Chapter 1

A Chapter by S.Lee

Someone once wrote, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” I would have to disagree. While taxes may promise permanency…I’ve learned death sometimes does not.

We can be no more certain about death than we are about life. Most of us assume that when we die were a greeted by the white light and pearly gates and all of our dead loved ones. But, the reality is no one really knows what happens after we die. All we know is that it will happen.

We do not know how.

We do not know when.

All we know is that someday everything that we have worked our entire lives to create will be mercilessly ripped away from our shoulders with no second chance. One day you are and the next day you're not. Whatever comes after that is anyone’s guess...except mine.
            I suppose you would call me a ghost. A spirit. A specter. A phantom. But in my mind I'm still just Cecilia Stone. I suppose I died in 1958 but I have no idea how. All these years I have pondered over the reason why I died. Racking my brain trying to remember if I was sick or in an accident, something that would explain how I got this way. Why am I here? I know I’m dead but I don’t know how I got stuck here. Why I didn’t go where all the other people who die go. Why am I trapped in this formless existence (If it is even an existence at all) while others move along to whatever is on the other side of that light?
            At Sunday school I learned that purgatory was a place where souls waited to be purified and sent to Heaven. Perhaps that is what is happening to me. Perhaps I am stuck in this limbo state just waiting for my turn to cross over into Heaven...wherever that is.
            I am certainly not in Heaven now. I’m not sure where I am exactly. I mean, I recognize my surroundings as my family’s home, the home I spent my childhood in, but it’s different. It’s empty and lonely; A mere shadow of its old self, like me.

Our house was built in the Queen Anne style in the 1890’s by my great grandfather. It’s a grand old thing and always reminded me of a big Victorian doll house with its high gables and wraparound porch. I always loved this old house with its beautiful bay windows and conical roofed tower on the east side which made it look like a castle.

At the very top of the tower, three storeys up, was the most beautiful room in the whole house. Stained glass windows with pink and green magnolia blossoms circled nearly the entire room. Every morning when the sun came up the rays would peer through the windows and light up the room with colorful lights. This was my room. My sanctuary.

Growing up in this house always made me feel as though I was living in a fairy tale. The house itself sat atop a hill just outside of town and was surrounded by a forest of beautiful gardens and magnolia trees. On warm summer nights I would open the windows to my bedroom and let the rich and heady scent of the flora below waft up and nestle me to sleep. In the daytime I would take my precious books out to the garden and read by the tiny river that ran down the hill and into Loon Lake about a mile below. I would imagine I was the Lady of Shallot coming down from her tower to the river which would take her to Camelot. Or I’d pretend I was lost in the forest and the fireflies which lit our summer nights were actually fairies guiding me home.

The gardens were my mother’s labor of love. She would spend hours out there weeding and pruning. I remember how beautiful she used to look in her sun hat and dirty gardening clothes. She would stroll along the narrow pathways pausing often to admire the freshly bloomed flowers. I remember the way she used to smell them; cupping her hands gently around the blossom while pressing her nose right into its centre and inhaling deeply with her eyes closed. She always looked so natural in the garden, as if she had grown out of the soil herself.

On the days that I would join her she would give me little botany lessons. She would say, “See this one Cecilia? This is called a Globe Thistle. Aren’t they beautiful? They come from Africa so they need a lot of sun in order to grow up strong but they are not fussy about the soil. They can go weeks without water and still grow as long as they have sun. Which means it’s up to us to make sure that the area around them is completely clear. Oh, sweetie, don’t touch them. They’re prickly.” I put my stung index finger in my mouth and her laugh made a sweet chime.

The house and garden have since been overgrown by weeds and vines. Without my mother’s nurturing hand the garden has grown out of control and sections of it have died of suffocation. Now, only weeds, tall grass and the occasional group of wildflowers can grow there.

The front of the house is still sea of magnolia blossoms in the spring but since the life has been taken from the house it’s as if they bloom against their will. With the uncut grass sucking away all the nutrients, the blossoms appear later and fall earlier than they used to when I was a child.

The windows of the house now seem more like the cataract ridden eyes of an old woman with all the dust and film that has settled on them over the decades. Inside, all of my mother’s beautiful antique furniture has been covered by white sheets. A layer of age and cobwebs has covered every surface in the house. It’s dismal and dusty and depressing. Nothing like place I grew up in.

It was as if the house died along with me. Now we both just kind of exist here on our lonely hill overlooking town. On a plane of the universe that is both completely separate from that of the living while still being a part of it. Trapped in a state that is neither fully alive nor fully dead.

My father used to call the house a “her” and would talk about it as if it had a soul. Now I suppose she really does have one, me.

How do I even begin to describe what it’s like not to have a body? How do you describe the sky to someone who has never seen the colour blue? How do I put into words the ineffable emptiness one feels when they have forever lost everything there is to possibly lose?

