Death warned me for the second time; I did not expect him to repeat himself.

"Heaven is boring you say.  Care to explain?"

Every story I have ever read about Death never included a curled lip.  I swore under my breath, I would be the first to chronicle this discovery.

"Heaven is a constant stalemate, void of color, devoid of choice.  You exist for no purpose other than a constant reminder to Earthers to behave.  Heaven is stagnation coupled with eternal boredom.  Once you chose Heaven, it will be the last choice you ever will make, ever will be permitted to make."  With that, Death, without prejudice, rested his case.

I, however, required a bit more information.

"If Heaven is so bad, what does Hell have to offer that I don't already know?"

Death acted his part in this drama.  Mine was as a spectator viewing his opening act.  His was a seasoned professional working within the confines of rote memory alone.

"Hell is everything you heard and yet, so much more.  You will be tormented, but you chose your torment and its duration.  None today averages with a double shift on the morrow.  The ledger book must remain balanced, not each day, but it must be balance in the end.  You may chose if another receives additional punishments for sins both known and unknown.  In Hell, we are everybody's keeper and judge and executioner."  Death paused to check my reaction.  He received nothing from me.  In somewhat disbelief, my lack of reaction caused Death to hesitate, maybe for the very first time in his "life".

"You require more, so be it!  Hell is appropriately named.  It is beyond all imaginable agony.  Our residents suffer on unspeakable levels with perpetual horror.  Most find no salvation, no bliss, and no remorse.  Pain is the currency of norm."

He ended abruptly, as if to cue me to speak my next line before he continued with his soliloquy.  I obliged and ask about his use of the word, "most".  Death knew he had my attention.  This was not his first performance.  At slight nod and he continued.

"I speak of most because there are a few exceptions.  I have the power to alleviate the level of unpleasantness to a select group of individuals who I find may be of service to me.  You could be one of this elite group.  Chose Hell, serve me to gather strength, do my bidding, and I will allow a respite of civility and relaxation to temporarily ease your suffering.  But, fail me once, and just once, and I will unleash a fury upon you the likes your mortal mind could never conceive.  You could have women, wealth, and power (distantly) rivaling only mine.  It will not be easy.  But it will be different.  It is time to choose, so choose wisely."

I was both a lawyer and a politician of pedigree and distinction.  Old age may have brought me before Death, but it could not keep me in his sight.

"I choose Heaven." I declared openly and defiantly to a now disgruntled salesman.

As he uttered his single word question of "Why" a glimmering beam of light began to envelop and protect me from his growing wrath.  Before I left, I answered.

"Do you know who I am?  Campaign promises are not worth the paper they are written on; without a cross-examination, no argument is believable."

With that, Death grabbed at smoke as I departed in the bright light.  I should send him a postcard describing Heaven.  It might be the first time a lawyer or a politician ever got the chance to do so.

Boring is how I played it when I was alive. Nothing new. Wake up, go to work, go home. On the weekends I would see my friends, but I never said much. Nothing particularly note-worthy happened. Nobody came into my life. I died in the most uneventful way as well: lung cancer. And it was due to the only interesting thing I did, which was smoking. I never was around with anyone, so I smoked. 

Now here I am. Death told me that I have two choices. I can go to Hell, fiery, but, I assume, that the most interesting people are there. If everyone really gets to choose... I'm sure that Hell has some interesting people..

But I've always played it boring.

But maybe I should change. 

But boring has always worked out.

But that's how I got here...

"So, which is it?" Death asked.

"Hell." I replied.

"Are you sure?" She asked.

"Yes. Boring didn't do any good for me then."

The real estate agent tells her to reconsider. She says she has some truly amazing houses to show before she makes a decision. But I’m watching Evelyn not listen to her, and I see how she looks at the place with that little half smile of hers, that twitch of the finest lines around her mouth, wrinkling and smoothing over in an instant, and I know that nothing is going to dissuade her from purchasing this shitty, dilapidated house.

Friends and family make their appeals. She tells them I know I’ve heard the rumors, that’s all they are, rumors raised from nothing, created for the sake of gossip and for scaring naive outsiders, does anyone talk about anything else in this shitty little hick town.

