Hello, Can You Please Stop Haunting Me?

“Have you ever felt as if the heart beating inside you is not yours?” She asked, breaking the comfortable silence that had befallen on them, her eyes still fixated on the families that were calling their pups, packing leftovers into their wicker baskets and such. It was getting dark. It was time to go home.

For some.

“Then who do you suppose it belongs to? A gorilla?”

A teasing smile, Eliza realized. He was trying to lighten up the mood. She returned his smile, but shook her head ‘no’ nevertheless.

“You get what I mean,” was what she said that rendered Jeremy speechless. Of course he knew what she meant. He knew exactly what she meant. He used to spend his days in his room, subconsciously scratching his chest. Those were the frustrating days where everything seemed to annoy him, and when he was so filled with hatred with everything and everyone around him while in truth was that he was only trying to ignore the hate for himself.

“Do you?” He asked and Eliza just gave a weak, broken smile.

“I’m sorry you’ve ever experienced that, then,” Jeremy said.

A light chuckle escaped her lips.

“Jeremy, I’m more sorry you can’t ever get out of that feeling.”

He thought he manage to escape. He really thought he could escape.

His heart started to beat that foreign beat again. No, he wasn’t dead. Not completely. And because of that, his hatred towards life grew more and more by the second.

“Let’s go back home, Jeremy. Mom’s probably worried. We’ve been out here all day,” Eliza said, getting up and walking a few steps before realizing her hovering friend was still rooted at the same spot. She called out his name and beckoned him over.

“Jeremy?”

Home.

He wanted to go back home.

“Say hi to your mom for me,” said Jeremy and Eliza rolled her eyes.

“You gonna be okay?” She asked.

“I’m pretty sure I won’t be mugged, Ellie. Don’t worry.”

He watched as Eliza walked away, getting farther from him and never looking back. She round the corner and then her figure disappeared. He sat on the bench, letting out a heavy sigh. He had a habit lately. It was a torturous habit that explained his disappearance once Eliza was fast asleep. He didn’t want her to know just yet.

He didn’t know exactly why, but he was scared by what she would think once she knows.

Jeremy got up again, feeling restless. A heavy feeling dragging him down from doing what he wanted to do. Turning around, he started to walk towards his house but out of the blue, a cyclist passed through him causing him to feel that weird tingling feeling all over his body while the cyclist – caught by surprise – lost his balance and fell to the ground.

“I’m…sorry,” Jeremy ended lamely, remembering that the man couldn’t hear him. But the man looked around, paranoid in his eyes and Jeremy knew that the man felt a sudden chill. Sometimes, Jeremy didn’t know how but when somebody else apart from Eliza passed through him, said somebody would experience some icy coldness. It spooked the hell out of them and the mischievous side of him felt amused by that.

But it wasn’t right, he knew that. So he discovered another way of travelling.

Whenever he imagined where he wanted to go to so dearly, the next thing he knew he was there. That was how he first got into his house. The smell of cinnamon and lavender mixed with the old scent of wood from the antiques that his mom loved to collect evoked a sense of longing in him.

And then a vase flew through his head, hitting the floor near his mom’s feet.

That was a couple of days ago, probably weeks ago. He had lost his sense of time but he knew very well that when that vase shattered into tiny little pieces that dug into her mom’s skin, he knew that he made a grave mistake. That he shouldn’t have left.

His mother cared so much for him.

He was probably the biggest moron in history, he thought bitterly.

That night he was there, it was no different. Only there were a lot more shouting and a faint sound coming from upstairs. His little sister, he thought. She was probably crying again. He had two beautiful little sisters. One was 15 and the other one was 13. On nights like these, he’d go into his little sister’s room, hugging her and telling her to stop crying, that everything was going to be fine.

A sudden pain stabbed through his heart just thinking about the situation.

It was his entire fault to begin with. It was his entire fault till the end.

The heavy feeling got heavier and he didn’t know what to think anymore. Coward. He was a coward. Even if nobody in his own home could see him, even if there wasn’t any reason to be cowardly anymore because he was already dead. He screamed. He screamed as hard as he could and fell to the floor, tears stinging his eyes.

“Mom, dad! Please, just stop! Just stop!” He screamed over and over again as he sobbed. Even though he knew no one could hear him. “Dad…please…”

Annabelle Jones retched from the smell of George Pike’s – her ex husband – whisky breath. She brushed off a few strands of her brown hair that was stuck to her sweaty face, her once beautiful blue eyes filled with joy and happiness were bloodshot from crying.

“What kind of a fucked up mother are you that you can’t even care for TWO children?!” Jeremy heard his dad yelled. “Congratulations, Anna. You managed to kill two of our child'en. I bet that makes ye' happy, doesn’t it? You BITCH—”

Annabelle slapped him across his face.

Jeremy felt sick.

This wasn’t home anymore. It was never home ever since he screwed up.

Eliza…

He needed her.

Home is where the heart is.