We're Ghosts in a Hail of Bullets

I didn't want to be stuck in the house all day. My uneasiness was turning into an illness and the only thing I could do was leave. In the morning, while Brittany and I were eating in the kitchen, I convinced her to let me show her around my new neighborhood. I wouldn't tell her where we were going, since I had no idea, but I told her I wanted to leave as soon as possible so we had enough time to see everything.
There were only a few places I could think of visiting; my school and the asylum. Maybe I could take her out to lunch or something after we walked everywhere.

It only took me a twenty minutes to get ready. I wore a loose fitting, gray, "The Used" band t-shirt I bought at a concert in Vermont. It was low cut v-neck that almost hung off my shoulders. It was a size small, but it was too big for me. With it, I wore black skinny jeans, my classic, worn down, black converse, and then threw a series of wristbands, bracelets, and ponytails on my arms until only half of my forearm was visible. I went through my usual morning rituals of brushing my teeth, combing out my hair, and trying to avoid Violet's voice. She found a way to whisper in my ear and infect my mind with her rough, angsty voice. She always had something negative to say. This morning she decided to remind me that my boyfriend is a psychopathic serial killer, who has a reputation of hurting the ones he loves.
I shook my head and closed my eyes, trying to shake her from my head. That didn't work at all. Violet continued to ramble on and on about the terrible things that Tate has done and it began to bother me. I wanted to scream, but I would look insane. Finally I had enough and called out to Brittany.
My friend soon appeared in the doorway, startled and confused.

"Are you okay?" she asked, concerned. No, I have a suicidal bitch yelling in my head.

"Yeah," I replied with a giggled, "I just wanted you to play some music. It's too quite in the house," I lied. I never lied so much until I moved here.
Brittany sighed, smiled, and then obeyed. Soon our floor of the house was full of loud, fast, and depressing music. It began with old school Green Day, but that didn't shake Violet. Then a soft, relaxing, romantic song by Between the Trees began to play. I closed my eyes and focused on the lyrics. The song was called "Miss You". It was about a lover announcing to his romantic interest that he loves her and asking her how she feels about it. He's waiting for the reply while he spills out his heart.
I found my singing the song myself because I loved it so much. It wasn't my usual taste in music, but it still tickled my eardrums.
After the song was over, Violet found her way back into my brain. This time she included visuals.
I was plugging in my straightener when I caught a glimpse in the mirror. The image of her cold, pale, bruised face was starring back at me instead of my own reflection. Her eyes were pale, not dark like I was use to with these spirits. She looked drained, but angry and spiteful.

"What do you want?" I finally responded, but I did it in the quietest whisper I could. There was a long pause and I could hear Brittany singing to Saosin in my room.
Violet's crusty, dry, pale pink lips cracked and spread into a horrible grin, then in her rough, graining voice she said, "To watch you break". She then vanished and I was looking at my face again. There weren't words to explain my hatred for Violet and her angry, bitchy ghost. If I could, I would kill her again.

I unplugged my straightener because I couldn't stand being in that haunted bathroom anymore. I had to sit in my room to finish my hair. None of the ghosts dared appear when Brittany was with me. I was pretty sure that Tate had threatened the spirits so they wouldn't scare my friend away.
Brittany was sitting in front of my mirror, running her hot straightening iron down her long, thick, black hair. I always admired her beauty and I felt inadequate compared to my best friend. She never noticed, but she was beautiful with make-up or doing anything to her hair. Brittany had natural tanned skin from her Native American roots and the color made her deep brown eyes almost glow. She had soft, long, thick, black hair. It was so long. It amazed me. It was straight on it's own so I don't know why she would damage it with a straightener every morning. Then she'd up on make-up. Eyeliner, eye shadow, cover-up, foundation, blush, and sometimes lipstick. She didn't need it.
Sometimes, I wanted to sit down next to her and tell her how beautiful she was without all of the extra shit, but it would seem weird and I knew she wouldn't listen to a female.
Instead, I sat down next to her, plugged in my straightener, and tried to make myself look half as attractive as her.

