Not Juliet. Just Yet.
Another piece of short writing, and yes, it is a sequel to Dorian. I don’t know what order it comes in, but it’s very late in the game. Told from Dorian’s “girlfriend’s” POV. Also: title sucks. If you have any suggestions, let me know.
“You know, I never understood Romeo and Juliet,” she says, turning the dagger over in her small hands. “I thought they were… well, stupid. Stupid especially by teenage standards.”
It’s somewhat ironic then that she’s still in her teens, speaking of the stupidity of suicidal teenagers to a twenty-one year old ghost. Who just so happens to have stabbed himself with the very dagger she is holding.
Maybe that is why the ghost stays silent, leaving her to contemplate dead fictional characters and a real knife aloud.
“It’s a rather morbid memento, isn’t it? Even by ghost standards, I mean.” And it’s true. Although she does not speak to the other ghosts as much - they’re not nearly as interesting as her current ghostly BFE. Best Friend Eternally - she knows that, despite celebrating the days they died as the living might celebrate birthdays, none of them were insistent on keeping the methods of their own death around.
“So why did you bother to show me this?” It’s a valid question, as he had had the drawer he kept the dagger in locked when he first met her. And had specifically asked her to open. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
Still facing away, she cannot gauge his reaction. Is he horrified? Eager? Uncertain? She does not want to know, lest she lose all nerve and cry. Although he is the best friend she has ever had - and ever will have - there are still some things that she cannot talk about face to face.
“I have to admit, I am kind of jealous of this,” she says, stroking the knife. She thinks she’s being careful, but she slips and slices into her finger. Finger in her mouth, she notices the difference between her own blood and the decades old blood staining the silver.
“This is as close as I’ll get to touching you,” she comments, holding the blade to her chest, the tip hovering near the pendant that hangs around her neck. “Unless I - would it be quick? If I don’t miss like you did?”
Silence.
“But not today.” She sounds disappointed. Sorry for disappointing him. It was cruel of her to tease him with offering what he might so desperately want. No, instead she had sentenced him to another day without being able to touch someone, someghost, that might care about him. Even just a shred.
“I’m still jealous of it,” she finishes, pressing her lips to the dagger briefly, kissing it goodbye - kissing him goodbye - before shutting it back in the drawer.
To wait.
Dorian
This is a short story that begged to be written, and is the result of a conversation with a friend of a ghostly RP character with a sad story, which was in turn inspired by Emilie Autumn’s poem Ghost. This hasn’t been beta’d, but I have run it through a spellcheck.
Sleep is a gift for the living, and having rejected the peace of eternal rest he is doomed to never close his eyes in slumber again.
But she sleeps now, dark brown hair spread in a tangle on the pillows supporting her head. She holds the blankets close as if requiring their comfort. Her chest rises and falls in a steady pattern.
The way his chest has not moved in over a century.
She does not know he is there, watching her as she sleeps, protecting her from unpleasant dreams. Just as she does not know how he follows her whenever he can, watching her, protecting her. She does not know that he loves her.
Yet.
He has done this so many times, finding her again and again even though she wears a different face - she sings the same song each time, the one without notes or words that summons him, made him love her that first time. The first time, when it all went so terribly wrong.
She will not remember it, of course. She never has - it is like she is a different girl each time. But he knows it is her, that she has come back to him, giving him another chance.
She has given him so many chances, he knows that. And each time he has made a mistake, and she has left him. Chosen someone else, just as she had done that first time. But it is not her fault.
It is never her fault. That is why he always gets another chance.
Although he tells himself this every time she comes back to him in another form, it will be different this time. This time he will get it right, and not make a mistake. This time she will love him, and be able to share that love.
But most important of all, she will forgive him.
And that, he tells himself as he tries and fails to stroke her cheek as she sleeps, is what she is just waiting to give him. This time.
This time is not the first. But this time will be the last. He knows it, deep in his ghostly, unbeating heart that his own blade had just missed.
She will forgive him.