I only want what Evelyn wants, it’s been so long since she's wanted anything. I think she'll finally be able to start over here, maybe this will make her forget and live. But people keep telling her things she doesn't want to hear and they all sounded like variations of a theme, so finally she stops answering calls altogether.

I’m worried about the amount of work needed to make this thing halfway livable and Evelyn looks so wan and lost all the time. Here she is alone with this monster derelict house and each day is spring cleaning and after that there is still more work to be done.

Evelyn works sunup until she collapses in bed at night.

I'm sick of these halfway places, she says to no one. 

Evelyn, pretty Evelyn, I’ll never forget the day I ran after you in the rain, barefoot in the park, with Caleb just beginning to jut out of your stomach, and I was running after you yelling for you to stop, scared but laughing because you were laughing and you were beautiful in the rain with your hair dripping down your face, you were so goddamned beautiful, it hurt to look at you.  

Now you walk around tired and quiet, with those sunken hungry eyes.

When was the last time you laughed?

Slowly the house becomes whole again. She polishes until every surface gleams, she puts in new windows, paints, organizes, reassembles. Her room upstairs overlooks the garden and pond in the back of the house. 

There are things here, hidden in the silence, that I don’t like to think about. And the force that drives Evelyn to fix this place—that scares me even more. 

Caleb was two years old. He was the perfect baby, quiet and uncomplaining. We worried that he was sleeping too much, too often and too deeply, and not eating enough. We were good at fretting—everything seemed like a potential disaster. 

You brought us here with you, didn’t you, I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to shake her, grip her by the shoulder so hard that she could feel my nails digging in her skin. You disturbed our baby's rest, how could you do it, Caleb just two years old and a barely visible lump underneath the blankets. You dug us up, God knows how you did it, you had to work with my decomposing weight and Caleb like a limp doll tucked under your arm. (They told you to cremate and you said no). Caleb he loved the color blue, he loved entwining his tiny perfect hands in his mother’s hair and pulling, he loved to sleep. A deep sleep, almost impossible to wake up. 

Sometimes at night after another exhausting day, I’ll keep watch over my wife’s sleeping form. She curls up in a fetal position with her hands protecting her stomach.

Evelyn, I heard a laugh I swear I heard it, last night it came from downstairs. I couldn’t tell where it could have come from, or if it were male or female or even human, but I know I’ve never heard it before, and you were asleep. And sometimes in that area she calls the living room, there’s voices and footfalls, the swish of clothing, things clattering to the floor.

Sometimes I hear her singing around the house. Once, I heard her laugh and that sound broke around the house, and all throughout it, and the silence was quieter afterwards.

She doesn't eat. Her sunken little face and the bruised sockets, the limp wrists, and sharp edges of her hip and ribs—I can't take it.

She is fading into the house. I'm helpless. She no longer has eyes I can recognize, those aren’t the hands I loved and held and promised to protect throughout life, death, world without end. She teeters up and down the halls, in and out of rooms. I hear her talk to things I can't see. She leaves me; she goes where I can’t follow. She’s so thin and translucent, sunlight streaming from the windows looks strong enough to hurt her, to melt her away. She floats on drafts throughout the house, and mirrors hide her passing.

The voices are so beautiful she says and I didn’t believe her but I see now. The whole house swells with their presence, with colors bursting and small ripples of light extending, and they are calling where are you and I say here I am here I am here—and they welcome me with voices raised and over the singing and the echoes of ringing colors I hear the voices of so many loved ones, I see Evelyn and she is holding in her arms our son and they are coming for me 

