misguided ghosts { tattle }

ERIS W.

The atmosphere is stilted, and it only takes one deep breath to taste the air – tepid and stale. I should’ve gotten used to this. It’s been years and there are times when I’ve fallen into a comatose-shaped hole to never go back up again, to feel the way as the rest do, like spirits with no senses to stimulate, just the rhythmic sound of our heartbeats and our breaths in perfect harmony. We are used to schedules and activities designed to make some use out of us, like maybe walk out the grounds to get some fresh air (I needed it the most.) But there are afternoons when the sun is bright but not high up or hot enough, and it’s half-suspended among the filtering leaves and branches of trees. It’d be perfect for walking and witnessing the funeral of a beautiful thing, but it seems the staff has another kind of logic for their heads, and decided to gather everyone in the common room. We were given papers and pens, certainly not for penning letters, and stare at it stupidly for a moment, hesitating as they look on eagerly (or, as much as they could. They were half as dead as us.) I gave in.

Maybe my mother went to a fortune teller before naming me. I never believed in magic and hoodlums and in all that seemed so far off the ground, but my father used to say there’s no better answer. I used to think I was the exact opposite of what I was named after, Eris, some ancient goddess of discord from a long-gone civilization before, even before the Dark Days. Back then, everything was in its place. I had a home, a family, and tomorrows to look forward to. Now, the only safe thing to say is that all I have left is the residue of whatever I once had.

There are times when I lose my perception of reality and break away, molecules disintegrating into atoms until I’m figuratively only pieces of myself scattered across the thresholds of time. I’m remembering different moments at the same time, little broken pieces stitching themselves together in my vision until it’s almost like a nightmare, with the overlapping sounds and the flickering images. But if anything, it was a comforting nightmare, the kinds where you openly submit yourself because it’s either too strong for you to fight back, or you just don’t care.

I like to think I’m doing the former.

The thought of discord is like the sound of blunt fingernails scraping against the blackboard. It’s frightening and irritating, the way things never settle and there’s no sense of security at all. Others may revel in constant change, but I don’t. Somehow having my family torn apart and ending up in the Home was a cruel sardonic twist by someone up above. There’s chaos in seeing them being pulled away from me, like pulling a loose thread from a fabric and messing it all up, creating ruches and vacant space, but the Home was perfectly systematic, the dull drone of wake up-eat-tests-sleep humming underneath the floor tiles and reverberates into our bodies until it’s embedded in our bones. It’s what they call a desert blessing, an ocean curse.

I’ve tried to stop feeling, ever since the day I was admitted and given my own room, my name printed in block letters on a sign that hung from my door, perhaps the most permanent to reveal how I’m to live here forever. There’s no getting out, and I’m not so much alarmed at the thought that I am at my lack of fear. Sometime on my first week, in between the fast-forward montage of black, white and grey – those long periods of doing nothing but sitting and facing the wall in front of me, looking out the window and seeing the expanse of our isolation - the tears have fully dried on my pillowcase and staining nothing against the whiteness of the sheet, I’ve convinced myself that I’m alright. (“Are you okay, Eris?” “I’m okay.”) I’m alright, and that’s what I should say to everyone else, when they’re already cowering behind their own shadows. To the stark contrast of red against white in my bathroom sink, to the increasing pallor of my skin, to myself and the printed letters on paper stating it’s back and it has no plans of leaving.

That’s all I have and all I’ve got.

The warden says our time is up, her voice cutting through the thickened silence that has swollen and filled the whole room. I hear her quite well, but I don’t loosen my grip on my pen and instead look out the window. It was a beautiful sight outside and for all the hours I have guilt shows no sign of coming near me, and I only readily agree to waste the seconds. Only until I’ve seen the room is empty then I leave, folding the paper neatly and keeping it in my pocket. There’s a box of letters I have under my bed, and maybe sometime when the Home is finally in ruins and there’s a gravestone with my name embedded on it, my story will be free to be heard and not kept under pressed lips and the pale glow of fluorescent lights above an operating table, the little chaos of the pills against the container when a hand turns it over.

After all, you will only see a heart only when it’s dead.

It’s not a long way to my room, and it’s in the same hallway with the others. They tend to keep us in the same place, because in a way we have grown up together, torn pieces off books and taped together in an attempt for a family, but we all know we’re far from that. We’re the pulled threads left on the ground, in the cracks of floorboards, gathering dust by the corner.

As I walk through the white hallway, I trace a finger against the wall, sensing the coldness but feeling nothing at all. It’s a habit. But not until I see the splash of red, and my mind registers the familiar: Finn. He doesn’t even need to turn around for me to look in his eyes to know that he’s lost; it’s in his very form, or maybe patients have sixth sense that’s interconnected with each other, but either way I just know. Hesitation and passivity calls out to me as a siren’s song, but the vision of my father’s profile in silhouette, a clear cut of black against the milky light from the window panes, and the smoke that curls from his cigarette, lodged between his index and middle finger – the outcome will be a wave crashing hard against the ocean-beaten stone and it’s not at the very least poetic, but disastrous in every way.

He calls out for his mother, and although I’ve gotten used to this, it’s difficult not to flinch at the sound of his voice. We’ve all got desires, no matter how hopeless. “Finn?” I walk towards him, slowly, resting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s Eris.” And not your mother.

(I’m sorry.)