The Manifestation of the Inspired Dead

Eden:

The Soul had obsidian Black hair that swayed when she turned her head.

The Soul had luminous, bright green eyes that were ablaze with sorrow, with agony. with dejection.

The Soul couldn’t remember. She wanted to remember more than anything else.

The soul was a girl. But she was not a girl, girls were alive. And she wasn’t alive. But she wasn’t exactly dead either.

She was yearning to die, yearning to leave the hell of Time, to escape from the centuries she has spent alone, learning to live the life of eternal isolation.

She only knew pain, so much pain. Pain that no one noticed. Pain that little by little killed her. Pain that she couldn’t remember.

No one knew her.

No one was looking for her. No one noticed her. But when you did see her. If you could see. You couldn’t stop staring.

She always sat in the same place. Her eyes fixed on the horizon. Her body Piece by Piece Fading Away.

She didn’t even know what she was

Who she was.

How she got there.

Her fading body wearing out, wearing thin, breaking down, she was dying.

And no one noticed.

No one ever noticed.

The world around her was dull, grey. Clouds covering every peak of light, clouding dreams. Hopes. But she didn’t mind. She never had a dream. She never slept. She decided to sit up. To dust the dry leaves from her hair, to stab the silence stilling around her. She forgot the sound to her own voice. She wanted to die.

But she knew she wasn’t alive either.

North

To the boy that cried to the sea,

“Take me, drown me. But do not take my love from me”

The sea answered with a voice so hollow,

“Your Father will live to his last dying breath”

The boy smiled with tears in his eyes, his pride gone. Demolished. Useless as his broken body that lay deep beneath the surface.

It was then the soul died to the sea.  

The Soul died sinking to the bottom of a cascading wave of ever blue.

The Soul died with tears in his eyes and a sword of pain edged through his once weak heart.

For once in his life, the world was stagnant as an apparition. 

Sweat rolled in like the waves of The sea across his chest.

And orchestra of bells rung obtrusively, echoing from his skull out. 

Time turned abrupt

Nothing happened as the boy took in his surroundings. Was he a boy? Everything about him seemed human. 

All except his heart, 

For it was shallow, that of a child who was never loved, that of a baby who knew nothing of the word. 

He was driven by violence, pain and discord.

Not love. Never love.

The Soul has spent Hundreds of years in search of another who shared his blood, his death, his confusion. His last words to save his father. The man that now gives no care in the world about his dead son.

About North.

He knew his name.

He hears the whispers as the wind danced across his eyes.

To feel the water thrash into every corner of his mind.

It felt monstrous.

So, it was then that he died, it was then than my life bowed to its knees, a prisoner to death. 

His body died to the sea.

But his heart died to his father.

Eden

Eden let her feet guide to a place she knew nothing of, her head held high, her eyes closed. Dry from forgotten tears that she stabbed with the dagger of her own anger.

She often pretended others could see her, that they were staring into her eyes that they were smiling at her… that she was nothing more than an ordinary human, then the soul no human eye could see.

She walked to the silent tap of her feet against the stone pavement. The sound of her heartbeat beating through her shallow, tired chest. The sound of her own sobbed weeping. legs collapsed under her, she let her body give out. Let her prostrated, tired lungs scream for air, drowned in her own cries.

Her past fluttered across her eyelids, Eden. Laying in my mother’s garden. Her skin purple, her body weak. staring at a paper with big black letters “DEATH OF A 18-YEAR-OLD TO LEUKIMIA” Ede, staring at her own dying body as she watched it dissolve and burn to ashes in a scorching pit of fire.

She couldn’t help it anymore, she screamed. Burrowing her angered face into her hands,

As she was about to finish crying she felt a leg trip over her sprawled body and collapse to the ground, feet away.

She jumped, and turned to meet the eyes of a stranger,

They tripped over me… They tripped over ME.

She shuttered, thinking of the possibilities that it wasn’t her, a rock next to her, a hole in the ground. Maybe they tripped over their own feet.

In the corner of her vision she could now see the stranger was looking at her.

She turned her head cautiously, letting her shocked gaze linger on the stranger, only eyes visible through a white, worn, ski mask.

“Who are you….?” She spoke with a voice of ice, each word coming colder then she expected, she decided to change the forming words that still lay in her head.

“What are you?

At that statement she saw blue eyes quiver, a gloved hand fly to the ski mask. A startle escape from closed lips.

