Hello everyone!
I wanted to ask for your opinion. if I added a picture of the ghost that the MC encounters in each chapter, would you like that idea or not?
I thought it might make the reading experience more immersive, but I'd love to hear what you think!
If you asked me if I'm scared of death, I can say that I am.
But if you asked me if death is the scariest thing I'm afraid of, the answer is no.
The thing that scares me the most is abandonment.
My whole life, I worked hard not to be successful, not to be rich. I just wanted to be loved. I just wanted someone to stay.
They say that we can die twice. First, when our heart stops beating. The second time is when those around us forget us, when our name fades from memory, when we become nothing but dust and silence.
That's what scared me the most.
To be forgotten.
To be alone.
To be worthless.
When my mother locked me outside in the cold, I understood. She was hurt. When she broke my guitar and threw that vase at my head, I understood. My father must have played guitar. When Amy ran away after seeing my family, I understood. Not everyone can handle difficult situations. When my father took everything I built, I understood. Business is business.
I always understood.
That's what people do. They hurt you and they leave. It's natural. It's how the world works. My mother did her best. My father had his reasons. Amy was scared. John and Margaret tried.
Everyone tries until they don't anymore.
But I found a solution. A good solution. If I keep them inside me, they stay. They can't walk away. They can't forget. They're always there, warm and close. My mother is with me now. I can feel her. My father too. We're together. We're a family.
That's all I ever wanted. A family that stays.
My brothers died quickly. That was a kindness. They won't have to grow up and learn what it feels like when people leave. They won't have to work for years building something beautiful only to have it stolen. They won't have to love someone and watch them run away.
I saved them from that.
John's face when he found me. He looked so sad. So broken. I felt bad about that. He was kind to me. He gave me a home. Margaret made me tea. They called me son. They meant it too, for a while.
But it would have ended eventually. It always does.
Margaret probably cried when she heard. She probably held John and asked why. But there is no why. That's just what happened. People leave or you make them stay. Those are the only options.
I chose to make them stay.
Father and mother are with me now. I can hear them sometimes. My mother hums. My father talks about business. They're close. They can't leave. They'll never leave.
That's love, I think.
Keeping someone so close they can't go away.
I feel tired now. The darkness is comfortable. Quiet. No more voices telling me I'm wrong. No more people walking away. Just me and the family inside me.
Together.
Forever.
.
.
.
Ugh.
A sharp pain shot straight through my head.
I opened my eyes.
Darkness. Complete darkness. And the smell. Oh God, the smell.
Rotten meat. Human waste. Something chemical and sharp that burned my nostrils and made my eyes water. I gagged, bile rising in my throat. The taste of copper and decay filled my mouth.
Where am I?
I tried to move. My hand pressed against something soft. Wet. Cold. The texture was spongy. Yielding. I pulled my hand back quickly, and something sticky came with it. I couldn't see what it was in the dim lit place, but I could feel it clinging to my fingers.
Bodies.
I was sitting on bodies. I could feel them beneath me, around me. The soft give of flesh. The hard edges of bone. The coldness of death pressed against my skin from all sides.
My heart started pounding. Fast. Too fast.
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light filtering through vents high above, I could see them. Piles of corpses stacked against metal walls. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Some were fresh, their skin still pale and intact, eyes half open and staring at nothing. Others were bloated, their bellies distended with gas, skin stretched tight and greenish purple. Some were little more than skeletons wrapped in rotting meat, their bones visible through gaps in the flesh where maggots had done their work.
I'm in some kind of container. Metal walls. Curved ceiling. Industrial. Riveted steel panels. A waste disposal unit. A place where things go to disappear.
This is where they dump the bodies.
But I should be dead. John shot me. I felt the bullet enter my forehead. I felt my legs give out. I felt the cold spreading through my body as everything shut down.
So why am I here? Why am I breathing?
I looked down at my hands. They weren't my hands. The fingers were longer, more delicate. The skin was paler, almost sickly white. The wrists were thin. Bones visible beneath the skin. Malnourished.
This isn't my body.
I turned my hands over, staring at the palms. Different lines. Different calluses. These hands had done different work than mine. Held different things. Hurt different people, maybe.
I caught my reflection in the polished metal wall across from me. The surface was dull and scratched, but clear enough to see.
The face staring back wasn't mine.
I stopped breathing.
