Chapter 3
ROSE
I’ve come to the conclusion that I must be dead.
I think I would be inclined to feel a little more insane, to panic and scream and cry, if it weren’t for the handsome green man next door.
Seeing him every day — watching him through his bedroom window, observing him as he comes and goes from his house — has kept me grounded just enough in the moments when fear and sorrow begin to overwhelm me.
Nothing here makes any sense.
He doesn’t exactly make sense either, but then again, neither do I.
While I’ve never seen someone like him before, I’ve also never seen someone like me.
My entire body is transparent, glowing green in the dark, and my hands are unable to find purchase on any surface but the external doors.
Each step I take makes no sound. I am here only after the sun has set, and when I go…
I don’t know where I go. I don’t know where I’ve come from.
I have no memory of anything other than my past life and the times I am here, now.
Is this Hell? Purgatory? I was never raised Catholic, but perhaps Dante’s Divine Comedy had it right all along, because this certainly feels like some sort of strange, in-between place of waiting.
Lonely and alone here in a dilapidated version of my own home, surrounded by the artefacts of the life I once lived, seeing the portraits of my parents on the wall and knowing in my heart that I’ll never see them again… this is a type of Hell, I’m sure of it.
It’s become abundantly clear that a very large amount of time has passed since anyone has set foot inside this house.
The layer of dust and dirt that coats every surface is thick, the mouse droppings and other unpleasant things on the floor are a far cry from how my mother kept this home, and the belongings that do remain are all faded and moth-eaten, fabrics falling apart, broken in the same way that my heart is.
I am dead, and yet I am the one here grieving for my family.
It’s why I’ve clung so much to the man next door, watching him whenever I can.
There’s something about him that is utterly compelling, and it’s not the fact that he’s so very different from me.
He towers in height, his body thick with corded muscles, and his features are so unique, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, but it’s his warm brown eyes that first drew me in.
When I was first here, trying to orient myself and understand what had happened, seeing him and the sadness in his eyes steadied me, and it’s not that I take pleasure from his pain — not at all — but the fact that we seemed to share the same emotion settled me, centred me, and made me feel less alone in my deep sadness.
I know I scared him the other night. He’d run, terror clear in his face and in his movements, and the way he’d leapt all the stairs leading up to his house had been quite a feat.
That had been all the proof I needed that something is particularly wrong about my situation, despite all the new and interesting people that now appear to exist in this world.
As far as I can tell, he is the only one who sees me, despite the fact that there are others that live with him.
They’re all different too, none of them truly human.
There is a man in that house who looks human but walks like a cat, prowling, and his teeth are far too sharp.
There is another who has wings and bright red eyes, his face almost insect-like.
I think he is a moth made into a man, and I would wonder if I were hallucinating were it not for my current predicament, for if I can be a dead ghost haunting my former home, surely a moth that is a man, or a man who is a moth, can exist too.
I watched yet another man step outside, his body as bare as the day he was born.
He hadn’t seemed to care about his nudity, and then his shoulders had shuddered, his body shaking for a moment before he’d turned into a great white wolf.
He’d trotted down the street — a wolf the size of a small horse — and I’d been left staring in utter shock at the sight.
From all of this, I can only conclude that something very strange has happened to this world around me in the time that I’ve been gone.
My father used to tell me ghost stories.
Now, it seems, I am one.