Ghost Perfume | ✔

Chapter 1: Hear Me (Part 1)

They smelled like the snow.

A fresh, cool whisper from an insubstantial friend.

They shivered and flickered into sight. Here with me. Now gone again. Only their fragrance left behind.

Till it too wisped away to nothing.

"Go through the portal, Brenda, it's time," I persuaded her.

I slid into my boots and knelt to tighten the laces, frayed and dirty under my cold fingers.

The ghost hesitated. "But you really don't know what's behind it?''

"No,'' I told her gently. I couldn't know. "But it's better if you pass through.''

I pulled on Tommy's old jacket and my mom's old oversized, red-checkered scarf, soft from its many years of washings. It fell heavily on my shoulders.

"Or else you're stuck on this side of things,'' I continued. "You don't want that, Brenda - you don't want to be stuck here.''

Many ghosts were lucid enough, but a few were indecisive, unstable, as if they were coming apart at the seams. They'd been stuck for too long. Their thread frayed under the weight of the knots that strained it. Brenda was one of those.

My voice was my greatest weapon with them. I changed and shifted it for persuasion, sometimes softening it with honey, sometimes hardening it with steel. Once in a while, in the middle of talking with a more difficult ghost, I'd hear my own voice like it was a stranger's, with strange resonances to it.

A voice I never used with the living.

"I don't know,'' the ghost said, her lower lip trembling.

"Look, Brenda -''

An icy wind tore at my face as I stepped outside and locked up the house. I stuffed my keys in the outer pocket of my backpack and tugged the zipper shut.

"Look at me. I'm stuck -'' I gasped as I fell on the iced-over driveway. "I'm stuck on this side of things for real.'' My butt and palms throbbed. "And it's hell.''

Brenda hovered over me anxiously.

The winter wind howled around us. It swept down the suburban street. Like a warning, I thought.

Stay home, the wind screamed, and bury your head under your blanket.

I carefully stood up, brushing myself off. "But you're not like me. You have a choice. You can get out of this place, right, Brenda? Don't you have this amazing choice?''

She followed me as I walked to the bus stop.

"You're twisting things,'' she argued. "You're the one with the choice. I'm the one that's ... that's ...''

"Dead,'' I finished.

"Oh my god,'' she cried.

"You are dead though, Brenda.''

"It wasn't my fault,'' she wailed.

I could see she was about to launch again into the story of the car accident that had most definitely been her fault, so I brought her back on-topic. "So you're free, Brenda!''

"Free?''

"Free from the shackles of your earthly body,'' I said as we reached the corner, and there was the bus approaching, just rounding the end of the street.

I stamped the snow off my boot. I thought I could feel a smidgen of ice on my toe. Was there a hole in the boot?

"Free from pain and suffering,'' I kept persuading, honey warming my voice. "Free finally to walk into the light. You know it's a longing that's plagued you your whole life. A yearning you couldn't give a name to. Well, you're finally ready. Take the steps you've only ever taken in your dreams before. You're curious. You're dying of curiosity. So step into the portal. See the other side.''