Sound- white noise, woolen air, spoken words, heartbeats, racing, drifting, gliding, hushed... swarming, echoed, caressing the air. The squeak of a chair as it sighed its laments, dust drifting, the world humming- hush, hush, hush, hush. Word's echoes, ethereal and bare, lost in a lonesome trail. Wind pressed against the house, shouting out here, out here, in there, in there against its unkempt walls.
Noise in his head- thoughts, trails of memory, bitter tasting residue locked by spiderwebs in his mind's cage. Heartbeats solemnly echoing, in here, in here, words barrenly trailing through, out there, out there, dust drifting, world humming, hush hush hush hush, and he was divided.
Yes, divided. He was always divided; outside, inside, real and fake, ghosts, reality, his heartbeat's ache- staring from behind a pane of glass, the rim of his hat, or fear's binding wrath. Life and death, hello, goodbye, ghosts and nightmares, dreams, ending as soon as they began. Trapped in a cage, a house, a mind, an emotion, cast beside the bank of a river and remaining on its lifeless edge. Inside, outside, lonesome space where only he exists, divided between the world's humming and the threadbare quilt of the ghost's laugh.
Silence, curtains blocking light, darkness, relief, oppressive yet light. Her darkness of a basilisk mind, world of stone and silence, heart beating hush hush hush, hushed. He yearned for her cloak, for her darkness, where white noise was banished and he could finally close his eyes to rest beneath this shade she cast, where noise was stone and darkness, light. Silence.
Silence.
Que stared through her shrouded eyes, twining his fingers into the tassels of his hat. And she was silent, oh so silent, yet somehow her words sprang, soft and yet loud, and neither sound seemed quite right anymore.
“You went outside today?”
''It's quieter at night,'' he whispered, as if an excuse, a subtle shrug pulling him deeper into his slouch. She spoke again, but he wasn't sure he listened- no, he had listened, surely he had listened. But the girl had moved closer, and her shadow deepened, and white noise swelled only to be smoldered by the shade she cast, and he was enthralled with the silence of the dark. She took his hands, and the touch upon his sensitive, clay clod palms coaxed a flinch, but the darkness grew heavier, and noise, opaque. What had been so terrible, again, about these ghosts?
Fear spiked in the ghost beside him, noise seeping through the shade, ghosts clearer, more defined, growing into his vision further and further away, fear, acrid, bitter taste, and light swelled unbroken into his eyes as the ghost's tail moved to lift his hat's rim. Emotions spun through her dark web- anger, love, hate, disgust, and they seeped into the house's walls and infested the darkness with a boiling restlessness, pests eating into his silence, noise, noise, white noise growing, wind howling, echoes, whispers, ghosts infesting, and his skin grew paler, blood infecting the darkness as it glowed a frightened blue. Bitter white, light, noise, ensnared by her furred hands, quelled from a growing panic by fragments of her dark shadow bullied by the noise. And he was at the bank of the river, hands pulled against his chest, noises of a crowd on the other side, milling, shouting, emotions rising, pulled to cross the dark stream by a siren, the Ghost with a capital G. His dull white sock tempted its surface and felt the water with a cold blooded shock before she pulled him back away again, swung him into a dance, his hat receding to shelter his eyes, and noise evaporated into a silence and he was hungry, hungry, hungry for that silence to never leave again.
Bitterness was washed away from his tongue as he stumbled to follow the ghost's hands, socked feet drawing hard thup, thup, thups from the floor. Awash in dust, the sound receded until it was but a faint murmur, and the quieter his footsteps grew the lighter the boy began to feel. It was an empty sort of lightness, one that coaxed him further into his fruitless slouch, until he felt as if lighter than air, and at that moment the boy was sure that he had, in fact, existed, because with a tug on his arm and a cascade of silence he was sure he was pulled from existence all together.
His last footstep echoed, thuff, as the boy was drawn in by a ghost into an ethereal world, dust swirling, silence muted and hushed. Eyes closed, empty gateways cast away, stumbling over hidden noise, swung, spun, together, uncoordinated, apart from the world as dust, pulled by a star's string, stumbled over and beneath their feet, and he was free- free, free, free, silence, darkness, curtains closed, dancing the dance of ghosts.
No more goodybes, no more hellos, just dust, time's swirling sand, an hour glass of dying stars. No more fear, cleaned of emotion's residue, just darkness, white eyes, eyes of ghosts, staring, staring, staring forwards, ever forwards, always forwards, dancing, dancing, dancing the dance of ghosts.
They stumbled to the room's core, breath, lifting, darkness, swelling its matted cloak, life, death, somewhere in between, and his hand was hers and her hand was his and they drifted, barren of thought and reason, drifting the dance of ghosts. Deepened slouch, swallowed breath, grey shadows, silent world, ghostly dance, silhouettes. Drifting, spinning, stumbling, breathing, dancing the dance of ghosts. And the Ghost drifted to a stop and the room breathed, white noise drifting in from an unknown world. And then that world was his, and he was real once more, or perhaps he wasn't, he could never tell anymore.
Dust settled, the world turned, the girl spoke, uncertainty glancing off his eyes in light of her words. But perhaps... perhaps... perhaps...
The Ghost stirred. As if a tattered curtain drawn back by the wind, emotion seeped into the dark, crawling into light yet remaining unfrozen. Noise, noise, white noise, words echoed, silence tore, and his footsteps throttled the stagnant air as the boy stepped back. No, no. She couldn't be real- she was his basilisk, she was his darkness, she was his cloak.
He was tired, oh so tired, he had been running for a long time, his breath, stolen, his heart awry. No, wait- he was something else- he was in mourning, his heart beat on after thought, he was lonely, he was yearning, his heartbeat was staggered with pain- no, no, come, wait a moment, was this him or was this her?
''You're stirring, basilisk,'' he spoke as a plea, voice sharp as needle's point. He stared at her, and for once, the boy truly stared at her before the curtain fell, and with it, the world grew to be stone, and relief was staggered with an emptiness of which he couldn't compete.
As if by puppet strings, the boy was drawn back to the window, milking the empty air in an endless, fruitless search. He pulled his hat low, twining the tassels about his fingers.
Dust murmured with movement's death.
It wasn't her.
