The Silent Ones

Chapter 2

The child's mother had died giving birth to the red headed little girl. That day two families cried, but the baby girl said nothing. She had been born without a single scream and her eyes had opened immediately in the new light, her father looked at the child in his arms thinking of what was supposed to be normal and what his new daughter was like. She was an odd child and she would remain that way.

From childhood, Lilly could see the transparent spirits roaming around the earth while the other living beings saw nothing. Each ghost was different in their own special way. Some chose to float away from living people while others stayed greedily at old sites or objects they had known in their lives.

Some chose to turn into a past memory of themselves while others were burdened by the memories of their deaths, obsessing over the edge of a knife in their skin or the pull of the rope around their neck. They were living their tragic death over and over until the end of time, like a broken record. They were alway the bloody ones, the ones that proclaimed to the world, "This is how my entire world crumbled around me!".

A charred man would run around screaming fire, a transparent woman would cry with a bloody baby in her arms and rope around her neck. Each one had its own story to tell.

While others were harder to distinguish from the living. An old woman wandering around on the constant, cold breeze that followed her, could easily be mistaken for a living human.

At first, Lilly hadn't understood the difference between the two separate worlds of living and dead. The transparent people were strange and unknown to her. They came more and more after her fifth birthday, and then on her tenth. The dead became much more common to her as she grew older, she was now fifteen and knew in her gut that her sixteenth birthday was going to be a nightmare. Unfortunately as she grew, the living around her grew farther away and she moved steadily into her own silent existence.

She was outcasted by the people around her when she was a child and unknowingly had remarked on the floating beings around them, getting stares from people whose eyes asked if she was crazy, who's eyes were blind even when seeing.

The living and the dead didn't communicate with each other and Lilly seemed to be the only one to see both of the worlds. Leaving her life alone all by herself.

She had always been a little shy, but the more people that turned their backs on her the more she turned away from them. In the end she came to hate all of them, both living and dead.

Lilly had been alone for so long even when surrounded by people. But one day was different from the rest. She had met a boy with a cold touch and transparent body. He had offered her friendship.

His name was Henry Rickenson and he had lived a short life due to forgotten reasons. He was tall and looked around the age of seventeen. He had slick black hair and a soft smile. Henry wore a white tunic that hung loosely on his cold frame and blue jeans with brown leather boots. His attire different from modern day fashion.

He was her only friend and took pride in that fact, seeing as she was his only friend as well. Henry's help kept Lilly from the madness that always threatened with her loneliness. They had had a connection from their very first meeting, a type of understanding only they knew.

They were always together. Together they could live in peace, both relying on the other to exist. The two friends would calm angry souls and help the living without them acknowledging the two. Many times the dead would have old letters for their still living loved ones.

Lilly loved both worlds yet hated them. The breathing were ignorant and were blind to what was all around them. While some dead took pleasure in scaring or hurting the ignorant fools. Even with all Lilly and Henry did, they were hated on both sides as well.

Lilly wished to be a normal human being, yet hated their stupidity and blindness. The fifteen year old was often depressed and cried herself to sleep each night.

Lilly was all on her own and yet surrounded by people. Being tortured by her own heart in a land foreign to her. She often wondered why God had chose this path for her, why torture her to this extent?