Ghosts (Book 1 Part 10)

It was a drunken night, near the end of my second week of class when the idea occurred to me: The ghost of the little girl was a victim of incestual pedophilia.

Sometimes things occur to me that end up being incorrect. But, I just knew this to be true. Most things that kill humans and make them haunt are graphic and gory, and they tend to relive that death over and over. It can be a moment of betrayal. It can be many things. But, escape has not occurred to the minds of those because they were not ruined over a long period of time. We humans, when tortured to the point that allows our minds to become frail and eventually snap in several places…we can, in a futile attempt to regain some sense of sanity, block out the pain, often attempting to revert to a happy memory.
I had become convinced that my girl had done that very thing. She had been a victim for a long period of time. She tried to block out the pain and horror by attempting to grasp some happy experience in her unhappy life.

Then she happened to die when she was reminiscing. I did not and still do not know if she is in or was in any sort of eternal pain.
I had begun to consider the girl something akin to a daughter. I had become obsessed with helping her, even though I had no idea if it was just a trace memory being repeated or if she was in some sort of torment. I still don’t fully understand repeaters.

I had done some drinking with Will earlier in the bar. It was a cold night and I had noticed that it seems very important to the Chinese not to waste any money on making the temperature comfortable or bearable. Go figure.

I had been able to not miss another day of school, but I was not finished with the course. I could easily miss another day and that could have happened any damn day with my loose nocturnal habits.

“Want to go find some girls tonight?” asked Will.
“I see ghosts. I see them all around all the time. I’m tired of it.” I don’t know exactly what caused me to tell Will at this point. Maybe I felt dishonest not telling him. He and I were becoming friends and I guess I feel it important to share with friends.

“I think the line is: I see dead people.” Will laughed.

“I’m not quoting a film.” We were at the hostel bar/restaurant/whatever. The place did not serve alcohol in the mornings when it becomes a sort of breakfast buffet. It is open for lunch for two hours when one can buy a beer, but no liquor. Then it changed to a bar in the evening, from approximately 5:00 until midnight, when it usually closed.

“I was not aware that you were crazy, mate. Maybe you could have told me this earlier. Do these ghosts tell you to do things? Do they suggest you kill your friend, Will?” He laughed again, but nervously. The easy-going good mood that he had been in prior seemed to have been dented or otherwise suddenly malformed.

I realized I should not have shared with him. “It’s nothing. Forget I said anything.” It’s hard for me to share with people and I realized long before I ever tried that the average person will never understand me. Even if he or she does understand and believe me, it makes one uncomfortable to be in my presence.

“Hey… do you want to go out tonight? Hit the clubs? See some women?”

“No.” I just wanted to help the spiritual remnants of what was once an innocent young child. “I don’t want to do anything tonight.”
Will eventually left me at the bar. I resumed my post, Scotch in hand, to watch the nightly ritual of something lost and shattered.

I cannot comment so much on nature as I am only human. It might be natural to fuck children. Some animals eat their young. I imagine that no thought goes into devouring one’s offspring when one is a mere animal, incapable of any sort of emotion. However, it is not human to fuck children. To be human means you need to take on a certain amount of empathy towards other humans. You can be a human and not know how to be human.

I sometimes forget that the living can often be much more dangerous than the dead.