It was sharp. Angular. Cheekbones that cut like blades beneath skin stretched too tight. Jaw defined despite the obvious starvation. The skin was pale, almost translucent in places, showing the faint tracery of veins beneath. Hollows under the eyes, dark circles like bruises. Sunken cheeks. The look of someone who hadn't eaten properly in weeks, maybe months.
But the face was beautiful. Strikingly, impossibly beautiful. The kind of face that would stop people mid step on the street. The kind of face that belonged in paintings or dreams.
Black hair fell in messy waves past the shoulders, long and unkempt. Matted with blood and filth and things I didn't want to identify.
And the eyes.
Golden.
Not brown. Not hazel. Not any normal color that human eyes should be.
Golden. Like molten metal poured into the sockets. Like coins catching sunlight. Like the eyes of something that shouldn't exist.
I stared at the reflection. The golden eyes stared back, wide with shock.
This can't be real.
I lifted my hand slowly, watching the reflection move with me. I touched my face. My fingertips met skin. Real skin. Warm skin. My skin now, apparently.
I traced the sharp line of my cheekbone. Felt the hollow beneath my eye. Ran my fingers through the black hair, pulling it forward where I could see it. It was real. All of it was real.
My hand moved to my forehead, searching for the bullet wound. Nothing. Just smooth skin. No hole. No scar. No trace of the shot that had killed me.
Because this isn't the body that got shot. This is someone else's body.
I pressed my palm against my chest. Felt my heartbeat. Strong and steady. Alive.
How?
How is any of this possible?
The golden eyes in the reflection blinked when I blinked. Widened when I widened mine. I opened my mouth. The reflection did too. I could see my teeth. Straight and white. Not my teeth.
I touched my face again, both hands this time, feeling the unfamiliar contours. The sharp jaw. The high cheekbones. The thin nose. Every feature was different. Every part of this face belonged to someone else.
But I was inside it. Controlling it. Living in it.
What happened to me?
Click.
A mechanical sound echoed through the chamber. Loud. Metal grinding against metal.
I tore my eyes away from the reflection and looked toward the source of the sound.
The wall at the far end of the container suddenly split open with a hiss of hydraulics. The two halves separated slowly, revealing darkness beyond. A wave of smell hit me immediately, even worse than before. Raw sewage mixed with industrial cleaner and something else, something burning and chemical that made my eyes water and my throat close up.
Then I saw it.
Beyond the opening, I could see another chamber. Larger. The walls glowed faintly red. Heat shimmered in the air. And at the bottom, I could see flames. Orange and hungry, waiting.
My blood went cold.
No.
No, no, no.
This isn't just a disposal unit.
This is an incinerator.
They throw the bodies in here to burn them. To destroy the evidence. To make people disappear completely.
And it's turning on.
Right now.
With me inside it.
Panic exploded in my chest. My heart slammed against my ribs. My breath came in short, sharp gasps.
I have to move. I have to get out.
Now.
I started moving immediately, scrambling up the pile of corpses. My hands sank into soft, rotting flesh. The texture made me want to vomit, but I pushed through it. Pus and blood squirted between my fingers, warm and slick. Some of it splashed onto my face, into my mouth. I gagged and spat, but I didn't stop moving.
I dug deeper into the pile, climbing over bodies, pushing them aside, squeezing through gaps. A dead man's face pressed against mine, his clouded eyes inches from my own golden ones. I shoved him away and kept climbing.
My foot broke through something soft. I felt it give way beneath my weight, felt my leg sink into rotting flesh up to my knee. The smell that escaped was indescribable. I pulled my leg out with a wet sucking sound and kept going.
A hand grabbed my ankle.
I screamed and kicked, thrashing wildly. But it was just a reflex. Dead muscles contracting. The fingers were cold and stiff. I kicked harder and the hand fell away, the arm separating from the body with a tearing sound.
Keep moving. Don't stop. Don't think about it.
I clawed my way higher. The bodies shifted beneath me, unstable. Every movement dislodged something. A head rolled past me, jaw hanging open, tongue black and swollen. An arm fell across my back, the skin sloughing off like wet paper. Something burst under my hand with a pop, spraying fluid that burned my eyes.
The air was getting thicker. Harder to breathe. The stench was so strong now that every breath felt like swallowing poison. My lungs burned. My throat was raw. But I kept climbing.
I pushed a bloated corpse aside. The pressure from my hands made the skin split. Gas escaped with a long hiss, and I turned my head away, retching. The smell was worse than anything I'd experienced before. Sweet and rotten and chemical all at once.