“You can see me?” The stranger spoke in a deep, mellow, voice. Tone forced, combining each syllable, sounding almost song-like.

Eden decided to stand up, straightening her posture, wiping the wet tears from her face.

She then held a hand out to the stranger, regretting the choice as fast as she did.

The stranger ignored her hand, using the floor as a lift. Backing away from her.

The stranger removed the ski mask, tossing it to the ground. 

She looked at the soul before her, bruises lined a jawbone, blood stained unkept hair, anger ablaze in blue eyes.

The once rude stranger was now nothing more than a scared little boy. A lifeless boy. A dead boy.

And this saddened her.

She forced a smile and held a bruised hand toward his bruised hand.

“My name is Eden” She said, acknowledging that this was the first greeting she had said to another in her entire soul lifetime.

He caught onto the greeting, killing the stilling silence

“North… My name is North.

Hours turned into days…

days turned into weeks…

weeks turned into months…

And as friends crafted into family, both souls almost forgot about the eternal hell of time.

Anyone that looked upon them didn’t see 2 Dead broken beings, But a Perceptive little boy and his Peculiar Older Sister.

Both suffering from a Careless Father who didn’t care about his son. and an aphotic mother who left her moribund daughter to die in a garden.

Maybe that’s why they were the chosen to live as souls, both died surrounded by nature, both died ignored by their last family around them. The coincidence felt wrong, something any conversation suffered to ignore.

Eden was lying in a garden.

Laughing to herself when noticing this was the garden she died in.

Somewhere behind her North was watching the Sea, his face a stone to the blue waves that crashed against the rocks.

He died only Sixteen, yet he seemed calmer then she could ever be.

She was merely and adult when her mother left her to die, only a month after her eighteenth birthday.

she sat up, smoothing the hem of her skirt, brushing the hair from her face.

North turned to face her, his blue eyes a reflection to the blue waves that haunted his nightmares.

The souls stood up, there gaunt bodies waltzing toward the harbor, both knowing that the daily routine was always filled with hours of visiting the place where the soul from inside them left their body. Both souls felt comfort in those places, the energy there was stronger than the energy on the entire planet.

Eden watched as North dived into the water, watching until his body was no longer visible.

She sat down on a nearby bench, letting the cold-water brush against her ankles, letting the wind howl past her ears.

She smiled, maybe the world wasn’t as bad as she always saw it being.

As she was about to fade into a nap something tapped her shoulder.

She groaned

“North. What do you need? I was trying to sleep.” With her voice hinted with annoyance she turned not to see north, but a grown man, perhaps in his forties.

She gasped, falling off the bench, she fell into the water backwards, her head slamming against the crashing waves, she yelped.

The man offered a wrinkled hand to her,

She took it willingly, allowing herself to be lifted back onto the dry land.

But this man wasn’t a ghost, he wasn’t a human either, a deep black hole was edged into his chest, the darkness spreading like a plague in his dying body.

She jumped, motioning to North who was starting to walk from the water.

The man sat down on the ground. He looked to her, tears forming from his blank eyes.

“Can you help me?” his voice nothing more than a break in the wind, quiet and low. Deep yet haunting. 

Eden kneeled before him, crossing her legs, elbows resting on her knees, her face resting in her hand. An emotion of sadness and pity resting in her eyes.

North was soon beside the old man, his face only staring into the blackness of his soul.

North bit his lip,

“How can we help… you?”

He sighed, more tears streaming down his shadowed face.

“You live with no purpose, you live stuck in the entirety of time.”

The souls nodded. Their eyes meeting the eyes of the man.

He pressed a finger against the deep hole in his chest.

“I need a soul.”

Eden’s eyes widened, she didn’t dare to look at North. She didn’t dare to think that only one would leave this place.

“What do you mean by that…” North stuttered on his words, branching the syllables together, sounding almost song-like.

He let a slow sigh ease through his shaky lungs

“The soul inside me died to the wind, and my body will die if something doesn’t take its place.” He brushed a shaky hand through his long-tattered hair.

Eden stood up, her eyes filled with a sudden joy.

“What will happen if I become a human-soul again?” North asked, anger spiraling in his irises.

“You will be born again.”

The souls smiled in unison, their ghostly bodies rushing toward the soulless man. Knowing the greatest opportunity was at hand. Knowing they could be saved, that only one would be saved.

The man sighed once more, his shaking hands uncurling from fists, his arms falling to his sides, his eyes still touched by sadness, as he stared seemingly into the eyes of the souls.

