Rione Terra living...or nonliving

What if oblivion never existed in the first place? I had never considered...: it might be a possibility. That idea of lasting forever.

Was the modern human… that guy with the curly hair and the hat … the source of the knowledge? Or just the questions...

Time is different for living people than for nonliving people.…

I feel the footsteps as I had done for millions of days. Maybe billions, but who cares? The tourists are coming. Rione Terra had become quite a popular spot, making me glad my hole was so deep. The clean out happened .... I no longer had the wrappers from the candy bars. The pieces of paper with boogers attached. The occasional piece of clothing. That was simply the most modern of the trash. My hole was empty, and I was satisfied with it that way. Deep, and empty.

The land was here a long time before they called it anything. These days, it was Rione Terra. A tourist site. An excavation site. An earthquake zone where nobody lived anymore. I was alive in this place when it didn't have a name. A place not too close to the very large volcano known as Vesuvius... 

When I was a living person, it was just a place I dwelled in with other people...

Oh yes. The tourist group. There is something about it....

This group has one individual in it. The interesting kind.

He id the type of bait a high strung Roman ghost would never leave alone. She would follow him around.

Maybe this time, she would leave... I almost let myself hope, but that is coming too close to having an emotion. Anybody who longs for oblivion would never make the journey all the way to nothingness by having emotions. I lapse, as best I can, into apathy.

The first steps are going up. After that they go down. Now circling around. A person really had to study a schematic map in order to make sense of the layers. The tour certainly never made sense of it. Now, the group is close enough. I can hear them with the place that might've been ears… if I had ears. I can certainly hear the Roman ghost, though.

"You gotta help me!" The ghost looms in front of the tourist, trying hard. 

If I had eyes, they would be rolling. I have witnessed this gag so many times. Millennia, really. She's never going to be a less high strung person, is she? Trying to get a charge out of somebody alive. Trying to get help. Trying to get… anything, really. 

But… 

She's never going to get anything. Ever again. 

This time, some reacts. It's nearly an amusement. If I had a voice box, I would be chuckling. 

This little corner of my existence… If you want to call it that…the place I have chosen to be…. Before the tourist phase, before the great clean out when the city was starting to be aware that airplanes were bringing people... and money...to the area. Before three or four different Empires…

Oh. The tourist. The group is nearly on top of me, now.

The person wearing the ball cap and the hoodie wrapped around the waist. That person is reacting.

It might be worth it for me to come up out of my hole…the newer ghost is never going to communicate with me. I think I hurt the high strung ghost pretty deeply a few centuries prior….

"Did you hear that?" The ball cap snaps right to left, right to left, right to left. 

The tourist closest to the box cap dude says, "Not again." He's also wearing a hoodie, but this one is worn like the sweatshirt it was intended to be. Arms inserted in arm holes, and hands inserted in the pouch in front. "Are you really going to claim another ghost? I thought our vacation was the one place we'd go to become free of... all that."

"You know I can't help it." The ball cap guy is still scanning every corner of the room.

The other tourists quietly move further away. The range of emotions is freaked out, annoyed, worried.

The companion of the ball cap tourist hisses to him, "Control it, though. At least once."

The interpreter tries to keep the tour on track. "If you will look this direction, please," she says, in her heavily accented English. She goes into the lengthy explanation of the artifacts removed from my hole. She's trying very hard not to call it the trash heap it has always been. But that's what it was. A very deep trash heap. They were trying to make another well, back in the day. They didn't find water, though, leaving a dry well. 

...Cathaginians threw their fish bones and their buttons into the pile. Sometimes a broken shaft from a spear. 

After that, the Greeks threw in ridiculous poems...

...Those were during the centuries when I cared. I always hoped that the final draft of the poem was better than the paper that made it into the trash heap. If I had a stomach, it would've been nauseated every time I read a Greek poem. They also had weapons of every kind. They didn't like to be known for it, but the Greeks were a pretty violent race.....

The Roman ghost is following the ball cap tourist. Wailing, I think. She has to be pretty loud so that anybody can hear her...

...I'm still trying to figure out... something... how long it may have been... maybe?...I may circle around to the original question sometime…without a brain things are so hard to keep straight....

"Can you please keep ghost sightings to yourself? I don't want to be kicked out again." The tourist still talking to ghost-guy-wearing-a-ball-cap punches him.

...Then came the Romans. They didn't care who knew it. They were extra violent. Every few decades or so, falsified books from various business ventures, got added to the trash. There were sex toys, and always the weapons from the Romans. Sometimes a head or body part. Nobody ever said it was easy to be a part of that century… I think the ghost who goes wailing through this place came along with a severed head… the physical kind. Then she got stuck here... She's still trying to get the attention of a ball cap wearing fellow.

The method of movement for that group reminded me of people huddled together during an earthquake. They didn't know which direction to go… until it was too late… was that my own memory? Somebody else's? A dream? Anyway, I have a decision.…

The tour group is going to leave the room. I have a decision. Go back in my hole and wait for oblivion? Meet them further on by passing through a wall? Pretend I have a body still, and shuffle along like a tourist?

If I had a face, I would be smirking. The Roman ghost won't bother me if I pretend to be a tourist. I go for that option. It doesn't really matter, what I do, what I think, what I am… but I join the group.

Something different might happen... maybe with this guy.

I drift along with the tourists, watching for interactions between the ghost and the person who seems to be... almost...able to hear her:

I have always been hoping for oblivion, so... I almost reconsidered my moment among the living ... might set back my oblivion by decades. Maybe even a few centuries....