" They say dead men tell no tales" he mutters in a deep weathered accent, as he lifts himself out of the old wooden chair. He rum walks to the window on the port stern of his tattered old ship. Pushing open the window he turns back at you, resting his back against the sil. " Tad old sayin be fer da fools not yet met old Hob, or worst ta dark abyss dat neva let ya see light of day" his voice pained as he returns to look out over the sea. " What ya see before ya, me ship, sails, keel every ting dat let a man be free" Lowering his head, his face fades underneath​ his large black leather tricorn hat with a sleek silver feather falling to the back. A red glow begins to illuminate from his face behind the hat. You close your eyes hoping when you open them you'll be gone. He whips your head back against the chair, your eyes bursting open to see him inches from your face, his eyes burning with blood red fire. His voice rattles you with a demonic roar" am I borin ya der ya bilge rat? den we shall make damn sure ye eyes be opened now" Suddenly your both on the deck, his hands on the wheel, you frozen in your place. A blinding orange light radiates from under the ship, as you feel the ship plunge into weightless free fall. You try to scream, releasing your lips but not a sound is heard. Instead you hear him hooting and hollering, like a cowboy in the west. Whipping around his head, he's beside you in a flash. Putting an arm around you eyes still burning, " i know yer tots, I was tryin to tell ya dat dis ship may have all it need.  ya tink tis me dat be bound by it and to it " He bellows the  laugh of a hundred men " Dis ship be bound to me.....jus like da souls I bring aboard" His hand erupts in size and wraps around your chest ripping you from where you stood. Yanking you in the air he screeches in a deafening yell" Your life be gone and your soul be mine" Slamming your body to the deck, you awake to a thunderous boom and a clash of lighting flashing through your bedroom window from the storm outside. Gasping for air, feeling around to be sure your home safe in your bed. Looking up at your tv it's a static white fuzz, (Dead men tell no tales) Gasping you ponder if it was a dream; chuckling into a laugh cause you nodded off to the Pirates marathon playing on the screen. 

Things are changing, and Nancy is restless.

She misses the old days, and she tells me so. We pass the time reminiscing while the landlord removes art from the walls. This hotel used to be colorful and vibrant in a slow-paced, Bohemian sort of way. It was the artistic heart of the city, a place where the broken and misunderstood were given a chance at survival without question or judgement.

Nancy and I used to live down the hall from one another. I would hole up in room 113 with two other girls, turning tricks for a few bucks, earning just enough to buy heroin from my supplier. When Nancy needed a hit, she’d come and see me. We would get high together, and it was in those moments we bonded behind a hazy curtain of carefree indifference.

Nancy and I weren’t always friends. This place, and our common interests, threw us together. You know...time and circumstance. She shared glimpses of her childhood with me; not at all intimate, but rather fragmented and disturbing shards of an incomplete puzzle. Words like suicide and schizophrenia peppered her conversations. She never asked me about my childhood, which was fine; I wouldn’t have been strong enough to relive the abuse my father put me through.

Nancy didn’t have to turn tricks to make money. Her boyfriend was famous, or at least he had been. They had enough money to live on, and party on, for a while. But when things got tight, they stole everything from food to drugs. She told her story like it was no big deal. It’s just the way things were.

She says she still runs into her boyfriend now and again. Every time I question Nancy about him, she immediately gets defensive. He’s harmless, she says dismissively with a wave of her hand, as if brushing away a thought she doesn’t want to be weighed down by.

Nancy’s agitated state has become more pronounced recently. She wanders the halls aimlessly, passing the time without direction or destination. It’s as if she’s trying to find her way through a dense fog, frustrated. She’s looking for something; she knows it’s right there in front of her, and she can’t see it...

And then it dawns on me.

We stroll through the hotel lobby, and I say to her, “You know, Nancy, it wasn’t Sid.”

Her head snaps in my direction, her eyes wide and focused, like someone has just stuck smelling salts under her nose. She accidentally bumps into a chair, and the few people in the lobby are startled by the action.

“What do you mean?” she asks me.

“Sid was falsely accused. It was an accident,” I reply.

Now Nancy is studying me, like I’m speaking in some sort of alien tongue.

“You don’t remember anything, do you,” I say.

She drops her head and stays like that for a moment, staring at the linoleum floor.

“I was so messed up that night, everything is still a blur.”

“Well, I wasn’t.”

Nancy lifts her head and is staring at me again, waiting to hear what I have to say.

“I came to see you that night. I knocked on the door and no one answered. It was unlocked, so I walked in. Sid was completely passed out on the bed, drunk I figured. As I called your name, I heard a noise from the bathroom.”

