1.

It was just another day. In the breakfast table, my mother said, “Did you hear? The boy who lived next door, who was in the same class as you, was found dead this morning.”

My heart skipped a beat. I asked, “How?”

“Suicide case, according to police.”

I could barely eat anything more after that. I didn't even know that boy. Maybe saw his face one or two times while passing by, that was all. Then why was the news of his passing hurting me this much? Actually, death news always comes with a shock. Or maybe it was the fact that he committed suicide that shocked me more. I never imagined someone I knew doing it.

He weighed on my mind all day. What was hurting him so much that drove him to that point? Did he have depression? My heart ached at the thought of him. The strange thing was, up until yesterday I didn't even know him, but today I was unable to focus on my daily life because of him.

He was probably lonely up until yesterday. But today, a lot of people who knew him and who didn't, would gather around him or talk about him, maybe even shed some tears for him. Not a single one was there to stop him when he made that drastic decision. Now their empty condolences would not do any good for him.

After tossing and turning in my bed for hours, I finally fell asleep that night. And I dreamt.

When I woke up in the morning next day, the feelings from that dream still lingered in my heart.

The dream was so vivid that I remembered every trivial detail even after waking up. Unlike my usual haphazard dreams, it was as if everything that happened in the dream was actually real. It was natural for something that you’ve been thinking about to appear in dream, but that dream was...different.

The dream was about the boy who passed away yesterday.

* * *

I was sitting alone when I saw someone coming towards me. When he got closer, I recognized him. I remembered his face from the funeral.

He was wearing a grey hoodie, and his hairs were messy. He sat by me. For a long time, we sat in silence.

He was the one who started the conversation, “Beautiful view, isn’t it?”

“Hmm.”

“I come here when I need to clear my head.”

I looked around. I didn't know this place and I didn't remember coming here before.

“What place is this?” I asked him.

“It’s 3 kilometres west from the city. You should go there someday.”

2.

I dreamt of him again the next night. And the night after that, and after that...it continued, like a series. And all of those dreams were vivid like the first one.

He kept silent most of the time. When I asked him something, only then he would answer.

I asked him about his life. From what he told me, his life was nothing much different from an ordinary university student. He liked reading and disliked socializing. He didn't have any close friends.

Waking up, I would wonder whether the things that he told me were really true or just a product of my imagination.

There was only one way to find out, and that was to talk to someone who knew him in real life. But during daytime, I rarely thought of him since I was so busy with my life. After the initial wave of shock, I could’ve just forgotten about him. But thanks to the dreams, he was still on my mind.

There was one question that lingered in my mind but I could never ask.

One day, I decided to ask my mother if she knew something.

“Mom,” I said in the breakfast table, “you know, the boy next door who passed away...can you tell me about him?”

“Well, how can I know about him? I doubt whether even his mom knew him well. You know, boys of your age are like that, secretive. You are like that too.”

“Hmm...but I supposed since you’re friends with his mom, maybe his mom told you something about him since moms love to brag about their sons to their next-door neighbour friends...”

My mother seemed to be thinking about my question.

“I don't remember anything much, really. I wasn’t that close to his mom to begin with.”

I gave up. And I forgot about him soon after, until night came and I dreamt of him again.

* * *

“Did you have depression?” the question escaped my lips.

“No,” he said, “I mean, not clinically. I did feel depressed from time to time, but who doesn’t.”

Then why...

“I know what you are thinking,” he said, as if he could sense my silent question, “I will answer you someday. But not today.” With those words, he let out a sigh.

3.

The next day, I met two boys on my way to university. While passing them by, I heard snippets of their conversation.

“I still wonder why on earth he did this.”

“He never looked like someone who could do something like this...I just don't understand.”

I wondered whether they were talking about my late neighbour. We went to the same university but studied different subjects, so we never crossed path even in university. If they did talk about him, then their question is my question too. Why? And, why did he choose me of all people to have conversations with?

Maybe it was because of the fact that I didn't know him. Sometimes, you feel more comfortable sharing your secrets with a stranger than with someone you know.

* * *

“Are you thinking about something?” I felt weird asking him that. How could someone who was no longer alive possibly think about something?

“Do you know what’s it like to cherish a dream, only to have it shattered?”

“Dream? I never had any to begin with. That doesn’t mean I am aimless, though, I do have a goal that I want to reach. But if I lose it unfortunately, I will just have to find another one.”

“Find another one...huh, how easy that sounds. Wish I could think that simply.”