"You can hear me?" She shouts it.

The dude wearing the ball cap makes no reaction at all.

"Seriously. You must hear this!" She screams it.

The high strung Roman knocks against the wall. To my own perceptions, it's almost painful how loudly the ghost is screaming. I knew from experience during my years as a living person that the largest shout was really nothing more than a whisper. I shrug and watch closely beyond the noise of the other ghost...This must be a decade where people who perceive a different realm aren't cherished. 

I would've scratched a chin if I had one, wondering whether anybody ever cherished a person with second sight. Probably not. I had never been around for it. That ability might have had something to do with my death… I can't be sure... We all wish for the cherishing. I had never seen it come true… and I had certainly seen a lot of days as a nonliving person. I stay with the tour group. 

The high strung ghost rarely sees me, since she never looks in my hole. It's the place, after all, her head ended up rotting. I wasn't going to take chances. Interacting with that ghost made an entire decade a bad one. I wanted to look like another tourist if I could.

The tourist guys have their heads together and whisper to each other.

Going outside is no problem at all. Living people don't know that. I accompany the tour group for the explanation of the Greek temple that got turned into a Catholic church.

There are people in the group who find it amusing.

There are others in the group who find it a terrible desecration. It is never clear what kind of desecration they mean.

Other people seem to have their next beverage or gelato on their mind.

I see the switch take place.

When the two guys with hoodies go into a restroom, they come out switched, and the Roman ghost follows the wrong one. He's flicking hands and water droplets fill the air, because the blowers do not work in the men's bathroom, apparently. Every time I see water, I have a negative reaction. I ignore that. I'm not fooled. The switch between a ghost-knowledge-living-person, and a non-ghost person is fun. They curly haired guy who no longer wears ball cap is the one with the gift.

She has that ball cap on her mind, apparently.

She prattles away. He looks at the bay of Pozzuoli. Completely oblivious of her. 

It must be nice. For him.

Watching the ungifted one, I don't realize I now have company leaning against this wall.

"I have never smelled anybody who stayed around this sphere so long a time." The guy didn't like preambles. That's good. Neither do I.

"How are you on hearing and sight? I mean, how far did your gift go?" I know I should never engage. Curiosity is close to having an emotion.

"I am definitely better on hearing than sight. You look like nothing but a shimmer. I can hear your voice pretty clearly, though."

I am impressed. "It must have taken a lot of self-control to avoid reacting to that other ghost."

"I could tell she was a whiner. I've come across the type."

We sat there in companionable silence. My life… or lack of life…is built with nothing but time. I still have time as an element, though. I feel honored that he decides to spend so much of his precious day on me.

Dang! Emotion. I will probably miss out on the next window for oblivion for another century or more. For now, I let the sun shine through me and watch his skin. Did I ever have that?

The companion was now eating gelato. "What about him?" I gesture to the guy, but remember I look like a shimmer. After a pause, I put it into words. "Your companion"

"He's my brother and cameraman. We have a YouTube channel together, focusing on the souls of those who did not pass on. Totally ungifted, so when I smell a ghost or hear one, he goes along with it, but never understands." He sighs. 

I know that feeling. A living person seeing the nonliving is never well understood. I sigh as well.

He says, "Your English is very good. Do you know all the languages from modern times?"

I nod. Remember, I am a ghost, and put everything into words. Again. "I know all the modern languages that pass through this area, and every ancient language that passed through, also."

"Wow."

.… "It's not the greatest gift. I think my trip to oblivion is always delayed by learning a language. Expressing curiosity. Being annoyed with that Roman. If I could just feel less, I would be a less of a person…"

"I wonder if that's the way it works." He scratches the curls, and I'm jealous how the wind blows through his hair. I used to feel the wind. "Why did you hang around for so long, anyway?"

"I can't remember… Things. There's something about an earthquake. There's something about… would you call it a big water? Maybe a tidal wave?… Beyond that it's pretty fuzzy. All I know is I've been here a long time, but I want oblivion."

I'm suddenly very tired. That many words in an hour is more than I speak in a century. I don't know if I will make it back to the hole by walking along the ground. Maybe I will just sink. Everything is harder when the energy gets depleted.

So difficult.

I remember ... I think we had something even when I was a living person. Manners. "Goodbye."

I decide I must sink.

Eventually, I will become a conscious being in my hole.

The second moment I see him, he smells me right away.

He's a middle-aged living person now, but he still has his brother with him. It's nonverbal, but I know they will be making a switch to handle that wailing Roman.

"Still here?"

"I suppose."

"I don't know what I expected..." He looks puzzled. "You had been here a long time even the first time I encountered you, as a young man."

We would've had a conversation, but a portal appears.

I have a decision.

As if sensing my thoughts, the middle-aged man who used to wear a hoodie gestures towards the portal. "I think they are there. It's the only explanation, and I have a lot of experience now. Lots of souls I have seen making their transition. I think you might go there. I think it'll be safe and the people you knew before might be waiting on the other side."

He looks sad.

Does his time with other souls have a cost?

I suddenly want to give him something. 

"You do have your brother here. Still with you."

Whatever the English-speaking man might have lost, he still has the same companion, and his face changes. Not a lot. Easier, though.

I step toward the edge of the portal.

The companion of the man approaches. Leans against the wall, where the overcast day means that neither of them is going to cast a shadow. Hands him a gelato.

For the first time in ... whatever my existence has been since I was a living person, I feel something new. Hope, maybe? I take another step. Into the portal.