Flightless

Ghosts

There was a wet, mossy smell all around me. It had rained yesterday, but it was nice and warm today. It was the middle of June and me and my family were out at the lake fishing. Well, Daddy, my brothers, and my sister were fishing. Mama was just relaxing and I was sitting on the edge of the dock watching the fish swim around beneath me.

I've never liked the smell of raw fish--not dead ones at least. I've never caught a fish and the fishiest thing I've ever eaten is fish sticks. I would much prefer to swim with fish than to eat them.

I wish I was a mermaid. But nope. Instead I'm a ghost. And no, that does not mean I'm dead and I go around haunting houses and scaring people. Those kinds of ghosts don't exist. That's right, I'm totally alive, and on top of that, I couldn't scare someone if I wanted to.

Ghosts are an all-female species that breed with human men. The first ghost in existence was a French woman, named Lunette. She was the mother of all ghosts, the queen. She became known as the Nightmare. Both of her parents were human. Why she was born as something else is still a mystery to this day.

Her parents had no idea what she was. They'd never seen anything like her before. When a dark hole opened in their baby's stomach, just above the navel, they were terrified. Their fear grew when a small black vine began growing out of the slender opening. A tiny white bud on the vine slowly grew into a pretty flower. The vine continued extending from the little girl's stomach, occasionally sprouting more flowers, in a wide range of colors, until it wound around her slender neck and stayed there. It was like a tattoo, a picture on her skin. The parents tried to hide it. However, another black vine began growing from the same spot on her stomach. Along with the new vine, a pair of small black wings also appeared on her back.

Eventually Lunette discovered she could control the vines and wings, that she could detach them from her skin. This bothered her parents even more. As Lunette grew and more vines emerged, along with the knowledge of her abilities, the parents became more and more fearful of her. She became resentful toward her parents and all the other people who feared her. She abandoned them, going off to live on her own, isolated from the rest of the world in a forest.

Lunette's story is a sad one. She grew up feared by everone around her. She was lonely until she saved the life of a lost man who was dying of hunger. He didn't fear her, in fact, he called a goddess, and eventually they fell in love and had children. She would have happily grown old and died with him. But that didn't happen. After becoming a fully grown woman she had stopped aging. Lunette watched as her husband grew old and died without her. Her children also grew old. Her two daughters were also ghosts but they never stopped aging like Lunette had. They also never inherited their mother's special power which she called Sang de Lune, meaning Moon Blood. Her two daughters and her son all grew old and died. Then her grandchildren, and then great grandchildren, and so on. None of them had inherited her immortality or her Moon Blood.

She was the mother of a whole new species which she called ghosts. She was the oldest and most powerful ghost in world. She was devastated when vampires discovered the existence of ghosts and began hunting them for their wonderful blood. A war broke out between the two species. Ghosts were slower and weaker than vampires, therefore they weren't very difficult prey. However, ghosts had the power of fear and illusion on their side. If the ghost wasn't killed quickly, she could enter the vampire's mind, find his biggest fear, and send it on a rampage through his head until he went insane.

Finally, the Nightmare challenged the king of vampires, a.k.a. the Fang. His name was Augustin Suavelle, the head of the Suavelle clan. Lunette knew that with Augustin dead the other vampires would fall back. Using her indestructible Moon Blood as both an armor and weapon, she won the battle easily and the war died down. A new Fang was never chosen, thus the vamires have somehow remained unruled for hundreds of years.

Some time after killing Augustin, Lunette's lonliness began catching up with her again. She was living in a cottage just outside of London, England. Eventually, a pastor in London began telling people that Lunette was a witch. Witches don't exist. The myth about witches was created by someone or maybe multiple people who had discovered a ghost, but didn't know what she was, and somewhere along the way the story got twisted. But the townspeople often trusted what the pastor said, so one night they abducted Lunette and burned her. She didn't fight them or anything. She knew they were coming and she was ready to die. She'd lived far longer than necessary.

Just as there was never another Fang, there has never been another Nightmare either. Both sides are still eagerly awaiting a new king or queen.

My mother is a ghost and so am I. My older half-sister, Ashley, isn't a ghost, though. That happens sometimes. Mama's older sister is a human, too. Mama says that I'm a lot like Lunette, because of my black vines and wings. Mama's vines and wings are baby blue.

A ghost grows one vine every two years until she's ten, and the fifth vine stops growing and is finally under her control. Each vine wraps around each of her four limbs and her neck. It's said that if the first vine wraps around the neck she will excel in spiritual power. If it wraps her right arm she will excel in physical strength. Wrapping her right leg means physical speed. The left arm is passion, and the left leg is instinct/intelligence. Mine wrapped my neck. My second vine wrapped my left arm. The third was my left leg, the fourth my right leg, and of course the fifth wrapped my right arm.

For the secrecy of ghosts, a so-called "religion" was created to explain why little girls had what looked like tattoos all over their bodies. According to Lunesity, vines and wings tattoos are a sacred tradition that begin not long after birth. Like how Jewish boys get circumcised.