White Orchids {BOOK 1 COMPLETED}

Chapter 7

I wake up with my clothes on even though I hung them in the wardrobe yesterday. The yellow sweater, the brown skirt with the suspenders and the black tights. Everything is exactly the way they were before I took them off. Even the dark brown boots are on, the shoelaces are tied in a ribbon. I guess this is yet another thing that happens when you die, stuck in all eternity with the same clothes you had the day you died. I could be worse, I tell myself.

     I slightly pull the brown skirt, I can't feel the material against my fingers. I can't even think of how it used to feel. There's a memory there somewhere, like when you have a word that you forgot on the tip of your tongue.

     I pull up my sleeve and pinch myself, I still feel nothing. Not the feeling of skin against my fingers nor the pain. I pinch harder, nothing happens. Not even a mark is left when I let go. I sigh and get up from the bed and leave the cover pushed against the wall.

     Breakfast. I'm not hungry and probably never will be again. Clover had said that they still ate, maybe they still do it so they can keep some of their humanity left one way or another. To make it feel normal, like it did when we were alive.

     I don't feel like eating, but if I can sleep without being tired, I can eat without feeling hunger. Besides, Clover is waiting for me, he had told me he would show me the dining hall. I can't keep myself locked into the room for all eternity even though that is what I would prefer.

     I stand next to the pinboard on the other side of the room and try to ignore the eternal rain on the outside. I look at the photographs.

     I – Jonna. Dad – Mikael. Sister – Emma.

     I repeat it many times. I recognize them and know who they are. All of my memories are still here, nothing is missing from what I knew and could remember from yesterday. I sigh of relief and continue to study the photographs and repeat their names. I think of some memories from my childhood, the forest me and Emma had been in the day I died, of how my dad carved faces of trolls in trees. I move on to the notes, I don't have any photographs of my mom, but I read the notes multiple times and imagine how she looks like.

     It feels like if I close my eyes I'll wake up in my apartment in Gothenburg and everything has been a dream. It's a hopeless wish.

     I force myself to reach the wooden door, on the other side of the darkness there's no soul wanderers in the labyrinth of corridors. I hadn't seen anyone yesterday either, it had been just as lonely as today. I close the door and I realize I can't actually hear the sounds of a smalltown on the outside, like the strange world I walked into doesn't exist on the outside of this building.

     It doesn't take a long time to find my way out of the labyrinth of corridors, there's a feeling that tells me what way to head so I can reach the Eleven again. Clover is outside of the building leaning towards the wall, he doesn't look annoyed so he can't have waited too long. The eleven looks like it did yesterday, with its dark blue grass and the black stone slabs that covers the street and with its black-pink glass sky. It doesn't feel as beautiful today, now it's like we're in a glass globe and can't get out.

     I force a smile for Clover, but it never reaches my eyes.

     "Breakfast," he says, "I'm going to show you the dining hall."

     Clover seems to be done with whatever he did yesterday, since he doesn't look as tense.

     In my thoughts I repeat my name over and over again while we walk up the small hill covered in the black stone slabs. Clover leads us to narrow streets with tall but slim houses of white stone, they must have been the roofs I had seen behind the trees at the crescent-shaped stairs. Creatures walks past us and some of them nods as a greeting. I also see other soul wanderers, from many different centuries. It feels strange to see so many different styles on people, like they don't actually dress like that and all this is cosplay. I know better, definitely since I stare at Clover's back. He looks just as strange as the rest of them, with his coal-marked and torn clothes.