An excerpt from 'The Journal of Ghosts"

An excerpt from ‘The Journal of Ghosts’

 

I rose from my grave on the second day. I had pawned my lungs for answers that would lead to nothing but a dehydrated palette and cracked, yellow fingers. You presented yourself as a lion with a thorn in its paw. I feigned sympathy and constructed tears from empty wine bottles. I sucked you in, digested your innocence and spat you out of my heart-burnt throat.

We sat, deep in the eye of a tornado, chewing bullets and building paper airplanes from cigarette papers. Waiting for the next syllable to destroy the silence we had built on sand. My eyes pierced yours and the pale blue of your irises bled upon your off-white veneer. I had lit the touch paper and waited with no retreat to reap the violence I had created with one aimless word.

We stood, we ran, we fell without moving a muscle in our toneless bodies. The weight of our own silhouettes dragged us to the ground and turned us to carpet. We struggled, kicked, twisted, attempting to break free from our cages and flee to a sanctuary of air and light. Movement ceased and stillness and quiet sent shivers down my brittle spine. That was when I saw you for the first time.

Your face was a mask withered with memory and pockmarked with lies. You appeared as an old man, ravaged by the worms that fed on your tobacco stained torso. My curiosity called you closer, yet my fear didn’t want you near. You stepped forward in slow motion, crushing shards of broken glass from smashed light bulbs under your feet. Another step, and another until you are too close to see.

I can smell the sweetness of the alcohol-induced headache on your breath. It has the fowl odour of death. We are face to face yet I hold no recognition, no memory to put to the blank canvas that stands before me. You have no name, simply a toe-tag with a code on it, an indecipherable barcode. My pupils fire daggers that do not puncture. My lungs gasp for air that is not there and burn from the fire you force me to inhale.

You will take me tonight once and for all. You are there, my adversary, one inch from me. It is then, and only then that I realize that you are a mirror.