Wailing

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Ninth Ink

Flicker just can’t get to sleep and he isn’t sure why.

It started at first with a stare at the ceiling; where he would usually curl up and kiss the last part of the morning goodbye in his pokey little bedroom filled with book stacks, there was now only a discomfort coupled with an utter refusal by his body to close his eyes and drift away. The restlessness kicked in over the next hour as though worms were crawling over his skin and he just wanted to scratch them off. Finally, in a fit of frustration he kicked off his covers and crawled over to his dresser, attempting to pull a chiffon blouse over his awkward shoulders. He often slept clothed.

The chiffon slipped and slithered to the floor. Suddenly choked by the urgency to get out of his stifling bedroom, he left it there and scrambled out of the window.

The night air felt cool and fresh against his skin, soothing the sweat on his brow. Sometimes, he just had to be outside; even if he was particularly fond of the cluttered den he called home. He was very alone tonight; the air was quiet, and wherever his ghosts were, they were elsewhere.

It could be nice, this quiet; these days he often forget what silence was like. Ever since Mikey had gone to the hospital, both Patricia and Candle had been flitting in and out of his life but never really staying for very long. And when they weren’t around, his attention was free to be captured by… other ghosts. Ones that Flicker didn’t like so much; he didn't even want to think their names lest they catch them and take it as an invite.

Dew tickled his bare toes from the grass and the wood felt nice and cold underneath his hands as he peered over the back fence to the Lamont’s yard, compelled by gut instinct to move in this direction. The window to Mikey’s room, black and desolate in these past few weeks, was lit with an ethereal green hue.

Flicker didn’t remember climbing the fence, but he was in the Lamont’s yard now. He drifted to the window and his bony fingers gripped the sill, pulling himself up to spy against the glass. Mikey rarely ever drew the curtains unless he was hung over; Flicker knew he could get spooked by the dark but he was too proud to use a nightlight. He used the light of the moon to substitute, and even out here in suburbia scattered street lamps added to the dilution of the darkness.

Sure enough; there was Mikey, a small ball of pale limbs cross-legged on his inky-coloured sheets with raised knees and an illuminated screen resting on his toes. He was looking at something on his phone, his thin fingers stabbing gently at the scroll button beneath the screen. A huge, looming shadow was cast on the wall behind him, which only served to make him look smaller than ever before in the artificial glow.

“Mikey,” Flicker whispered, so softly that his breathe barely fogged the glass. He reached up to delicately tap on the glass; gently, like a dove, so he wouldn’t get too scared… but his fingers just fell right through. Something wasn’t right with this.

“Mikey,” he spoke aloud now, voice unabashed and audible, and his old friend didn’t say anything at all. Panic began to bubble in his blood, for of all the people in the entire world he’d wished would fade away and never see him he had never wished for any of them to be Mikey Lamont. He looked so small and sad sitting there and Flicker was forced to watch, stricken, as his world turned a brighter shade of green with a message chime.

He watched as Mikey tapped the screen with trepidation, though the phone was too far away to read the words; whatever they said made his bottom lip tremble. He shoved the thing from his feet as though it were suddenly offensive, flipping the phone over and plunging himself into the gloom and gripping his head in his hands. Flicker couldn’t see any bandages any more, and his hair hid any scars that might be left. Mikey rocked for a moment and looked up with leaking eyes, staring straight through his friend and out into the yard.

“Alistair is dead.”

He said it with such bitterness and conviction that Flicker fell backwards, off the windowsill and down, down to the flowerbeds below at a pace that was ever so slow. He felt it like a curse somehow, as though his friend had wished it all on him. But had Mikey even seen him? He would have called him a freak if he had. And in all the rush of madness that seemed to stretch out forever like the stars in the sky his head hit the garden soil and suddenly his open eyes were staring out at dimly lit plaster painted white.

It was a ceiling. The ceiling Flicker stared at before he went to sleep.

He lay like that for a moment, the gears slowing grinding in his brain before something in his subconscious screamed for oxygen and he lurched, drawing in a great, shuddering breath that began in a wheeze and grew into a gasping crescendo. He didn’t know how long he’d meet like that. His eyes felt glassy and dry.

He felt unnerved, removed from his centre; knocked off balance. Had that even happened? Flicker almost never dreamed; never-ever. But he had felt the cold.

With the most peculiar sense of foreboding, he crawled out of bed and crept towards the darkened glass of his own window, his pale nose pressing against the pane. Still panting, his breath made warm little clouds against the glass and he was sure that meant he was alive again. From his point of view, he could just see a sliver of green-lit window over the top of the fence from Mikey’s yard.

He watched for a moment, biting back his heart as a dark shadow tore across the ghostly rectangle and it tried to hammer out of his chest through his throat. Someone had pulled the curtains. Mikey was home.

He ran away from the window and leapt onto his mattress and stayed there, pulling the cotton sheet over his naked chest and curling into a ball. He watched the shadows on the wall with big, worried eyes and wondered if he was real any more. He’d stay like that for hours, gently stroking the pillow he hugged against his chest like a pussy cat, until sunlight started to shine and it finally felt safe to pass out.