Nancy’s eyes got even wider, as if this was the first time she was hearing this story, her own story.

“I had just gotten some cocaine from a friend. I had the baggie and a knife in my hand when I found you leaning over the sink, already high as a kite. You turned around and lunged at me, trying to grab the baggie. I told you to stop, but you wouldn’t listen. You practically threw yourself at me, and onto my knife.”

As Nancy listened, I could tell it was all new to her. A mixture of sadness and relief seemed to envelop her, washing away any sense of doubt. Closure was the only gift I had left to give.

Nancy looked at me, nodded her head, and smiled. Without another word, she headed over to the lobby entrance and drifted through the wall.

She was finally free.

AS EWAN stick, his numb glistened thereafter to certain moiling strains similarly, “like I am ever pinned in sniper shots…Hee-hee!” war-cried out just too immersed; the scenery I’d floated in; its space…then I’d, I’d just….wandered to scenes, pictures too narrow. Ewan, in the immediate, hesitated, “….BuBLasted so huge; so absolutely huge,” half ashamed or with his reminiscence of the sharpened assuming, the mirrored-in self, too, “right in my fucking ear!” then riddle lingers one slant in his head, shot, “just targeted.” Just imagine the celeritous 19 year old, squiggled ninja firing a sniper gun into himself at some slit high enough, with rationale poised upon the whole demeanor of war; before him; focused on that funnel in this almost requisite point, Ewan divinely tracking, –zoomed! boom.

Through composed sight, extreme isolation, and reciting ethereal voices to his own self, inside the looming wherewithal with wilderness describing me to you and for you to hear me, “oh it just Blasted absolutely huge?” Those. Real thoughtless life took off uneasily as some whim about encapsulated and old fascinated Ewan Donegal, himself, the dream, “woosh-Bam!” unusually excited, accelerated, plunk thick, unleashed right index, onto me in a moment….in-filtering through my busy mind about the overlapped instant we drifted in…., discharged, disgusted placement of somewhere….“in Storm! and Craq!” affected, dreamlike, dashed off and away….Ewan, a greater purpose than he was aware seeping through the inner walls into this great maze; the unfurls; the unfeeling reasonable trick inside-like signs from God, incredibly still-breathed instance, from a payphone I heard him ramble with destiny, and catch me my diaphragm moiling, abdomen pulling, strains…leaking with that feeling of needling crevices anymore just adjoining myself to processing but embarked upon in such dazzled concealments of workings of a vampire with a mini-scanner still strapped to my wrist, separate coiled back through the cord to attach the index finger anymore, ruptured laser triggered his ear about zapping such harsh scratched insights, the unravel, the heavy conveyance and loose unraveled succumbs of cross-fire coupled with unorganized bellies in light beams.

“Trying to make my own, lost in these ruins,” morning dazed, driven, groggy, fog-worked through and through, day-crashed, away, aways (hopped full of spills, aches - spirirts); when I awoke again and again in the cold moiling and sloped, pushed to collapse in the slopes, slim confined ghoul hoarded fists, worn, raked, all along unforgetting what I was supposed to be; fast forward where the front waist buckled, belt area snagged, and rash like stretched, torn muscle, intestinal bleeding, cleared out implosion; curled under wooden soothe slightly hearing Ewan exclaim the perspective of the inverted realm in an endless scream.

Numb, cells fluttered, drained, face leavening. Slick, thick, slunk, surged, flushed dismally, tingled, an escapade, a disturbed swim of good soft dreams to the bottom, the euphoric palpitated skull, gushed gentle, delight across the pump pump pumped sinks of pale-faced thick white droops, lightheaded sense the reality –floated! The leftovers, refilled the sewn holes, cavities with ….with....standing bites around severed gulps down asymmetry, bubbled thin air immensely aaaaaahhh-umk choked from returning up to the moonlit cool walls that suffer good gone whole dreariness ungrounded; yet, scarred, electrified, contained thin, heavier coating of the pain, to the shot that hit Ewan.

