Watching him fight made Maya feel alive again. His fist connected with raw skin once, twice: each time with a crunch that made her stomach lurch. Blood trickled down both boys' faces, clotting and leaving dried crimson crust in its wake.
Maya didn't know ghosts could feel like this. When David threw the final punch she leant forward, then drew back at the sickening thwack when his opponent's buzzed head hit the concrete. He stopped moving.
Wiping his bloody mouth with the back of his bandaged hand, Davy turned around to scout the area. She ducked back to hide as if his pale blue eyes would be able to see her. Satisfied he'd won, Davy spat a mouthful of blood and saliva onto the gum-covered tarmac and ran from the scene, away from the other boy, who was beginning to stir.
She fell away from the mortal world. The place she stood in now was plain, dark, devoid of any character or charm the living plane held. Fields of black sand surrounded her for as far as she could see, and as far as she could walk- and she'd spent a lot of time walking around in this desolate place. The sky above wore a black cloak without any of the stars it had adorned above the city she'd just come from. In short; it was inoffensive and boring. With a sigh, she sat and drew her hand across the sandy floor. The grains fell through her fingers and splattered down like the blood from David's mouth.
Smirking, she threw herself down and recalled the scene. It was so exciting. He lived a life of danger, taking each day by the neck and throttling it until it gave him the entertainment he craved. Every second counted to him, because every second could be his last. One wrong punch and his life as he knew it was over. One crash on the motorbike he adored so much and everything could end.
By contrast, there was little concept of time for her. Maya could spend centuries in a second, or a second in centuries and not feel any difference at all. You can't age without a physical body. She wore a vague form, with pentadactyl limbs and something resembling a head on top, but even that was constantly shifting.
Maya didn't remember how she'd died. Try as she might, her memories' farthest extent was the beginning of her time here, when she'd met her keeper.
Sands swirled in endless circles around him, crawling up to cover him in a thick black cloak like millions of tiny ants. Without any arms, features or distinguishable legs, the only thing about him that suggested sentience was the blink of shining golden circles where his eyes should be. Somehow, without any words exchanged, Maya knew he was the one that had bought her here.
"Why? Where am I?!" She stuttered, "I need to go back! I need to get back to-" The fire coursing through her, the memories she felt with such passion, faded away into the ethos like dirt down a drain. In no longer than a second, nothing mattered, and she understood she was dead. The sand around the base of his feet slowed its circling.
Calm, she walked (drifted?) forward. Logically she knew her translucent blue form was alien, her soft skin and mortal firmness mere seconds away, yet she felt as though she'd already been here for decades.
"Who are you?" Maya asked the figure.
The sands drew up to form an arm, which rose through the air to the top of his head, where it tipped a form that resembled a hat. "Deus," he said. The voice came from all around her with a deep, resounding finality to it.
"Why am I here?"
"When most people die, they fade into nothing. I find that a real shame, when some mortals are so deliciously entertaining." Deus gestured out over the plane, and as his arm waved past she saw hundreds of other fuzzy blue figures littered across the sand like dead flies collecting on a windowsill. "So, when I observe someone so fabulous in life, I preserve them in death as part of my collection."
Maya strained to remember something, anything. No such luck. Memories of here and this strange figure filled her mind like sand flowing into a container, taking up every crevice with an identical, neat, circular moment.
"What did I do in life?" She stepped forward, but found herself no closer. "Why can't I remember, if I'm so entertaining you had to keep me?"
"Your life was then, here is now." His shining circle eyes peeked through the sand and she got the nagging feeling that he was smirking. "What you did is for me to relish in."
"Agh!" Frustration overtook her. "You'll tell me- I'll figure it out. It's my life, mine!" What would she normally do? Words swam in her brain like darting fish; she was unable to organise them into a cohesive school to swim from her mouth and charm whoever was listening.
The feeling that Deus was smirking intensified. "You're just the same," he jeered, then the sand of his body dropped to the floor, lifeless.
She'd thought, then, that she'd convince him to let her remember someday. However, as years, seconds, centuries and weeks sauntered by she grew no closer to her goal. There was one thing she'd noticed, though. She was sure she was his favourite. Maya, as he'd dubbed her, was not her real name- he'd never so callously reveal that when he kept every other aspect of her identity sealed tightly away like a pearl in a clam.
No other spirit had a name. No other spirit spent more time with him than she.
But what was time, here? It was impossible to trust her own concept of the thing when every time she saw David she couldn't predict how long it had been. Sometimes it was seconds, usually days: once years, and he'd gone from an angsty teen resentful of the world to an adult numb to its injustice. She was terrified to come down and find he'd died decades ago, as had happened with other mortals she'd observed.
With them, she'd felt a faint sadness at their loss, then moved on. The others had been mere entertainment, but David was different to her. Something about the way he moved lit a bright spark within her, and the thought of his death brought her unimaginable fear. She didn't want to take the chance of time whenever she saw him. She didn't want him here with her either.
Maya jumped up. In her abstract mind, an idea was forming. Like a scribble, it began as spiked lines without a clear direction, but with more brainstorming- yes, a curve here, a point there- a picture began to form.
She called to Deus in her mind. From the moment he rose from the silky floor, she knew he'd been peeking into her thoughts before she even knew she was having them.
He bent over, bright eyes clear from sand for the first time. "You're asking to live again?"