“Hey, it isn’t that easy.” I tried to assure him, “You will feel lost and frustrated at first. Pressures from parents won’t leave you alone, either. But life goes on. If you lose your way, you have to find a new one unless you reach a dead end.”

“To me, every other way except for the one I decided to walk on was dead end. So when I lost that way, I didn't have any other choice but giving up at the middle of the road.”

“How were you so sure that the road you decided on was ‘your way’? Maybe the way you choose wasn’t originally meant to be yours?”

“It’s totally pointless talking about it now.”

After a moment of silence, he spoke again.

“You know, it pierced my heart when those adults said that our generation is a lost generation, or something like that.”

“I heard that a lot too, but I just brushed it off and forgot afterwards.”

“I feel stabbed every time I heard that, honestly. Sometimes I just felt like I shouldn’t have been born in the first place...”

“Hey, but our parents who are saying that now, they must’ve heard it from their parents too.”

“I was just too tired, you know. Constant fight with realism and idealism... I was too exhausted from living like that every day. It was suffocating, leaving me with no room for breathing...”

I couldn’t say anything.

He suddenly hugged me and started crying.

“I just wished someone would’ve told me that it was okay, that it was normal to go through this at my age...but none of the people around me could think straight, you know. They were way too complex, and I was afraid to turn out to be a shitty adult like them...I was afraid, I was afraid of growing up...”

I guessed that was the answer to my question.

I hugged him back.

Waking up, I discovered that my cheeks were wet with tears.

4.

He never appeared in my dreams after that.

I didn't believe in dreams before. I mean, dreams are dreams, they are just illusions created by our brains that had nothing to do with reality.

But this series of dreams made me wonder. Why did he repeatedly appear in my dreams and why were those dreams so vivid? Could it be that he wanted to tell me something through these dreams? Who knows.

He probably had no one to share his burdens and thoughts with, and he had something that he wanted to be known to someone. Something he couldn’t tell anyone when he was alive. Once he let it all out, he stopped appearing.

Or probably it was because I wanted to know so badly why he did what he did, and his death hurt me in subconscious level. Maybe the whole thing was just something in my head.

I went to meet his family one day. They didn't welcome me with open arms, since a lot of people bothered them ever since his death. I didn't tell them about my dream, I just made up some excuse. I wanted to know about him better, though I already knew a part of him that probably no one else knew...

Maybe out of sheer curiosity, or maybe for a reality check, I searched for the place that I saw in my dreams with him. And I discovered that a place like that did exist.

I went there on the first anniversary of his death.

Sitting there alone, I thought of him. I couldn’t understand people like him. Maybe I never would. I would forget him someday, probably. But then again, he must have wanted me to remember him. I still wonder, why me of all people to whom he chose to confide in?

There are some questions that you will not find the answer of, even if you pass a lifetime. For now, all I can do is to grant his unspoken wish – to save his untold story and pass it on.

You aren't for the Heavens yet

But no longer for the Earth either.

The goal of your existence unmet;

Your experiences, no more wiser.

But don't look back on the barren

Discarded, decaying garden of hope.

The branches of love now fallen

And romances on a slippery slope.

For when it's the day of Death

We move on to worlds apart.

So, don't waste another breath

And no longer take things to heart.

In the dim light of a forgotten alley, I stumbled upon a figure shrouded in mist. The air was thick with an otherworldly heaviness, and I felt an unshakable pull to approach. It was then that I realized: this wasn’t just a trick of the light; this was a spirit, trapped in limbo.

“Are you here to help me?” the spirit whispered, its voice barely a sigh in the stillness.

“I… I don’t know how,” I replied, my heart pounding. I had come to this city searching for something—answers, solace, or perhaps just an escape from my own turmoil. I never expected to find a soul in need.

“I’ve been here too long,” it continued, its form flickering like an old film reel. “I linger between worlds, caught in the memories of my life. I can’t move on.”

“What keeps you here?” I asked, my curiosity mixing with empathy. The spirit seemed both fragile and weighty, a paradox of existence.

“I was… forgotten,” it said, eyes shimmering like distant stars. “I lost my way when my family abandoned me. They didn’t understand. They left me behind, and I couldn’t let go of the pain.”

The revelation struck me hard. I too had felt abandoned, left to navigate my own labyrinth of grief and regret. I thought of my own family—how my father’s departure had cast shadows on every corner of my life. I stood there, frozen, connected by our shared experiences of loss.