Froze in the undone missile burst. With extraordinary Ewan Donegal, extraordinary real piece of modern literature all mist receding straight back, head accumulated ripped open head, under the blue creativity; the incandescence rose off frozen soothing electric strains yet retaining a moon, when? Ewan simply aligned, synchronized, autonomy in sub-somewhere, placed inside an impact that, “Makes you dream… so enormous. REM sight over our shoulders greater and more replicated, concentrate at the ..but in every attempt will always not have enough..” powerful movements of the provincial successors of ourselves, shorts with miniscule somewhere in the midst of enraged boils, Ewan bubbled skin surfaced, affirmed or reassured in this world, I - in echoes and proud chills, “but where’s heading back? Once we left, the ground... lift off!”—“mmmooooooh?" forever screamed now he went, to him and to me. And Ewan said, “agreed,” in the coercing juicing ignominy, thronging double-edged guts, that flexed, too tightening, reliving ---the contracting, constricting; that every way the flashing; unexpected flare-up of panic; struck of panic; stuck, trapped in the moment heaving fetal clenched, curls and attacks swarming a disgusting mess trapped in planes angled above the pulverized irreversible corridor, unswallowed; or mostly swallowed….permeations leaking to everywhere inside of the overwhelmed salivations… “…sure screwed destiny and fate, (what is fate?) would not matter." That infinite churn even greater.

We were laced with scrolling the shrapnel; all the old or aging shards. In the way Ewan saintly pondered me for more legendary, until.... you know what?— His fresh shaved head turned open from the too refracted pinching, wasted, slipped little shakes right there, tremors or fidgets, low blood swerves some unnatural all masqueraded kind of sideswipe relapsed from some presence of the look Ewan holds up, and out, and the way one hand displays story-time kindergarteners, but leaning that toward me, “unless there is nothing more spectacular,” meaning, touching me forever without touching, "we will be wavering as souls going simultaneously imploring the smashed crouches," but only if we never get out of here. So he sprung off, swiped a confounded theory to thin air, and rolled over for an answer, a reply from myself, but from him; yet, “weee gonna be released," in stringing of words kind of coyly in front of the persuaded quiet galaxies mesmerizing the falling trees, then blipped right on through, reached all in some smooth rapid continuous changes of nearly evaporating the original to nothing at all, yeat remaining as it were.

