My Ghost Story
Oct. 2nd, 2014 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
in_the_blueFandom: Drowning Again (original)
Word Count: 461
Rating: G
Characters: Tom, Caroline
Notes: I... yeah. I've been meaning to get back to this story and see what I can do with it. Maybe this short ghost story will inspire me to work on it some more. If anyone wants to read the original, let me know.
The first time he saw his sister she was four years old, wearing Keds sneakers with the blue tab on the back. White Keds, scuffed with dirt and sand and water, and she wore a blue t-shirt and a pair of bright red shorts and he had the vague passing thought that she looked like the American flag so maybe it was supposed to be the Fourth of July. It was summer anyway, so that made as much sense as anything. She ran up to the side of the house and simply melted away, disappeared right into the grains of the siding.
The second time he saw his sister was really the first time, but he didn't know who she was yet. He was two years old, and he was playing in the pool outside and didn't have all his words, although he had a great many of them, and understood when his mom said not to get in the water, that she'd be right back. But then he saw her and she had her bathing suit on and held out her hand and said play with me so nicely that it seemed like a good thing to do, and by the time his mom got back and pulled him out of the water in a panic, pounding him on the back hard enough to make him spit up, his sister was gone. He cried for hours, not because he'd almost drowned but because he knew there was someone there and he couldn't make his mom understand.
The third time he saw his sister was after he'd learned her name. She was dressed up, with heels and stockings, her hair long and loose hiding half her face, a lit cigarette between her lips, wearing a form-fitting thing fashioned from a red so shocking it almost made him blush, although as a man of science he rarely let that happen. Caroline, he mouthed the word, and she turned to him and smiled with half her mouth, the rest of it keeping hold of that cigarette like it was more valuable than gold. Even after she vanished, the smell of smoke lingered.
Sometimes she was little. Sometimes she was older, as old as she would have been had she survived. Sometimes she would be there for a moment, only one or two, and other times she would stay for hours. Always, she vanished when it was least convenient for him; always, she left something behind. Some mess to clean up, or the smell of a burning cigarette, or lipstick on a napkin, or the sound of her voice or her image emblazoned on his eyelids.
It was good to have a sister after all these years. What a shame she'd never been born.
Word Count: 461
Rating: G
Characters: Tom, Caroline
Notes: I... yeah. I've been meaning to get back to this story and see what I can do with it. Maybe this short ghost story will inspire me to work on it some more. If anyone wants to read the original, let me know.
The first time he saw his sister she was four years old, wearing Keds sneakers with the blue tab on the back. White Keds, scuffed with dirt and sand and water, and she wore a blue t-shirt and a pair of bright red shorts and he had the vague passing thought that she looked like the American flag so maybe it was supposed to be the Fourth of July. It was summer anyway, so that made as much sense as anything. She ran up to the side of the house and simply melted away, disappeared right into the grains of the siding.
The second time he saw his sister was really the first time, but he didn't know who she was yet. He was two years old, and he was playing in the pool outside and didn't have all his words, although he had a great many of them, and understood when his mom said not to get in the water, that she'd be right back. But then he saw her and she had her bathing suit on and held out her hand and said play with me so nicely that it seemed like a good thing to do, and by the time his mom got back and pulled him out of the water in a panic, pounding him on the back hard enough to make him spit up, his sister was gone. He cried for hours, not because he'd almost drowned but because he knew there was someone there and he couldn't make his mom understand.
The third time he saw his sister was after he'd learned her name. She was dressed up, with heels and stockings, her hair long and loose hiding half her face, a lit cigarette between her lips, wearing a form-fitting thing fashioned from a red so shocking it almost made him blush, although as a man of science he rarely let that happen. Caroline, he mouthed the word, and she turned to him and smiled with half her mouth, the rest of it keeping hold of that cigarette like it was more valuable than gold. Even after she vanished, the smell of smoke lingered.
Sometimes she was little. Sometimes she was older, as old as she would have been had she survived. Sometimes she would be there for a moment, only one or two, and other times she would stay for hours. Always, she vanished when it was least convenient for him; always, she left something behind. Some mess to clean up, or the smell of a burning cigarette, or lipstick on a napkin, or the sound of her voice or her image emblazoned on his eyelids.
It was good to have a sister after all these years. What a shame she'd never been born.
