Wade

Chapter Two

As I ease my way into the church I'm overwhelmed by how sure my footing is. You take for granted not sinking into the earth with every step you take. With most places its like walking through sand and I can almost not stand it.

As I enter the church I'm on the lookout for Father Smith and hear humming from the main room. Panicking slightly, I sprint for the stone stairs that lead to the seconf floor of the church. Reaching the top I grab a tasel that pulls down the latter for the attic. If there's one place Father Smith never goes its the attic. I'm just happy spiders can't crawl on me anymore-even if that means they now crawl through me. I try not to dwell on such things.

The church attic has become my new home and I treat it as such. I have a hammock bed (one that I stole from my old neighbor who used to steal any toys that made their way near his yard) tied up in the corner-just because you don't sleep doesn't mean you can't pretend. Along the wall there's a bookshelf overflowing with trinkets and things that I've picked up over the past six years.

With a sigh I sit on my hammock and stare up at the ceiling. Taped to the wood is an old poster that my friend Alexis made for me when I was alive. On the light blue paper, written in thick black sharpie it says:

THE RULES OF LIVING

Underneath are all the things she thought necessary to live life to it's fullest. I found the poster in a trach bag with all the rest of my stuff in trash bags by the road after I woke up into Ghostland. There was other stuff in the numerous trashbags too; pictures of me, my clothes, some cards I made for my mom for Mother's Day, Father's Day cards-pretty much anything you can imagine and it was all in the trash. For the past six years I've been wondering why parents would throw out all my stuff. It doesn't seem right-that they'd want to get rid of every last memory of their only child.

RULE ONE: Hold onto what you love and never let it go.

I stared up at the poster and wondered what Alexis was doing right now. She had given me the poster for my seventeenth birthday.

I died on my birthday.

How silly of me to forget. Alexis had given me that poster the day I died.

It's kinda sad though, because I don't really remember that day. I don't remember how I died or why. I had never really had any desire of finding out until now because, really, what're you gonna do, right? I'm dead, nothing is going to change that.

Rolling out of my stolen hammock I walk through the wall and for a moment I had suspended in the air like gravity doesn't know what to do with me. Then I'm crashing to the ground. Without even a whisper of pain I sink knee deep into the grass and have to pull myself free before I sink any further. Once I'm out I walk leisurely toward the road and make my way toward town. I have nothing better to do so I stop along the way at my grave, hoping to find some flowers or something. No such luck, the grave is as dead and empty as I am.

From behind me I hear I faint clicking noise, a chattering hiss that would have scared the shit out of me when I was alive. But I'm dead, nothing can hurt me now. I walk through any graves in my path as I head toward town again, overly aware that the clicking is not growing any fainter. But the moment I pass under the shade of a tree the sound is gone. I stop, looking around suspiciously. But there's nothing, only a few wandering ghosts sitting by their graves sadly.

"Waaaaaade" The voice is so faint I nearly mistake it for the wind. Alive me would have shit his pants, but dead me simply shoves his gray hands into his gray pockets and keeps walking.