the ghost and the one way

“Is it just me, or does this entire place taste like ash?”

It is quiet for a while before the small voice returns, glazed with guilt.

“Listen, I owe you an apology. For all I know, you’re just as oblivious as I am. Or maybe you know something but can’t say. Or won’t. I don’t know. The point is, I was a jerk back there. I’m sorry.”

On and on.

“Can you… um. Understand me?”

A look.

“Oh… kay. But you don’t speak, so, um.”

The small voice pauses, assessing something.

“Listen,” he says, “I can’t carry a conversation. I can’t even safely lift one, not by myself.”

Another pause; expectant, maybe.

“Um,” he continues, collecting himself, “anyway, you’ll have to forgive me but if no one talks here, I think I might go insane. Um. Do you have any idea where we are? Or where we’re going? Or um. Anything?”

serene, this place, it seems to the ghost

Nothing.

apart from the tic in his tiny pathet tones

“I guess that’s a no?”

an unwalled hall with no trace of echo

A look.

a little ash never hurt anyone

“Hey,” he exclaims, “that’s great! Um.”

Rethinks and explains:

“Great that we’re communicating, I mean. Not that we’re, like, clueless.”

Harried little eyes search the haunted ones beside.

“So, this is weird to ask, but I’ve been wondering ever since that… thing, back there… said ‘good morning’ to me, and um. You know, the ghost beside me…”

The small voice braces.

“Am I dead?”

Unafraid, he guesses, of death.

Nothing.

Fearful, for sure, of dying.

“Oh. Um. Are… you dead?”

A look.

“Oh,” he says quietly.

Feeling small, indeed, this morning.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

The ghost slows, slightly.

“S-sorry,” he stammers, “b-bad joke. Not good. I’m sorry, that was stupid. I, um.”

Shame seeps in.

“I wanted to make you laugh but now I realize you probably don’t do that. I have a bad habit of making bad jokes at bad times. It’s actually been… um… wait.”

Some hint of something else flits past —

“That was… I remembered something.”

— a moment, reaching, but —

“I think it’s gone now.”

— lost once more, along the only one way.