Ghosts In The Daylight :: (Esther + Felix) [Blitz]

[L△LIA]

( E S T H E R L E O N T I N E H A R T M Y R E )



i died so i could have you
i died so i could haunt you
thousands of ghosts in the daylight
one day we all disappear

Florry and I play hide and seek on Sundays, just like when we were kids before the fire made life difficult in a pretty literal way for me. The two of us have been getting along much better since she died; now that she understands what being a ghost feels like, she seems to understand me better too. Sneaking around between gravestones makes a Sunday afternoon feel lazy, as the voices of those who still linger below the ground whisper hints up through the dirt to me, tipping me off as to which way my sister has gone. Over there, just beyond the broken angel statue, one says and something mischievous sparks in my eyes. "I owe you one, Jamesy," I whisper back, "next time your wife comes around to visit, I promise to play nice." There are certain people who don't know how to let their loved ones go, who come by the graveyard every couple of days or so, and I get to know their faces pretty well. Maybe they're the ones I should be the most respectful of, seeing as how they have the decency not to ignore the dead, but at the same time those are also the people I know my tricks won't scare off for good and I just can't seem to help myself. That woman is one of those people whose endless sobbing simply begs me to scare her witless from time to time, but I'll sacrifice that amusement just this once. For now, my sights are set on a different target.

The graves surrounding me aren't particularly old, but the soil has still settled in tightly around their memories. Only a matter of months or, at most, a few years have passed since the people in the coffins beneath this part of the cemetery were laid to rest, so Florence likes to think she can pull one over on me by hiding around here. It's as if she thinks I can't tell the difference between her ghostly giggles and the cries of living lungs and I might laugh if I weren't wary of giving my imminent victory away. I can hear her on the other side of the next gravestone — one of those huge, pillar-like monuments that rich families buy for each other so they can feel important and bigger than everyone else even in death. My sister hasn't been dead long enough yet to remember that she doesn't need to breathe anymore and the sound whistles in the air as I shoot a devious glance to the ghost of the Bloom boy watching me from the next row over. He's got the kind of smirk on his face that seems to think I'm not about to win my game, but there's no way I'm going to sit back and be mocked by someone who definitely lost his. I'll show you how to be a Victor, I mouth at him before sticking out my tongue and whirling up from my hiding spot, a handful of flour dusting the head of the one lingering on the other side. Aesop Bloom's hollow laughter rings out on the breeze as I'm confronted not with the whitened face of my sister, but one that is only that way because of what I've just thrown. A strangled groan of annoyance thrums through me as I look the frustratingly alive person in the face and give him a halfhearted — "Oogy-boogy-boo!" — before plopping down on the ground and pouting, forced to acknowledge that I might just be a second place loser too.

[florentine, d4b ❁]

[presto]

felix valentine-keeni
seventeen
district six

[/presto]