I squeezed through the gap the corpse left behind.
The space was getting tighter. The bodies above me pressed down with crushing weight. I was burrowing through them now, like an animal digging through dirt. I could feel ribs cracking under my hands, bones splintering with dry snaps. My shoulders scraped against something hard. Maybe a pelvis. Maybe a skull. The pressure on my chest was unbearable.
I couldn't expand my lungs properly. I couldn't get enough air. Each breath was shallow and painful.
Black spots started appearing in my vision.
No. Not like this. I didn't survive death just to suffocate in a pile of corpses.
I forced myself to move slower. Deliberately. Panic was using up my air faster. I needed to think. I needed to find space.
I reached out, feeling blindly through the darkness and decay. My hand found something. A hollow. An empty space where a body had collapsed in on itself, the organs liquefied and drained away, leaving a cavity.
I pulled myself toward it, inch by painful inch. My face scraped against exposed bone. Something wet and cold touched my cheek. I didn't want to know what it was.
My head broke through into the hollow. I pressed my face into the space and breathed. The air was foul, thick with the stench of decay, but it was air. Precious, life-giving air.
I stayed there for a moment, gasping. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears, feel it in my throat. Those golden eyes stared into the darkness of the hollow, seeing nothing, just trying to breathe.
Then I heard it.
A low rumble. Mechanical. Deep and resonant, vibrating through the metal walls and the bodies around me.
Getting louder.
The incinerator was starting.
Oh God. Oh God, no.
I started digging again, faster this time. All caution abandoned. Pure survival instinct took over. I shoved bodies aside with strength. I didn't know this thin, malnourished body possessed. Adrenaline flooded my system, drowning out everything else.
My fingers tore on exposed bone. I felt my nails break. I didn't care. Blood got in my mouth, thick and copper tasting. I spat it out and kept going.
The rumble grew louder, becoming a roar. The whole container shook slightly. Then I felt it.
Heat.
Faint at first. Like standing near a space heater. A gentle warmth at my feet.
Then it grew.
Hotter.
The metal floor beneath the pile of bodies began to glow. Dull red at first, then brighter. Orange.
The smell changed instantly. The sweet, rotten stench of decay was replaced by something infinitely worse. Burning hair. Searing fat. Cooking meat. Human meat.
The bodies at the bottom of the pile started to smoke. Thin gray wisps at first, rising through the gaps between corpses. Then thicker. Blacker.
I screamed and clawed upward with everything I had.
My feet were getting hot. Really hot. I looked down and saw the skin on my ankles blistering. Small bubbles forming on the pale skin, filling with clear fluid. I watched in horror as one of them burst, the fluid running down my foot and dripping onto the corpse below.
The bodies directly below me started to char. Their skin turned black, crackling like pork skin in an oven. The flesh split open with wet cracks, revealing the yellow fat and red muscle underneath. The fat began to melt immediately, liquefying and dripping down through the pile like grease.
The smell was indescribable. Burnt pork mixed with chemicals and human waste and something sweet that made my stomach heave.
I kept climbing, my hands slipping on melting flesh.
The heat was rising fast now. It wasn't just at my feet anymore. It was everywhere. The air itself was hot, each breath searing my lungs from the inside. My skin felt tight, like it was shrinking, pulling away from my bones.
The corpses around me began to cook in earnest. I could hear their skin crackling and popping like oil in a hot pan. Fat rendered out of them in thick rivulets, dripping and pooling at the bottom where the flames were hungriest. Some of the bodies started to move, limbs twitching and curling as the heat tightened their tendons and contracted their muscles. It looked like they were trying to get away from the fire, even in death.
I could see the flames now. Orange and red and white-hot at the center, licking up through the pile from below. They moved fast, spreading and consuming everything they touched. Flesh blackened and peeled away in sheets. Bones cracked from the intense heat, splitting with sounds like gunshots.
My legs were in the fire.
The pain hit me all at once. Overwhelming agony that wiped out every other thought.
I felt my skin split. Not tear, but split, like overcooked sausage casing. The pain was white hot, all consuming, filling my entire world. I looked down, unable to stop myself, and immediately wished I hadn't.
The skin on my calves was peeling away in long sheets, curling up at the edges like burning paper. The edges glowed orange for a moment before turning black and crumbling to ash. Underneath, the muscle was exposed. Red and glistening and alive with nerve endings that were all screaming at once.