Brittany and I were walking down my street, just exiting the gates of my house, when I looked up at the giant, ominous, pile of bricks. In the window I saw the image of broken girl. Her eyes were empty and sad. Her long, blonde hair fell over her face as if it was trying to hide her from the cruel world. I recognized her as Violet, but I didn't acknowledge her because I didn't care.
I continued my journey with my best friend. We held hands and began to skip down the block, passing Constance's house. She was sitting on her porch with a glass of something alcoholic in one hand and cigarette in the other. She gave a snicker, probably assuming that Brittany and I were lesbians out on a homosexual adventure. I shot her a glare, smile, and wave just to piss her off.

"Where are we going?" Brittany asked me as we reached the end of the block. I couldn't admit that I didn't know.

"My school and then the next place is a surprise," I smiled. It was the first thing that popped into my head.

It only took a few minutes to reach Westfield High School. Brittany looked at with amazement, only because it was so much bigger than her new school.

"This is my school," I announced as we stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the front entrance. "It's full of stupid, ignorant, crybabies and bitchy whores,".

"Welcome to America, the teenage wasteland," Brittany said with a smile. Westfield got boring though fast so I decided to show her the asylum. The last time I went there was Halloween with Tate, but I remembered the way.
If I told Brittany where we were going then she would've turn and ran the other way. It didn't take her long to catch on though. We had to veer off of the normal sidewalk and down a dirt driveway. Down a few yards, past all of the overgrown grass, weeds, gravel, and broken glass, where the tall gates that kept us from the main building. I heard Brittany sigh and whimper behind. She knew we were too far for her to turn back. She didn't know her way back to the house without me and I wouldn't let her leave.

"It's not that bad," I told her, hoping it would calm her down a little bit. It didn't, but it was worth a shot.

"I forgot that you're obsessed with abandoned buildings and crazy homes," she sighed sadly, "Did Tate show this place?"

"Of course he did," I replied as I tried to pull the gate open like Tate did at Halloween.
After a minor pause, Brittany asked, "Why isn't he here then?".

Because, Brittany, he was shot down by a SWAT team years ago and now his restless soul can't leave my house. That's what I thought to myself.
"We don't want to see each other everyday and end up getting bored," I said. I hated lying to her, but what else could I say? The truth? Because that would've gone so well.

I helped her through the tight squeeze of the gate and then made my own way through. I picked a stick off the ground and lead her down the pathway to the main building. Brittany showed her fear all the way there, even though it was broad daylight. I tried to explain that I had to come here in the middle of the night with a boy I barely knew. It didn't calm her down at all.

"This is the only hangout spot I know," I admitted. We didn't even make it to the front door, unfortunately, before I had to tell her that. She put two and two together and figured out that I didn't have any friends here.
"I know how you feel," she said, "I have no one in Tennessee and the town is so small that there’s basically no where to go. I mean, I could walk seven miles to go chill that the Wal-Mart with all of the racist hicks who shout racist shit at the two black people who live in Alcoa. Because that’s fun,” Brittany stated sarcastically.
I couldn’t help but chuckle at her. I thought back to her family and the little I really knew about then. We had been friends for years, but every sleep over and hang out session was at my house or around town. I never went over to her place. She told me that her parents were psychopaths and ex-drug addicts. I believed her without a question.
I thought back to her father, the gigantic brute, and how mean he was. He must love it in Tennessee and all of the racist hicks. I could picture him standing outside of a Wal-mart, wasting his time to just to yell at black kids and Mexicans. Poor Brittany.

She followed me into the dimly lit, abandoned building. I was thankful that the day was so bright and easily penetrated through all of the broken windows. Every room in that building was softly lit the safety of daylight. Brittany would never come inside if it was nighttime. She wouldn’t even look at the building.
I lead her through the hallways and corridors without any problems or fuss. After walking up a couple floors, she didn’t mind it at all, though she began asking questions about the building. I knew some of the answers would scare her.