I write to thee

the one I love

the one who cares

I write to thee

the one who hears my lonely sorrows

the one who won't pity me till tomorrow

I write to thee

the one who found me there

the one who didn't care

I write to thee

the one that cried

the one who lied

I write to thee

the one who lays awake

the one who says it's fake 

I write to thee

the one I want to reach

the one who won't listen to my preach

I write to thee

the one holding me here

the one that's lonely out there

I write to thee

the one who won't set me free

the one who won't let me be

I write to thee 

the one that deserves my rage

the one who keeps me in this cage 

I write to thee

the one who hurt me

the one who finished me

I write to thee 

the one who murdered thy

the one who needs to die

Dead men don't lie so to,

the one who still strides 

the one who is destined to lie

I am here to seek you out

so I may move freely about 

in heaven I finally lay

for it is hell you go to stay

I am the ghost

Of retribution

The one that

Haunts you every day

And every night

That lies in the layers

Between sleep and wakefulness

Between wakefulness and reality

Ready to pounce

The moment you drift off

The moment you wake up

Torturing your dreams

And your every waking thought

'Til you wake up bathed

In the sweat of fear

Or go mad

In the light of day

I was there and saw

What you did

The drinks in the bar

One following the other

To drown the sorrows

Of your fractious marriage

One following the other

To avoid the inevitable trip

To the place you still

Had to call home

Because you did not have

The spine

To fix what was broken

Or to leave

And let the wounds heal

The girl was three

Still cherubic with baby fat

Her blond hair in soft curls

Around a heart-shaped face

Strapped in to a carseat

In the back of the van

The mother was young

With intense green eyes

The bulge in her belly

Pushing against the fabric

Of her sweatshirt

And yoga pants

Wondering what she would serve

For dinner that night

You met at the intersection

Of 4th Street and Main

There was a traffic light

Which gave her the green to go

And you the red to stop

But your head was still stuck

In the last bottle you drank

And you did not give the

Slightest attention

To the world around you

You plowed through

At 25 miles above

The posted limit

T-boned the van

And crashed its other side

Into a telephone pole

On the corner

Your airbag deployed

And when the police arrived

They found you the sole survivor

Though you had no idea even

Of what had occurred

But in the brief moment

Where the mother cried out

And the girl screamed in fear

I was born

A single ghost

To represent all three

Of those lost that night

My purpose will be

Your undoing

Even when you leave prison

You will never be free

I will be with you

At your side

In your head

In your fears

Every moment of

Every day

And twice as fierce

In the shadows

Of the night

You will carry me

To the grave

And far, far beyond

Never alone

Never free

Never free

#ghoststory #challenge #fear #drunkdriver

You plead to me, you plead to me

     muted tones and unheard words

     intimately, profanely, silently

     trumpet of declaration wails

     invisible train passes through station

See him, hear him, know he’s still here

     the ghost of O’Sullivan

     no tales from dead men

     rats gnawing on feet

     fleeting apparitions lost

Leaving no shadow, snaking between worlds

     watching life past from hidden shelf

     soul passing through walls to other side

     O’Sullivan arose and stood by my side

     “I have done my time and must depart”

Piercing eyes begin to fade from view

     squinting in the fog of time

     empty buckets, nothing inside

     for a decade, he’s been dead

     still I hear his step in my heartbeat.

"Help," her words come out in a wheeze. Her deep blueberry eyes are hidden beneath her closed lids. A golden spread of hair lays across her pillow. Even in her sleep she can feel the sear of my hands that grip her throat. I curl my nails to add more pain. 

"Stop!" In a Jack-in-the-Box motion she springs up. I howl with demon hate as my form is forced backwards. When her eyes flutter and widen with a stare in my direction I pray she sees me. No, instead she puts a hand to her chest with a gasp that could be a sob. The gold hair falls to cover her face as her head lowers. 

"I. Hate. You." My words are enough to kick up a wind. 

Just. A. Wind. 

Another scream of rage; pure rage. She can't hear me, but she trembles. I freeze as her hands reach slowly to touch her neck. My own hands had left a dark, red mark. Now I allow a conner of my lip to twist slightly up.

"Macy, help me," She drops her hands to her lap and tilts her head to the ceiling. I long to go over to her; to dig my nails into her pretty little face. But now she is awake. Her force keeps me at bay. The living and dead do not mix. Never. 

"What is this?" She begs the ceiling for answers. Of course it gives her none. "Macy, please! I know your there! You can keep me safe from this....from him," 

I cringe. "Don't say his name. Go back to sleep and I will give you what you deserve! Do it!" I demanded. My words echo only to me. 

The tears come and they slip down her face. "Why does Trey hate me? I was just so scared.... Tell him I'm sorry!" 

I hate her. I hate her so much. I will tell Trey no such thing. My step-father hears his name. 

"What have you done?" his voice is hoarse with worry as his shape appears next to me. 

"I hate her." Now I have someone to tell. My sister's pale face is covered by her hair again. She is sobbing very quietly. 

"Her neck...." Trey sucks in a breath. He tries in vain to go to his daughter. He is dead. Doesn't he understand it's pointless to try?

"It's her fault. It's all her fault, but she can sit there and cry about being punished?" I shake my head disgusted. "She got us killed Trey!" I can see him trying to ignore me. "Your daughter called because she had a nightmare. A nightmare!!!  We got in that accident because she had a nightmare and had to be picked up! Its. Her. Fault!" I am to the point of screaming again. "Now she has to pay," 

"Macy, tell Trey I'm sorry," My sister was now almost chanting the sentence. 

"What does she mean?" Trey doesn't understand. I can't help but laugh bitterly. 

"Before.... I use to tell her that you hated her. I would whisper in her ear that she was nothing. Now she thinks you are the one hurting her," 

Trey shakes his head. He's an idiot. "No." he denies it. How could his precious little girl think he was the one causing her pain. It's all because of me. My laugh grows. 

"She killed us Trey." I repeat. "And now she has to pay,"