North stood only a foot away from the man, his eyes were not sad, the sadness inside him was sucked from his dead body, he was angry. His brows drawn together. His eyes blazed of fire from the depths of his soul, from the lighting and thunder that crashing against the rocks, the seashore. Each breath a cry from the ocean as humans drown, as they stop fighting, as they fade into the darkness of the sea.

He turned toward Eden.

Not daring to meet her eyes.

Not daring to admit that he would do anything to leave the eternal nightmare of time.

Eden wasn’t staring at the ground, she wasn’t feared to meet the eyes of her new enemy.

She wasn’t like North.

She was staring into the eyes of the boy she now hated.

She would do anything to leave. She would kill.

Eden would normally be sad, she would be crying to leave the first brother she ever really had.

Both minds washed, both minds forgotten of the times of laughter, of joy. Both minds angry. Both minds willing to slaughter, for the chance to live one more life… one last time.

The man spoke, his voice slowly by slowly fading away.

“I need an answer by midnight”

And with that simple statement he faded into the depths of the small city.

“North…”

“…Eden”

“I need to live… one last time. Please.”

“I know… but I am not going to let that happen.”

Eden backed away from north, her hand grabbing a sharp stone from behind her. The stone was cold, black, stained with her own anger.

North forced a sigh from his breathless lungs, he closed his eyes, curling his fingers into a fist.

And as he closed his eyes Eden sprinted.

With a scream she punched him straight in the jawbone, his teeth snapped together, he let an anger-drawn cry flood from his lips as he fell backwards. She came at him again, the stone still gripped in her fingers.

He gasped as she ripped the stone into his own flesh, as his heart broke, splintering into millions of pieces, falling from his bleeding chest.

But the souls couldn’t die.

They were already dead.

North stood, his brows furrowed.

He wasn’t angry, he was antagonized, infuriated.

“I am going to kill you Eden.” He hissed. Letting every ounce of good drain from his body.

Eden turned to face her victim.

“I will leave here North, I will do anything”

In unison the souls turned to face the nearest shop they knew was stocked with the tools of death, shops they would normally ignore. Shops that now mattered.

They sprinted.

Eden was faster.

She raced across the city, ignoring North who was not far behind, her mind a map to the city she could walk with her eyes closed, the city that she died in, was born into.

North didn’t know the city as well as she did.

She turned to face North, hoping he was lost in her dust.

But he was gone.

She stopped, biting her lip, acknowledging that something was wrong.

When she felt it.

She collapsed onto the floor beneath her, screaming as bullets were edged into her back, her skull, her arms, her legs. Hundreds were sinking into her body.

She turned her bleeding face, her face that was struck with at least 6 bullets.

She was blankly staring into the eyes of the boy that told her everything, her friend, her brother.

She wished to see him dead, burring in the fiery abyss of hell for all eternity.

She wished to have his head.

Eden sat up to face him, letting him watch her as she pulled the bullets from her gaping skull.

She watched him laugh

But she knew that if he was in her position she would be laughing too. 

She waltzed toward him with the grace of a swan, ignoring the pain that broke not from outside her, but inside her broken body.

She snatched the gun from his pocket, letting the cold metal rest in her cold hands.

The gun felt right in her hands, like she was meant to hold it in the first place.

North rolled his eyes.

“It’s 11:45” he spoke darkly, sad.

“I know. Prepare to stay here for the rest of your life.”

Both souls felt the presence of the soulless man nearing from behind them.

He walked with his eyes happier, still lost. But joyed… he too knew that he would be saved, along with only one of the souls.

“Who is coming?” even his voice was higher, filled with more joy.

2 things happened at once

North screamed his own name, and Eden raised the gun. Aiming straight for North’s Head.

North ducked, smiling as Eden watched the bullet fly past him, in unison all three watched the metal bounce of the surface of a metal statue, its light blinding as it passed through a wooden table; switching course.

Eden snapped her eyes shut as a scream filled the air, a human scream… she had forgotten that the human gun could kill a wandering human.

She popped her eyes open turning to see the person she had just killed.

To only hear another scream, her own scream.

North was screaming too, as they both ran to face the dead man that was going to save only one of them.

They screamed as they reached for his body as it faded into thin air, as it died the final death, as is heart beat one last time.

The place he died was nothing more than dirt and stone, nothing.

Eden wrapped her arms around her shoulders.

The soul wanted to die.

The soul was yearning to leave the eternal hell of time.

The soul begged for death.

But death never came.