The Ghost Girl By The Ocean

The seagulls floated like the tone of her parent’s voices, like they were playing dead in the sky. She had a terrible disease that had taken her to the end of the world. On those shores she was lost and beyond the lands of reality. The waters had receded and all was empty and broken and she was a ghost.

She sat in the back of the car on the leather like a plush toy, remembering nothing, her blonde hair floating over her eyes, her mango coloured nails lying on the grubby leather seats.

On the advice of her psychiatrist, her parents had taken her to the ocean. Out on the beach the sand was grey white and the water twinkled in numb and eternal blue. The ghost girl’s parents, who just wanted to leave something behind, carried her, one hand in each armpit, towards the sea and left her there on the towels, on the pineapples woven into the fabric.

Back in the teacher’s parking lot was her parent’s pink Beetle on the warm gravel, under the Beechwood trees and behind them, a vast field of daisies and a locked up white boarding house with an insignia of arms above the door. The early morning sun twinkled on the waves in little sparks that flashed and disappeared but for her, it was a dream from which she could not awaken.

Her parent’s pockets were empty. Her mom wiped some dirt from her face. Her nose pricked from the salt. When they left to pick up the basket with the pliers and the apples she tried to drown herself. Hands rushed back to her and caught her in time, dragging her back, standing her on her two knees. As they tried to open the car door she took the pliers and plunged them into her Father’s belly. The blood poured like jelly over her hands and she swung at her Mummy. Whether she was dead or not it didn’t matter, the ghost girl ran over the pebbly gravel into the field towards the boarding house, a harmonica calling into the silence that she could not hear. She ran from her mother’s pastel green dress.

Inside were uniformed school kids strolling down an old wooden staircase from above, blinking the sleep from their eyes. A tall pig-tailed girl skipped past carrying her laundry. Immediately the ghost girl swung her pliers at a nearby body and plunged them into a stomach and there was blood but it wasn’t warm, it was just space. There was no sound as she swung in despair at another temple and killed and killed, under the ocean floor, craters opening beneath her. The pig-tailed girl went past her, skipping and oblivious. Others came running their hands down the polished bannister, ponytails and bangs bright and stinging as first love.

Only a Japanese girl in short skirt dressed like a sailor reacted, snatching up the phone under the staircase and calling the police. As she did this, she undid her white shirt, appeared on a washing machine and spread her legs to show a perfect pink o covered in pubic hair. Exhaustion brought the ghost girl to her knees and she swung her pliers one last time, her hands sticky and vile. The disease had taken everything from her a long time ago. If only it would end. Other school children with bows in their hair fluttering like butterflies sat down on the carpet to watch.

She sank backwards. One of the girls arrived and gently pulled the pliers from her fingers. A boy snuggled his head under her arm, skin smelling of lemon shampoo. Others came to sit too around, cuddling around her, perching on nearby furniture. Her mind feels nothing, can do nothing, gorged on madness, rescued to nothingness, a ghost floating at the bottom of the sea. She closes her eyes and drifts into the great space that continues infinitely within. An uplifting at fills her. Her entire being begins to tingle and she resists it. No, she does not deserve it. But she has nothing left. The hum rises in her, her essence vibrates so strongly she can’t she can’t take the pull she’s—

When she awakes she is moaning, her voice is not working and all she can do is moan like a cow, like her voice has not yet recovered and her body is not working. Huuuuh Huuuuh. Her mother breaks into the room to comfort her saying I’ve heard you baby I’m here are you okay. But instead the girl insists on grabbing her notebook with its cover of the great Japanese image of the wave off Kanagawa to write down what she has seen. Her plush toys crowd all around her and the world has not ended, after all, somewhere in the house her father is playing the piano.