“Maybe you need to forgive them,” I suggested, my voice steadying as I felt a surge of determination. “Or maybe you need to forgive yourself. Sometimes the past holds us captive.”

The spirit hesitated, and for a moment, I could see the flicker of hope in its ethereal gaze. “Forgiveness… It feels impossible.”

“Maybe it starts small,” I encouraged. “A single thought, a moment of understanding. You were not meant to carry their choices forever. Your life was your own, and you deserve to let go.”

“I don’t know how,” it whispered, sorrow folding around it like a cloak.

“Just try,” I said, my voice growing stronger. “Imagine them free, living their lives. Imagine yourself free, too. What would that look like?”

For a long, haunting moment, the spirit stood silent. I watched as it seemed to wrestle with the weight of its memories, eyes searching the void. The mist around it began to shimmer, and a soft glow emerged from within.

“I remember… the laughter,” it said slowly. “The way the sun felt on my skin. I remember love.”

The fog thickened, but instead of trapping it, the mist began to lift. I felt a rush of warmth as the spirit smiled, a bittersweet expression of release.

“Thank you,” it breathed, voice barely audible above the rustle of the wind. “I think… I can finally let go.”

With that, the spirit transformed, its essence dissolving into brilliant light that danced and spiraled upward. It shimmered like a thousand fireflies before bursting into a constellation of sparkles, vanishing into the night sky.

I stood alone in the alley, the air lighter somehow, filled with a sense of peace. I thought of the spirit’s journey, of how it had found a way to rise above its pain. In that moment, I realized that maybe I, too, could learn from this encounter. Maybe I could forgive the ghosts that lingered in my own heart, the burdens I carried.

As I walked away from that forgotten place, I felt a newfound determination swell within me. The grey area of my existence, once heavy with shadows, began to shift—blurring the lines between past and future, sorrow and hope. In that alley, I had encountered not just a spirit, but a mirror reflecting my own path toward freedom.

I find myself

stuck all day

the sun may shine

but i see gray;

there are no colors

there's barely light

darkness surrounds

although it's not night;

heavy and slow

i drag around

air so heavy

i feel i may drown,

in tears like rain

that blurs and clouds

grayscale watercolor

that cloaks and shrouds,

hides yellows, greens and blues,

holds reds and oranges at bay

no purples, no pinks, no joyful hues,

forever and always, only gray.

We looked closely...

having struck dynamo

an excitement scientific

among all the laboratorian

Aha...finally! a spirit

stuck...

in slide!!

an authentic sampling

cross section, aye

between glass

its parts wriggling

and jiggling

we see turning around

as little space allows

for what seem

like hands

face, feet!

a nose it has

elbows and

it kneels

it kneels!

deaf and mute

and we are also

in the microscope

gapping...

dumbstruck

09.17.2024

Grey area challenge @AJAY9979

He walked past her again. It almost felt like he was walking through her. She cried out to him, begged him to stop, but this was going to be another day of the silent treatment.

He slammed the door and headed to work. She stood at the window, watching him back away down the driveway in his new truck. He refused to talk to her about the purchase; he just showed up one day several weeks ago, the dealer sticker still in the window.

He hadn't spoken to her in over a month.

She looked out at the neighborhood. It had gotten to be fall without her even realizing that the weather had cooled. Leaves gathered in silent blankets, warming the earth.

She felt a chill, and went back to bed.

______________

She'd been sleeping more, lately. It was unusual for her, but she'd somehow slipped into a deeper darkness than she'd ever experienced. She'd been depressed before, but this was different; black days didn't begin to describe it. She'd sleep, she'd awaken. He'd ignore her as they watched television, when she actually joined him downstairs.

Most nights, he'd fall asleep on the couch, a highball glass with remnants of an ice cube giving testimony to how he'd spent another one of his evenings. The empty Glenlivet bottles were lined up in a windowsill.

The ghostly green was absurdly beautiful in the setting sun.

One night, seized with a frustration that words wouldn't cure, she grabbed one of those empties and flung it at the wall.

Finally, he looked in her direction, eyes bleary, a gasp on his lips and a trembling tumbler in his hand.

A rorschach of whiskeystains colored the offwhite sheetrock. Little divots formed where the bottle struck and shattered; verdant shards rained to the hardwood. A glass garden bloomed on the kitchen floor.

She didn't speak, but wailed tears of sorrow, anger, and sadness.

She was angry at mourning the loss of the two of them; she was angrier at his apparent lack of concern for their love slipping away.

