Revenants

'It's strange,' said Kneale as we hovered at the bottom of the
subway steps. 'When I was alive I didn't believe in ghosts.'

We took the stairs in one bound. At the top we sensed the presence of
other dead in the air, thickening the darkness. For a moment, we too
dissolved and became a part of it.

'Now that I'm dead I find it hard to believe in the living.' The
distant light drew us to it. Then suddenly I sensed that Kneale was
gone.

I knew where he would be. Back in the subway, chasing echoes. Passing
through the vibrations of drunken cries and laughter, mingling with the
smell of freshly spilt piss.

I waited by the light for his return, watching the blank wall for
moving shadows. 'I don't know why you torture yourself like that,' I
said when I felt him back with me.

'You're not so different,' he said. 'You think the living are going to
show themselves to you here, like some kind of movie.' He shot away and
I followed.

'I don't need to see them to know they're there,' I protested. He led
me through the city, building speed.

Now we were shooting through the empty streets like electrons in a
particle accelerator. 'I mean, look around you. Who built all this if
it wasn't the living?' I screamed.

'Don't try to trick me with logic,' snarled Kneale, as he sped towards
a concrete pillar. 'We've gone way past logic.' As if to prove his
point, he passed through the pillar, zig-zagging between its atoms with
arcade precision.

'We don't have long,' I warned. 'As soon as the sun's up, we won't even
be able to see the buildings.'

'It makes no difference,' said Kneale. 'I could find this place when
I'm day-blinded.'

'Like I said, I don't know why you torture yourself like this. First
the place where they knifed you. Now your flat.' But he had already
passed through the front door.

I found him in the kitchen, mingling with the smells of her breakfast.
'No one asked you to come along,' he said glumly.

There were voices in the living room. The TV was on, but the images of
the living were hidden from us, just as they were themselves.

We were alone in the flat now. 'It's not the fact that I can't see her
that tortures me,' said Kneale. 'It's the fact that I can still smell
her.' And for a moment we both danced in the lingering scent of her
perfume.