Tulip

It becomes clockwork; they hang around like tennis shoes over telephone cables— stagnantly waiting for a gust of wind that will never come.

The sun glimmers into an attic in a small town just outside of Philadelphia. Its light fractures through the round window in the center of the room, passing dusty moving boxes and covered art canvases. A rainbow is projected on the old wood, and besides it, in the shade, a weight bends into the floor. It’s lying over the dampness and the splinters. It’s indistinguishable by atoms, but it used to be�"he used to be. Now, he trades his time between lying there and long walks; he roams the streets like a bodiless fixture of long white bed sheets with holes where eyes should be.

Outside of this place he calls home, the world lingers over him. The attic is unused and forgotten, and its only purpose is to store old mementos. It smells of dust bunnies and sawdust, but no one would know this. A few feet beneath the attic door there’s a hallway with a bedroom on each side of it. A middle aged couple resides in one room and their two children in the other. Their joyous laughs and arbitrary complaints could be heard from above, but they have no knowledge of the guest living in their attic. Their only comprehension of his existence comes from “ghost stories" the kids share in the middle of the night as they whisper in blanket forts over steel-framed bunk beds. That, along with delusions they tell themselves before falling to sleep.

I swear I saw the door open by itself!

She’s barking because she saw a ghost, Eddie.

They enjoy the thrills of make-believe, but they’re not always wrong.

Waking up in the house is the last thing he can remember. He can conjure ideas and feel the way a person could, but all specific memories have left. He has no recollection of a family or special dates or even what he looked like, just the feeling that at one point he did.

Outside the window, he could make out a street sign for “Driftwood Ave.” He’s been there before. After a certain distance, what he had summed up to be 3,886 steps, there were no more steps for him to take. It was as if there was a barrier holding him back from exploring any longer, and that barrier held in every direction creating a radius where the attic was the center. Along with being held prisoner to the neighborhood, he was held prisoner to the moon. In the rays of sunlight, he was unwelcome. The barrier of the sun felt different though; there was no wall to hold him back, but instead an undeserving guilt. A guilt as if the sun would say: you are not worthy to feel my rays�"my light, so he listened.

For all the time he has, he does not eat or sleep, he merely exists�"if this is considered existing. He lies awake hoping to one day remember who he was, hoping that that would let him rest. That’s all the hollow body could make of his purpose. These rules and what he had come to find became law to him until those laws bent and broke to the sound of her.

It was the start of a Sunday just past midnight, and he was walking the empty streets. At the end of the block, where Driftwood Avenue intersected 4th Street, he could sense it.

He turned his gaze to her, and she appeared elegant and in no way represented as the drapes with eye holes he imagined himself to be. Her figure was translucent and whole-bodied; it glistened in the moonlight the way a soap bubble did in the sun. It almost felt surreal, and he wondered what had brought her there.

She slowly hovered forward and stood directly in front of him, and then she placed a box between where their feet would be. She leveled herself with the floor and opened it. Inside was an old wooden board with a fold in the middle of it. By the board, there were two sets of pieces �" one set was colored black, and the other was wood-stained. The wooden board with the pieces set in place would remind him that what he was looking at was a game of chess.
Who are you? The words flowed through him like rain from clouds. He was surprised by the sound of his own voice. It was hollow sounding and almost hazy as if he was speaking through a large cave dripping with rain water.

She didn’t say a word. They sat with each other for a couple of seconds, and in that time he felt naked. He could sense an innocence and vulnerableness looming over him, and he worried that she felt it too. 

She lifted a pawn from the chessboard and moved it up two squares. Then, he took his turn. Each chess piece felt heavy under the empty fingers he used to move them. Only the sound of a slight breeze kept them company throughout the night as they traded between moving pieces. Within six turns the game was over.

She slowly slid the queen across the board pushing the king from his square, and when she did, she said, Checkmate. 

Her voice was just as hollow as his, but it flowed smoother and more confidently. He looked up at her for a short second then stared back down and reached for the wood-stained bishop on the chessboard. This cycle of chess matches followed by the second ghost saying, “Checkmate,” continued for the next few games.

