Forbidden Room Extract

I saw a ghost once, an old woman, as solid as me.

I was working as a porter in a big old Georgian hotel and one day I had to take breakfast up to this cold, twisted business woman. Clipped, sharp edges you could tear your skin on. Oh she had a wicked tongue on her. Scary.

It was a hot, stuffy, summers morning with bright blue skies and birds singing. Indoors, however, was full of artificial light and plastic plants. Apart from the heat, you would never tell it was a beautiful summers day; it was a vacuum, plastic, despite the grand facade.

As I reached her door, I noticed it was ajar, so, knocking once I walked into the room. In the corner, sitting in the half light at a vanity desk, was an old woman with dull white hair tied back in a severe bun.

Good morning.

No reaction.

She was wearing a tight black dress that choked the neck, with a pearl necklace resting at the nape. No movement, no acknowledgement, she just stared into the mirror ahead of her, hands soft on the desk, placed there as if to stop it floating away. I can't remember her face, just a smooth expanse of ivory, the way the curtains moved gently in the breeze, a waft of lavendar playing across my lips, the lace peeping out of her cuffs that swam on the breeze, coming to a rest on her thin wrists. I even remember the trace of veins acros the back of her hands; but not her face, featureless in the somnambulant morn.

I'll just put it over here on your desk.

Not a word, not a reaction, just manic intent aimed at her reflection.

I met the business woman half way down the corridor outside and told her I'd left her breakfast on the table with the old woman.

What old woman?

Whooooooooo.

Ring a ring of roses, a pocket full of posies, atishoo, atishoo all fall down. We fell down didn't we? Fell from grace, fell from the mountain, fell into the ashes of our laps, snuggling there with bare bones crying in the dark weeping till blood seeped from our eyes. Enough of that.

What to do?

What to do?

What to do.

It is so hard at times to speak the truth. A million different reasons enter my head for pressing my case, but the lines of communication are severed, till I'm reduced to one sided conversations and the half remembered memories of a future it seems I'll never have but want so dearly. Once I lived with a multiplicity of selves, each one clamouring against the other, rising to Hell, till all I could hear was the white static of my mind, blind to the truth seared across the sky. Now my mind is clear, with one gentle, soothing voice washing away the demons; but not the mistakes.

One for sorrow, two for tears, three for shame.

It is terrible to lose once, twice is folly, three times oblivion.

I am reduced to this blank, black page of white scribbles, hoping that you'll hear me. A diary of my torment and hope written across fiber optic lines, strands of myself stretching to infinity. It still seems futile, like holding onto a whisper of a dream when waking, only I can remember everything with crystal clarity.

My existential grief is leaving me now, slowly the pieces are falling softly back to earth, falling softly to the ground.

I hope you can hear them land.

If the Rapture were to begin tomorrow; I would not descend to Heaven or Hell.

Rather, I will rise to the glory of your bosom and spend an eternity wrapped in your warmth.