He just looked at that rorsharch on the wall. A study of himself, painted in single malt.

She went back upstairs, crying herself to sleep.

______________

Winter came, and nothing improved between them. He started missing work some days, and those bottles began to line the floor beneath the window.

She refused to clean up after him.

She sat down in the chair opposite the couch one day when he slept past his alarm. She reached out to turn off the television, but it smoked and smouldered under her fingertips, and it died on its own. She snatched her hand back, expecting a shock, but she felt nothing. Where it had been blasting on about some winter storm on the Weather Channel, now there was only silence and the smell of ozone.

She just sighed.

One more thing gone wrong.

She tried to wake him, but he wouldn't stir.

She couldn't remember the last time he'd slept in the bed with her. His only trips upstairs were to dress, and even those stopped when he moved everything he needed into the guestroom.

She was a heavy sleeper, and the depression she'd slunk into forced her to stay in bed most days.

"We need help, babe." She said, hoping he'd engage her.

He just rolled over, curled away from her, shivered, and continued to sleep on the couch.

"I'm going to leave if we don't try to fix this."

Nothing. He reached for his blanket on the back of the couch, still sleeping.

She knew it was a lie. Despite all this darkness, she loved him still.

______________

Time was a slippery thing to her in her depressions.

When the snow began to melt, the man from the bank came. She refused to open the door, but looked out the peephole at him. He left an orange flyer above the knocker.

She went back to sleep, and the tears took away the worry.

She awakened to the ear-splitting noise of reversing alarms on a truck.

A Uhaul sat in the front yard, but she was too tired, too sad, to care anymore.

She slept again.

______________

When she awakened, everything in the house outside of her bedroom was gone. Echoes greeted her creaking steps down the stairs, and she cried out in fear, in shock, and in such incredible, aching remorse that she felt her heart shatter just as a windowpane above the kitchen sink did.

He'd left her bedroom, and moved out around her.

She collapsed in the living room in a heap, wails filling the air and blackness coloring her world.

______________

She felt like she was being torn apart.

Sleep disappeared, and dreams were replaced with the sound of Latin being spoken downstairs.

Latin?

It echoed throughout the emptiness of the house below her. Inside, she ached. Physical pain tore through her, and she screamed, despite trying to listen.

The Latin stopped, and the clinching in her gut relaxed.

She stumbled to the stairway, and looked down into the living room.

Strangers gathered, surrounding a priest.

He looked at her.

At her. He smiled.

It was the first real contact she'd had since...

And memory flooded her.

______________

Images of she and her husband.

He was driving, she was holding his hand.

They were just going to the store; a beautifully mundane ritual.

He said something and she laughed.

And then it happened.

______________

The priest spoke to her.

"Hello, Melanie."

She didn't reply.

"These are the Murchisons. They own this house now. They asked me to bless it before they move your bedroom out, and they move their family in."

"Mine," she managed to croak, tears flowing.

She noticed the couple cringe, and the man, Mr. Murchison, she presumed, shivered. They were young; they reminded of her of how she and her husband looked back when.

"GET OUT!" she managed to yell, voice cracking through tears.

The young woman began to cry.

The priest just continued to smile, and he took a step closer.

"Melanie. You need to go Home. You need to let go of this place."

The Latin resumed, and the last thing she heard:

"Go with God, Melanie."

"Amen."

And she let go.

The house disappeared from around her, and sadness was a distant whisper.

______________

A tractor trailer blew through the red light.

It hit the passenger side of the car at somewhere around fifty miles an hour.

As the noise died away, so did she.

We're having fog up here as well

Yep. Persistent fog. It dampens, past

the skin, perspiration, permeates the brain

We forget things too, time, we waste aways

but what am I saying? pls forgive me, I get it

in Limbo these things aren't the issue...

When you tear down the walls

that blind you from seeing your true self fully,

you’ll have made the first brave tick

in your soul stretching from beyond its comfortable classroom.

And therein comes the awakening –

an itching mental freedom.

And never could you want anything more.

Yes you!

Misting up my hallway,

Moaning all hours of the night!

Stomping and scatching and

scaring the bejeebers outa my kids!

Well you can just stop it right now!

I have had it up to here with all your creepy, crapy cryin and so on!

You've had your little fun but if you dont walk into the light right now, so help me im gonna call out the Hell hounds and have them rip you a new hole in your "sheet"!

Now i mean it! Trust me when I say

"Hell hath no fury like a mother who had no sleep!"

So get into the light or face my wrath!