I remember skin that felt nice under the sun. I was a girl then. Fourteen days I’ve been here. Today it looked like skin was a distant dream. He was surprised that she knew some about the past, or at least she spoke as if she did.

She turned her head towards the corner house they were sitting in front of. It was light blue and looked like every other house down the road. The neighborhood was safe, but it was as eerie and uniform as a psychiatric hospital’s hallway. This house looked even more uncared for, as a picket “For Sale” sign swayed with the yellow grass it was stabbed into.

The grass was greener once. She had noticed him staring. She looked down at the diseased yard with a reminiscent sadness, and he believed her.

Are you afraid?

Before she could answer, they heard the sound of a door opening. A thin man walked out from the house next door and began to stretch his arms. He raised them above his head and then held them out widely to each side. After that he reached towards his feet. He rolled his neck and hopped forward, one foot before the other, and slowly picked up a pace in their direction. Then he was running.

He, the ghost, felt nervous. He worried as if his empty bones would collapse with the force of the running man. The ghost worried whether the man would stop and think, “What the f**k is a chessboard doing here?” The ghost worried because he was uncertain of everything.

He closed his eyes, and time paused. The man jogged through them as if nothing was there and stepped on the chessboard as if it was a mirage. The ghost was relieved, yet another part of him was saddened. He turned his glance back to her to find that she looked unfazed. She seemed slightly surprised, but not by what had happened, instead by the type of surprise that comes with déjà vu.

By then, the sun had began to rise. They could see its light breaking past the buildings and onto the street �" they would be forced inside soon. They’d be safe and away from the sun but somehow unlucky. 

Will I see you again?

She reached her arm towards the board and lifted the white queen. Checkmate was the last of what she said, and then she put the pieces back in the box.

He stayed on the concrete and followed her with his gaze as she walked into the abandoned house. Once she disappeared behind wooden frames and chipped paint, he walked back to the attic.

He made it to the doorway, and before entering the house his hand was touched �" it was burned �" by the sun. Its heat felt like ten tons of cigarette buds on cold skin, and he noticed himself fading in it. His once translucent fingertips became nothingness. He quickly pulled away and back into the shadows. It was a pain unlike any he had felt before, and he never wanted to feel it again. He made an empty-hearted attempt back into the attic and lied there unmoving and thinking. He thought of the sun, chess, and her.

He thought of where she came from and if her memory served her better than his. He wondered where she had found the chessboard and how she was so skillful; he barely acknowledged the idea that he just wasn’t.

From there, his thoughts drifted to the sun. He wondered if it hurt her the way it hurt him and if she knew why. He explored these ideas stagnantly like a prisoner in solitary confinement, and before he realized it the night had came.

The flickering street lights polluted the night sky, but he noticed constellations bloom above him with every passing step. He stopped in front of the corner house, where she had been, and it was as if she was waiting for him by the window.

She gently crept out from the opposite side of the walls and made her way towards him. On her left side, she was holding the box again.

She sat it below them the same way she did the night before, but in some ways this night felt different. There were less clouds corrupting the stars, and the moon was full rather than crescently.

Big dipper. Her voice was clearer. She started unboxing the chessboard and continued, You?

Me?

Who are you.

She was continuing their conversation from the night before, and as he realized this he paused and thought. He figured the shell that has lied in dark corners and on wooden floors for a consecutive 729 days was not him. He understood the question, but he couldn’t conjure an answer. A part of him felt that he wouldn’t want an answer regardless. Maybe there was a reason he was there, and his soul wasn’t good enough for a better place. What he had finally said was, All I know is the attic.

Take me there.

They walked the street and counted more constellations along the way. They made it to the attic, and there she could find answers if there were any; all she was likely to find were thin walls and the dusted boxes, however. She could find cobweb filled corners and dampened floorboard caused by rain dripping through cracks in the ceiling �" the way it was doing then. She could look through the round window in the center of the attic. It was the only place besides the floor he constantly found himself at.

Instead, she watched spiders as they weaved together a safety net. In one corner she noticed height-markers on the wall that must’ve had meaning to someone. She stopped in front of the window and enjoyed the sight of Orion’s Belt, and right then, a raindrop fell. It hit the floor, but for a second he imagined it would touch her head, gently slide down her cheek, dribble onto her shoulder, and stream its way to the tip of her finger�"then it would hit the floor. She looked down as if she imagined the same.