As I watched, paralyzed by horror and agony, the muscle began to char. The red darkened to brown, then black at the edges. Smoke rose from my own legs. I could smell myself cooking.
The fat underneath melted. I could actually see it happening, see the yellow tissue liquefying and running down my legs like candle wax, dripping onto the flames below where it caught fire and burned with thick black smoke.
I could see my bones. White and stark against the charred meat still clinging to them. The tibia and fibula, exposed to the air for the first time in their existence.
I screamed. A raw, inhuman sound that tore my throat, that didn't sound like it came from anything living.
But I kept climbing.
My hands found something solid. A metal bar. Part of the incinerator's frame, the supporting structure that held everything together. I grabbed it without thinking. The hot metal seared my palms instantly, the flesh sizzling on contact. But I didn't let go. Couldn't let go.
I pulled. Used every bit of strength this malnourished, burning body had left.
My legs dragged through the flames as I hauled myself up. I felt chunks of meat cook and fall off, heard them sizzle as they hit the fire below. The bones of my legs scraped against corpses, leaving trails of charred tissue.
With one final, desperate pull, I hauled myself up onto a metal grating above the pile. I collapsed face first onto the hot surface. It seared the skin on my cheek immediately, I could smell my own face burning. But I didn't have the strength to move properly. I managed to roll slightly, just enough to get my face off the metal, and lay there.
Below me, the entire pile of corpses was fully engulfed. A towering inferno that filled the chamber with heat and thick black smoke. Bodies writhed in the flames, their silhouettes distorting as they burned. Arms raised as tendons contracted. Mouths opened in silent screams. The roar of the fire was deafening, drowning out everything else.
I looked down at myself.
My legs were ruined. Completely destroyed. The skin was gone, burned away entirely from mid thigh down. What remained was blackened muscle and exposed bone. In some places, even the muscle had burned through, leaving nothing but charred bone and carbonized tissue. Blood and clear lymphatic fluid oozed from the wounds, pooling beneath me on the hot grating where it immediately began to sizzle and evaporate.
My feet. The bones were completely visible. Every metatarsal. Every phalanx. Clean and white where the fire had burned hottest. The flesh between my toes had melted away completely, leaving nothing but skeletal structure.
The pain was beyond description. It wasn't just pain anymore. It was my entire existence. Every nerve ending in the lower half of my body was screaming. I couldn't think. Couldn't form coherent thoughts. Just feel. Burning. Destroying. Ending.
My hands weren't much better. The skin on my palms had melted, fused with the hot metal of the bar when I grabbed it. When I tried to move them, to pull them away from my body where they'd fallen, strips of flesh tore off. The cooked meat stuck to whatever it touched. Raw muscle and fat underneath, pink and white, exposed to the air. Nerve endings firing continuously, each one a separate source of agony.
I tried to scream again. My mouth opened. My throat worked. But only a weak whimper came out. My vocal cords were too damaged from the smoke and heat, the lining of my throat burned.
The flames continued to burn below me. The heat radiated up through the metal grating, keeping my wounds hot, preventing any relief. I was still cooking. Slowly. From underneath.
I could smell myself. My own flesh, searing and smoking. It mixed with the smell of hundreds of other bodies doing the same thing, creating a stench so overwhelming that my brain couldn't even process it anymore.
My vision was blurring. The edges are going dark, closing in like a tunnel. Not from lack of air this time. From shock. From blood loss. From pain so intense that my brain was shutting down to protect itself, going into emergency mode.
I lay there, unable to move. Body destroyed. This strange, beautiful body with its golden eyes and sharp features, reduced to charred meat and exposed bone.
Darkness creeping in from all sides.
Is this it? Did I survive death, wake up in a new body, only to die again minutes later?
My eyes started to close. Those golden eyes, now the only part of me that still looked human. The darkness was almost complete now, just a small point of light remaining at the center of my vision.
The pain was fading too, replaced by a cold numbness that spread from my ruined legs up through my chest, into my arms, my neck, my head. My body's last mercy, shutting down the pain receptors because they'd served their purpose and now were just torturing a dying organism.
The last thing I saw was the flames below, still burning, still consuming everything with insatiable hunger.
The last thing I felt was the cold spreading through my body like ice water in my veins, freezing everything it touched, stopping everything.
Then cpme nothing.
Just darkness.
Complete and absolute.