, my analytical thought did not suffer one bit. I could judge clearly and without any distortion. I had no idea about anything but I could also draw perfectly sound conclusions.

I reached a big gray block. A building. I tried to slip into this building but the door had a code, and not one of the people hovering around was going in. I waited around for some time, but as my feet were becoming more and more annoying, I was running out of patience. I took a walk around the block and discovered a pipe on the said block. A very convenient gray pipe.

It was better than the door – it wasn’t locked, it didn’t have a code and it offered a way in. So in I climbed. The higher I climbed, the sharper my senses seemed to become. At the third floor I said enough and entered the apartment through the window. The guy took it pretty calmly.

Pretty calmly is an understatement, actually: he acted as if nothing happened. Didn’t even look in my direction! The nerve.

I sized him up, preparing to walk around his distasteful house when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around to get free. Their fingers were cold and wet and dirty – I didn’t like that.

“I don’t like this.”

I raised my eyebrow – it meant I didn’t care. Although, for this person probably everything had to be stated out, both the obvious and the not so obvious:

“You can’t just climb in here.”

“What do I care what you like. As for the ‘you can’t’ – I just did.” Bam! A smirk. A shrug. The whole trick.

Usually, that is.

This, however, was not a usually.

They grabbed my wrist and dragged me to the window, sat me down, slapped me upside the head. I didn’t really feel it, but my head bent forward a bit. I looked at the pale face that was rather curious than hostile. I scratched my neck.

“Oh hi then, Jeremy. Do we know what we are?”

The hell is that a way to start a conversation?

“We don’t know anything. I do. You seem. To be clueless.”

I stood up, considering the conversation finished, but the hand dragged me back. Curlyhair was stronger than they looked.

“Unbelievable. Send me a newbie like this. And his feet – ugh – God.” They were talking rather to themselves. Some frenzy, I assumed.

“You’re a dead man, honey,” they turned to me. “A dumb one, at that. Who sent you?”

They had to be out of their mind but I decided to play along.

“Division 9.” Their eyebrows almost flew off their face.

“But it doesn’t make sense. Are you sure?” They mumbled gibberish to themselves and then asked again, “Are you sure?”

“Yes. But now that I see you, I have to send you away. I’ll do the duty and you rest.” Well this was starting to be fun.

“You really are dumb,” they sighed. “I thought first, ‘hm, okay, group 9 deemed themselves a division. Way to show we’re equal.’ But now I see they didn’t. So, who sent you?”

“Noone sent me.” The fun was over.

“Then how did find me?”

“With a huge lack of luck, apparently.”

“Well, that’s obvious, we all have that but…” they looked at my face, examined my eyes. They started laughing. They were crazy. They were crazy and I was sitting on a window frame.

“Relax, I’m not gonna push you. Wouldn’t want you to die twice, would we.”

They put the palm of their hand to my forehead. Everything went back, then gray.

We’re ghosts, okay?

I shook off the hand. Their smile was almost warm now. They just talked in my head, but their crazy might’ve been just rubbing off, I might’ve imagined it. I looked at my hands.

I felt my fingers. Something was coming up my throat but I didn’t let it come out. I’ve never felt worse.

“It’s normal. The new normal, that is. I’ll leave. You can walk around.”

Finally. I smiled, hoping they would finally leave me alone and rolled my eyes as soon as they left. I didn’t hear the door shut but they weren’t in the apartment. A weird curlyhair.

I walked around. The guy watching the TV was the only one there and didn’t have as bad an apartment as predicted. A couple of nicely decorated walls and tidy-enough floor. The kitchen was pretty clean too. It was gray and weirdly it had more sounds than the rest of the apartment. I liked the kitchen the best. The sounds flowed nicely through my thin fingers and now I could actually feel their vague presence.

I didn’t feel hungry but I was curious whether the fridge would surprise me as well. I reached for the handle but my hand went right through it. My hands started shaking. Was curlyhair the one that was making sense?