There was a warmth that came over him, and the moment felt intimate. Since being here, this was the closest thing he’d known to comfort.

Suddenly he remembered scents of lilac over bedsheets and what running water felt like in his palms, so he told her this. They were empty memories, but they were something.

She asked him if he could try to remember more, so he did. He reached towards the soaked floor and held out his hand. For the first time, it was as if he could actually feel the wetness. Flashes started coming to him, but they were hardly decipherable. There were assault rifles and jungle forests and tuxedos and wedding dresses. He could hear jazz playing for seconds at a time and picture round dinner tables. He was bombarded with memories like distant dreams as he imagined newly formed fingertips shape over him. He told her all of these things.

He basked in the moments as she stared out the attic-window. A thin-lined silhouette was forming from the moonlight over her body, and he felt like he could smile. He walked beside her and took it all in �" the thoughts in his head and the specs that made the sky. They stood quietly, and for the first time they felt like they weren’t trapped in the mid-stage of the Divine Comedy.

Do you have a name? She asked.

That’s one memory he didn’t think would ever come back to him; he didn’t find it to be of importance either way. A name was just a calling card, and what did that matter to the only two in the room. Still, he said, I must.

They stood with each other for the next few hours, and his eyes began to tire. The sun was coming up. Although the days faded more quickly, they felt heavier there. Minutes flew by like seconds, and days felt like hours. It made it feel as if sleep was a high they were always chasing just couldn’t reach

Do you have a name? He asked the question in return.

Outside the window, they noticed the neighborhood become busy. It was seven in the morning, and the streets started to buzz with car engines and disoriented chatter. There were men and women walking out of their homes in suits and dresses. Some walked towards the cars sitting in their driveways while others pulled out of their garages.

Children in uniform followed with lunch boxes, large backpacks, and dispirited faces. They all wore bags under their eyes and wrinkled shirts like badges they were unfortunate to have. A young man stopped at nearly every house in the neighborhood, and after greeting the owners he would leave with a new companion each time. By the end of it, he had roughly ten leashes strapped to a belt around his waist with dogs of all sizes on the other ends. They pulled him in every direction as he tried to halt them with all of the muscle on his back. He ultimately gave in and let them guide.

The ghosts watched from the window entertained and enamored. Two nights ago they were strangers, and on the third day they watched the sunset together. Everything had come and gone again. The kids grew into thick bones and bratty attitudes. They always said “goodbye” and left home, and they always came back with new scars, stories, and a well-deserved sense of grandeur. Before that, their pets grew old. Their fur became gray and their bodies shriveled. Some aged past a decade and some bore offspring �" some more than once �" but all of them, with time, weren’t seen again.

The two of them saw this and watched as the skies changed. Cars became larger and faster, and technology advanced unbelievably. Homeowners changed, and yellow grass became green again.

Eventually, caffeine-driven demolition workers came. The houses were abandoned then, and their ashes meant more. They needed to be rebuilt and saved from busted pipes and termite-ridden walls. Heavy wrecking balls brought them down, and excavators gathered the pieces in large piles. When there was nothing left, they stood over the dust.

The sun grew out from the horizon and began to consume every inch of shade. It slowly crept from the far side of the street and onto the sidewalk. Its rays touched her ankles then wrapped around both of theirs like grapevines on wooden fencing.

Are you afraid? She asked him this time.

The pain of bee stings made their way up and around them. A sharp burn boiled at the soles of their feet, but neither of them moved. The light tightened until they couldn’t hold their breath anymore, and he turned to her to find it was up to their chests. The tension was barely bearable, but they were glowing in it. They grew a creamy exterior complemented by an assortment of colors �" all the shades of a tulip. Violet and maroon transitioned from the faint yellow on their bottoms. Pink began to reflect off of their noses, and they turned to each other one last time before being completely intangible. He smiled vibrantly through warm sun-kissed cheeks.

No.

Author's Note

any input is appreciated.