Page 12 of A Ballad of Phantoms and Hope
Ophelia blinks slowly, looking at the door that separates us from the darkness outside. “They only follow me.” A mere whisper.
I quirk a brow. “Why?”
Her jaw muscle feathers and she shakes her head. “I don’t know.” She lifts her shoulder and drops it. “One day they just showed up and they’ve been trailing me since. Sometimes I go days or even weeks without running into them, but one thing is true, they’re always near. Waiting patiently for me to forget and become aloof like I was tonight.” She looks at me pointedly. “They almost got me tonight.”
The hairs on the back of my neck raise, but I swallow the discomfort.
“Are you scared here? I couldn’t imagine being alone.” My voice is coarse. The image of her being here alone for days,months, years, a decade, breaks me. I can see her tending to her garden of forgotten plants. This abandoned building keeping a ghost the world has blinked away all this time.
She spreads her arms to the room, smiling and casting away the grim conversation. “I’m not alone. I have all the greenery and knick-knacks a person could ever hope for.”
I nod and force a weary grin, glancing back at her door once more. “So you’re okay with me staying here for the night? You won’t feed me to the dark?” I tease and her guarded exterior lowers; replaced with a lovely smile.
“Tea?” she offers, and I chuckle.
“Coffee, please, and no cream.”
6
Ophelia
How didtoday’s events bring me here, drinking tea and sitting across from a beautiful man as he sips on coffee?
His eyes wander around my shack of a home, lingering around the plants and tables that I’ve collected over the years. We’re each seated on a worn sofa; mine is colored maroon, his tan, with an old authentic wood coffee table between us. It has slates of glass for the surface, scoffed and nicked with history. There’s an innate feeling of judgment that swirls in my stomach, even though he’s shown no evidence of it.
The gothic black walls with coffered edges and chandelier light fixtures definitely don’t brighten anything up, but I love these things. This place is me: Broken beams from the rotting roof, drops of rain falling and landing on plants below, and lovely silence. Ebony candles burn and flicker on the windowpanes, tables, and stage behind us.
I’m protective over my oddities.
Because no one else has loved them like I do.
Not the man who claimed to have loved me when I was sixteen, nor the man who possessed me when I was twenty-five. I wrap my arms over my knees and shut my eyes against the memories of my last love. I promised myself I wouldn’t think of that man ever again, and yet he still haunts me—a shadow in the back of my mind.
I’m convinced that the living are the ones that keep us here—their desire to hurt us even in death. The knife can forever be plunged deeper, even into corpses.
“So, what’s with the purple hair?”
My shoulders tense as I realize I am lost in thought. “Hm?” I look up at him and his soft hazel eyes flicker with curiosity and maybe even some nostalgia. My fingers thread through the long strands of my hair and I force a sarcastic smile. “Don’t like off-colored hair?” I ask, not unkindly.
He sets his mug down on the coffee table and leans forward, setting his elbow on his knee and resting his head on his palm as he grins at me like he has a dirty little secret.
“No, in fact, I seem to be particularly drawn to it.” His smile becomes distant, and he blinks slowly with thoughts—perhaps of memories of his life or the people in it.
I cup my mug with both hands, enjoying the warmth that seeps into my palms. It’s not my place to ask, but I find Lanston oddly comforting and welcoming to such questions.
“Who was she?”
Lanston stares at the floor and his eyes lose their brilliance for a moment. “She was my kindred soul, as lost and sick as I was.” It’s evident he misses her, but there’s something else he isn’t saying.
“But?”
He looks up at me and leans back on the sofa. His arms rest at his sides. I keep glimpsing the locks of hair that peek out from beneath his ball cap. “Butshe was in love with my best friend.And he loved her the way she needed it.” My expression falls and he gives me a weak grin. “It’s okay; when you love others more than yourself, it’s easy to let it be. I wasn’t meant to stay. And that was years ago now.” He drags his hand down his jaw; there’s a formidable weight of anguish he holds there. In the set of his dark brows, the lightness of his heart.
I frown and nod. “You seem like the kind of guy who would say as much, but doesn’t it hurt? Aren’tyoulonely?” I turn his question from earlier back on him, leaning forward to set my mug on the table before I curl back up on the couch across from him. I pull my knees close to my chest and watch Lanston through heavy lashes.
He tilts his chin back and rests his head against the cushion, shutting his eyes as weariness orbits us. Phantoms grow tired so very quickly. We fade into lost spurts of rest and there’s no telling how long we’ll sleep. The redness bruising around the bottom of his eyes alludes to how close he is to falling into his dreams.
His voice is raspy and sweet. “Of course, it hurts… I think it always will. But most things that wound your heart like this are worth it. It only hurts because of how precious we hold them. I’m never alone, not really, because I know they will carry the weight of me with them forever.”
