Grey II - Ghosts

Chapter 1 - Little Deaths

And all foundation that we made built to last, they disintegrate.
And when your house begins to rust, oh it's just metal and dust.

London Grammar - Metal & Dust

The sky opened up sometime during the night and the clouds finally made good on their promise. The rain poured down, freezing rain that coated my world. It seemed oddly fitting. The drops felt like needles against my skin, each hit with a sting, but slowly turned numb from the cold. It felt like the Earth was mourning with me. The cold outside mirrored the in, and the darkness mirrored my mind. It would have been a beautiful pairing if it didn't hurt so badly. I never knew you could feel nothing at all and yet still be in so much pain. My mind replayed the night ceaselessly, turning over each excruciating detail, torturing myself with the gravity of who I was, what I was, what my Pair was. What my future would be.

I remembered the fight in the woods when James told me I was going to become a monster, that he had seen it. I remembered the despair. I felt that again, except this time it was worse. I had tricked myself into whole-heartedly believing I was good, that I could fight back my nature, overcome it, just to have that beautiful deception shattered. I had been tricked by the only person I ever truly believed in. But that's what Halflings were, what we did. We were the thing of legends, of nightmares, and there was nothing I could do about it. All the stories I had read, all the history of Halves, what they had done, was me. I slowly realized more and more how everything I had ever wanted was gone, how everything I needed was gone. How I no longer had anything, anything at all.

I stayed in the cemetery for what seemed like hours, trying not to think, trying to still my mind, hoping it would make the pain fade, but it didn't. I could feel James there with me, sitting just as still as me, knelt on the grass catching the rain like me, but I didn't look up. I couldn't face him. I never wanted to see him again - a reminder of what I was, that he had known all along, how easily he had tricked me, made me fall for him, and that after everything, I was still too weak to kill him.

And then in one moment that was both wonderful and horrible all at once - I couldn't feel him anymore. One second he was there, his mind drowning my own, his despair, his rage, his pain and horror and panic swirling within me, and then he was gone, like he no longer existed, like he never had. I looked up with blurred eyes, but I knew he wouldn't be there. I was alone, sitting in the dark just waiting for the pain to kill me. I almost hoped it would.

Everything was silent apart from the hushed rain falling softly, and the stillness made me feel like I had been alone the whole time, but my mind ached from the memory of his. The edges of where our connection should have been felt raw and exposed, a lasting token of his parting. My knives disappeared along with James, no longer on the grass where I had left them. I knew he had taken them so I wouldn't kill myself, at least not right then, his version of insurance on my life. I let a cold laugh climb my throat. Even his kindness was cruel. That's all he could be.

It took me a moment to comprehend what his absence really meant, like when you hurt yourself but your mind doesn't understand just how severely for a few seconds. Those seconds stretched on and on, but eventually, the shock shifted to something sharper, rougher, as my mind caught up with reality, as my body recognized this newest trauma. My connection with James was gone, and not like the other times, like I was merely blocked or it was dormant, this was different, something final, something total. This was like something had been ripped away. It was a death in a way. I had an empty feeling in my mind, a hollowness that felt cold, numb...and then the pain hit.

He had cut every last part of himself from me, precise and brutal, and it left the edges tattered and bloody. A sob choked out of me as the pain in my mind slowly grew into something physical. My chest convulsed as I clutched at it, doubling over until I felt the dead grass pricking my forehead. It felt like my heart, my soul - or whatever things like us had in them - was trying to escape through my ribcage.