If I were being honest I would tell you that even after all this time it has never gotten any easier. It’s still hard for me. Not being able to touch anything, grab anything. No human contact, no one to talk to. No hugs, no kisses; not even a handshake. I’m unable to feel my feet on the ground or the breeze in my hair. What I wouldn’t give for one last bite of my mother’s Sunday roast or a juicy bite of watermelon on a hot summer day. I would die again just to feel the sun on my skin while walking through the garden or the cold bite of a winter morning on my cheeks as I stepped out on my way to school. Those everyday pleasures I took for granted when I was alive all seem like part of a distant heaven I once belonged to. Not anymore.

I think the strangest part about being a spirit is being invisible. On the first morning I woke up dead I could still see myself but it seemed like the moment I realized I was dead I lost all connection to my physical self and I became completely invisible. I was already invisible to the living but something about not being able to see your own hand in front of your face was really disturbing. Living like this, you start to feel like you are just a floating brain; A bubble of all these thoughts and emotions floating around with no vessel to hold them. I have no sense of touch or smell or taste. I can only see and hear the world around me with no way of interacting with it. Like living in a barrel.

            I remember a book I read when I was alive. It talked about a man named Descartes who theorized that the very act of doubting one’s own existence is in fact proof of its reality. He summed up his philosophy in one simple statement, “I think, therefore I am.” He basically meant that if you have thoughts floating around in your brain, whether you’re pondering the universe or thinking about dinner, it means you exist.
            I like to think I still exist.
            That’s one thing being dead does give you; a lot of time to think�"about the world, about life and death; about what it means to be alive. Upon this subject I have come to a single conclusion. I realize that I did not live my life the way I ought to have. That is not to say I ever did anything really bad, I just never lived it to the fullest. I buried myself in my books and records and schoolwork and never really took any chances. I never skipped class to go to the beach or gone parking with a boy.

I suppose it was my fear of failure that made me too afraid to take any risks. Afraid I would make a mistake and disappoint my family or get hurt. I became a prisoner of my own fear and my comfort zone was my cell.

However, the process of accepting the fact that my life is over has brought along a sense of clarity. I no longer feel afraid of those things I was too frightened to do in life. The ironic and devastating fact is that, it is only now that I have no hope of doing anything that I want to do everything. I can’t help but regret every day of my life that I wasted.

I read a poem once that I think would apply here. It was about a little bird in a cage. All the little bird wanted to do was to fly free and swing on the branches with the other birds. The bird beat his wings so hard against the bars that they become bloodied and bruised and when he could no longer beat his wings the bird began to sing. “It is not a carol of joy or glee,/ but a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,/ but a plea, that upward to heaven he flings--/ I know why the caged bird sings!”

I remember feeling sorry for the bird. Trapped all alone in a little cage with no way of escaping no matter how hard he tried. I could feel his frustration as he beat his wings in vain against the cruel bars. My heart broke when he finally gave up and could do no more than sing his mournful prayer. I remember wanting to step inside the poem, unlatch the tiny door and release the bird. I wanted us to be free together to sing happier tunes.

I've learned since then that not all cages have doors. The walls of my cage, though invisible, are really quite real and separate my world from that of the living. My torture has been to watch for countless years as life and time and joy elude me�"passing me by with no way to stop it as it flows through my ethereal fingers like water.
I want you to imagine now, that your life is a series of stepping stones. Imagine these stones are like tiny islands in the middle of a vast ocean. Now imagine you're out in the middle of that ocean hopping from stone to stone. You stop and suddenly you realize that every stone around you has disappeared except for the one that you are standing on. You're completely stranded.

All alone on a solitary stone in the middle of a vast ocean with nothing but the endless horizon of empty space.

Stranded.

Alone.

And that is all you will ever be again. Standing on a rock, in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to go and nothing but your own mind to keep you company.

Forgotten and unloved.

That’s what it’s like, becoming a ghost.

next chapter

© 2014 S.Lee

Author's Note

Thanks for reading!

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Reviews

HayleyLemore

Ok, this has piqued my interest. Hmm, to wake up and realize you are dead...I've got to read it.
The line "...everything we have worked for will be ripped" rather than 'away' how about 'ripped from our shoulders'? Just a thought. Don't let me change your style.
Love the room at the top of the tower with the stained glass windows. My type of room. It's a beautiful get-away to have peace and quiet and write. And with a garden. You are really winning several people over.
You sense of description is wonderful so you might consider taking out the slang word Ugh. It doesn't seem to fit.
Since this chapter is all about description what if the readers eyes saw something more when you describe the garden. Let us feel how she skipped or whirling with either a friend or sibling so we sense the texture of her skin when she was a alive, or hear the sound of her voice. To feel the senses of sight and smell will break up the pattern and create interest as well as contrast to the bleakness. When the bleakness starts again we will ride the roller coaster of ups and downs.
In the end when she is stranded and alone... here is a suggestion although I don't know if this is the direction you want to take. Add forgotten and unloved, or with the feeling of being unloved. Forgotten certainly is a powerful word.
Keep writing. I'm interested.
Hayley