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COME THE REEK OF BONES

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I did not intend to grow into a boy who lives in a graveyard. Perhaps it is not my home in the literal sense - not like the children who sleep each night in the church-house - but I exist here in the same way the spider webs do, entangled in the tombstones and sprawled out across the grass. Time has delivered me here, a product of a broken system. I kneel in the dirt each morning, and rest on the benches at dusk. It is not a silent place.  The girl, she sings as though her heart was not wrenched from her chest along with my own. (She thinks I can't hear her, from all the way over here in the land of the living, but what she doesn't understand is I am a man with one foot in the grave. I can see the inhabitants of this desolate, empty land in the same way I see the blood on my palms. Nothing here is a secret from me.  We are all nobody children. We do not ask each other's names, nor do we question the paths that carried us over the hills to rest between these walls. Familiar faces visit daily, weekly, monthly, carrying flowers and tears on rosy cheeks until they begin to fade. And all at once, they are eager to leave, moving around on tiptoe so as not to disturb the ghosts. (After a while, they tend to stop coming at all, content with the service they believe they have already carried out.) It is not my right to tell them they are wrong. Instead, I lie and track the clouds with equally cloudy eyes, whispering my thoughts aloud because Freya cannot read my mind. The crown of my head presses into the stone and I stretch out my fingers, searching for her. I grasp the air, for she cannot wait beside me the way she once did. And they cease to return, unfaithful, as though they fear the death the Hartmyre Graveyard holds is contageous.  If they asked me I would tell them that no amount of lurking about the final resting place of your siblings is no way to join them in their current state of demise. (It's a shame, I'd rather like to drift through the walls in the way she does, scattering lullabies in the way that the winter scatters snow.) I have seen the smallest of them all, Clara, dancing here. I held my breath and watched her go before she drifted away in a flurry of smoke.  Today I arrive at dawn, because I cannot stand to wait between the ceiling and floor of my house among the stupid, stupid voices anymore. My siblings are so filled with feeling for the brother that currently spends his days upon the television screen that already they have disregarded the last of us who did not come home. My walk is not obliging, as I do not feel my presence is a debt I must pay. Pyrian and Gypsy are set a little way back from the entrance, where some of the soil is still soft. I don't like leaving footsteps behind. They remind me exactly how alive I am - that trace, a trail I cannot argue with no matter how long I spent by the mirror, muttering to her that no reflection remains. Usually, my journey is purposeless and a varying, restless feet carrying me about where they please. (I like to think she's holding my hand and pulling me around her brand new world, showing me all she can.) Instead, I walk forward as though I know where I am going. By Florence Hartmyre's grave, I stop short, realising how even I forgot for a moment that the family tied down to this land are not free of loss; they have experienced death as well as the worst of us. All of a sudden I am choking on this - a fine and suffocating feeling that is abandoned the moment I realise that this is, in fact, a fine and suffocating substance that tastes like Willis' attempts at cooking.  "Oogy-boogy-boo!" cries a voice that makes my heart leap. I splutter on the flour, wiping it from my eyes and from my shirt and from the darkest corners of my mind. Because as many times as I have conversed with my dear departed before, I have never, not once, been haunted. And I have waited all this time.  "It's been years, honestly! You think just because you're a ghost you can ignore me? Surely death isn't quite so selfish as all that?" I look at the girl and take her in with a jolt that feels like forgetting. (After all, it's been half my life, and I'm sure I've changed more than she. The least I can do is make sure she doesn't run from me again.) Although, after death, I wasn't sure there was anywhere else to run.

WHEN WE DIE, WE WILL DIE

[L△LIA]

( E S T H E R L E O N T I N E H A R T M Y R E )



you asked me how long i'd stay by your side
so i answered with just one reply
til the casket drops, til my dying day
til my heartbeat stops, til my legs just break

Living people can be exhausting. They have this inconsiderate way of breathing that just gets on a ghost's nerves when we're already in a sour mood and so when he starts huffing and puffing as if he's going to blow me down, I just about lose it. It's not like he's the first person to storm around in a graveyard, telling off his loved ones for being rude by up and dying on him, but there's nothing original about his argument and I'm not in the mood to have his incessant commentary as the background soundtrack to my personal embarrassment. Forget hide and seek with Florry, I just lost a whole other game to none other than why-you-get-second-place-your-name-Aesop-not-B-Sop Bloom. "Urgh!" Throwing my hands up in a whirlwind flurry of flour upon the breeze, I fall back and glare at the ignorant guy jabbering on to a ghost that isn't even around to hear him out right now. "Ignore you?!" I scoff at the still cackling dead Tribute across the way and mutter a series of graceless curse words under my breath. "As if anyone could ignore someone when they're kicking up such a fuss."

Sitting straight up, I feel the beast of my own self-righteousness rise up from the wicked caverns of hell to lock horns with his. Bring it on. "Being selfish is one of the few perks of being dead. Do you think it's easy to die? No way. There is a definite downside to dying, you know, the whole being dead part." This. Guy. I recognize him, now that I'm getting a proper look at his face. He's one of those people who visits the graveyard enough that maybe I shouldn't be ranting at him across the divide of the afterlife, because maybe he has earned a little bit of a right to be haunted, but even if I hadn't personally seen him around before, by now I can tell a Keeni when I see one. Gypsy and Pyrian spend an inordinate amount of time getting on my nerves too, still bickering on and on about who killed who and wah wah wah. They had better get over their betrayal issues sometime this decade, Ripred please, or by the power of the name Hartmyre invested in me, I swear I will banish the both of them to wander the rest of eternity outside the gates of this cemetery. It would probably do them good to get out a little more anyway; the same for this brother of theirs. "If you want to be haunted so badly, maybe you should try being less of a show-off about breathing. Ghosts don't appreciate having the whole body thing flaunted. Salt in the wound. I mean it." Whether or not the remnants of my rotting voice can actually reach him, I'm not sure, but I feel better getting it out of my system and I guess now I understand why living people like to kick and yell around here so much. "If you held your breath every once in a while, you'd probably be a lot more likable."