I Eat Boys

O. I Feel More Free Than I Have In Years

     Do you know what it's like?

To spend your years rotting internally among the ever changing trees? To watch time pass you by so quickly because you cant remember years at a time? Do you know what it's like to be dead? But not dead enough? To be alive and feeling? But not breathing? To be so dead that only those who are dying can hear your cry? To be so alive that the other dead things pretend you don't exist?

For Jennifer Rosalie, she's forced to play a never ending game, cycle that repeats for eternity. How old did she look? How old was she really? Nobody remembered— not even our pretty little dead girl. Time was grueling and cruel, it was shoved so far down her throat that she was sure she'd choke on how much of it she had. Things aren't supposed to be like this. When you die, you die. There's no hell or pearly gates awaiting you. You're just supposed to stop. The end credits roll and all fades to black.

But she's the movie that's stuck in the VCR, the gears winding and winding, replaying certain parts, skipping over others; a glitchy rendition of the original. Somebody's favorite toy. She hated the days she was awake, crying so loudly just for no one to hear. The dead that lurked around her, wailing for themselves or deathly quiet, they never payed her any mind. Some stared, some passed through her, others snapped their jaws as she passed.

     Even they knew she was wrong— the chink in the armor. She didn't belong there, she wasn't a ghost and she wasn't a human. She was just an amalgamation of things that was a monster to both sides of the veil. When Jenny was awake she knew that, she noticed the hateful stares she got the creatures, the low growling human ears couldn't pick up always made her spine tremble. They didn't want her there just as much as she didn't want to be there.

Her heart yearned for her life, a flyer on the cheerleading team, junior year prom queen, junior class representative and secretary. The "middle" child out of her twin and her baby sister. The best friends a girl could ask for and a boyfriend who had charmed her socks right off of her. Life had been good— she'd been good. Jennifer Rosalie had never been a bad person, she wouldn't even kill a fly.

Everybody loved her back in Castle and she loved everybody. She spent most of her conscious time wondering who would want to kill her, why she'd been on the other end of someone's knife, when she'd never done anything wrong to anyone. She was a good person. She always had been.

     A crow cawed high over the Californian forest that she haunted, pulling her out of her reverie as she swayed among the fir trees. Her white dress was still perfect, despite the years she'd spent staggering through the trees, through all kinds of weather. She's never seen it before in her mortal years and when she'd awoken up in her prison world, it was all she had.

     The day was sunny, bright and cheerful. The wind a light breeze that had the birds singing sweet melodies that Jenny couldn't find herself enjoying. From between the tapered off tree tops she could see a blue sky. Maybe later she'd wander back towards the clearing and lay back on the  riverbank. Maybe today she'd get to rot away.

     On days like these, the woods were full; of both the dead and the living. They coexisted enough— neither could truly interfere in the other's world. Nothing she touched was affected for them. It was only different in her world. People only saw her during her moments of greatest distress and during theirs.

     She didn't want to be seen anyway, there wasn't much for people to see. She was just another dead girl crying about being dead. She couldn't properly grieve herself because she had no closure. She knew nothing of her family or of her friends— or anything about what had happened to her. She barely knew what year was (2010??).