“Hey, Anna,” she began shyly. She tiptoed over stick, broken glass, and broken tiles carefully behind me. “Why was this place abandoned?” she asked.
I was tempted to lie to her, but I was tired of lying. Anything that didn’t involve my haunt house, I couldn’t lie about. I didn’t want to turn into a bad person or make it a habit.

“Tate told me that the doctors and nurses were practicing hydrotherapy,” I answered.
Brittany fell silent, only because she didn’t know what hydrotherapy was. She asked what it was and I was forced to explain. “It’s where the patient is dunked under water, forcefully,” I said. Soon enough she put the pieces together and figured out that patients died here from drowning.

“People died here?” she softly shouted, shocked and scared.
The only thing I could do was nod. I wish I could’ve told her the spooky stories that Tate told me. It would’ve been fun, but you can’t do that with Brittany because she would’ve ran out of the building. But the temptation grew as we pasted by certain places. The elevator, obviously. I wanted to tell her of the story where the kid fell down it. Or of the nurse that killed all of the patients. But I couldn’t.
We continued our seemingly-pointless journey through the hospital, passing by creepy things that spooked Brittany every-so-often. She would notice that wheelchairs, tables, and other things were placed through out the corridors just to scare you. She didn’t know that teenagers and assholes place them there to scare people.
There was a “Room of Pianos” that made her question a few things. I didn’t know the room was there, it might not even had been there when Tate and I visited, but it was there then. Someone had taken pianos from a music room and placed them all inside one room that was obviously a child’s room. It unease us both, but then I began to play it. The one song that I know by heart on a piano. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana. I only knew it one handed, but you could understand the song. The piano I played was horribly out of tune, vandalized, and beaten up. A group of must’ve taken bats or crowbars to the poor instrument. All of the pianos in the room were either beaten to Hell or broken. Keys had been taken out, strings were cut, and panels were snaps in half or had objects thrown through them. If you opened up the top of the abandoned pianos, you’d find dead animals (some were alive), misplaced objects, graffiti, and other things that didn’t belong in a beautiful instrument.
It made me mad that people would just treat such beautiful things so carelessly. Granted, most kids my age and young don’t understand why such things are so precious. I played piano for a few years, though I never really learned anything, but I still understood the beauty. I knew why Beethoven was considered a genius.
I hate my generation.

I took Brittany out of the piano room and led her to the unending staircase. It would take a while and I had to endure a lot of whining, but I showed her that the countless flights of stairs was worth something. She had to see the view from the rooftop.
I ran up the stairs, already having to endure the pain of the never ending work out, but Brittany sluggishly trailed behind. The climb was too hard for her.

“I promise, the view is worth it. You can see all of L.A. from up here,” I encouraged her. But she had to stop, catch her breath. She leaned her self against the dirty rail and breathed heavily. I was standing on the platform while she wasn’t even half was up the stairs. “Brittany,” I whined.

“I’m sorry. My school doesn’t even have gym. I’m use to running up a thousand flights of stairs just to look at buildings,” she snapped sarcastically. I smiled and chuckled at her again.

“But they’re buildings from far away,” I said.
She smiled at me, took a deep breath, and then continued on with me at a faster pace. She was still slower, but at least she wasn’t three flights behind.
It took a while, but we reached the top. The sun was beating down on us, which was somewhat refreshing. For having so many open windows and it being so hot outside, the hospital was cold. I could guess why, but I denied it right away. With all of deaths that occurred, it seems obvious. No, I wouldn’t let myself think that. The hospital wasn’t haunted. I was having a ghost free day.
We enjoyed the sun and L.A. skyline. Brittany actually thanked me for bringing her to the hospital.

“As creepy as this place is, I rather be here than in the house,” she admitted.
I was taken back. I had to gasp for a breath for a second.
Brittany looked at me with a serious face, twisting her lips around.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Suddenly my anxiety began acting up. I knew what she was going to say. It was only a matter of time before she noticed the spirits sulking about in their sadness, anger, and rage.

“I’m not sure, it’s like…your house is haunted, but no one wants to come out,” she explained, “it’s like there’s something inside your house. Its scaring off the creepy things,”

I couldn’t help but smile, thinking of Tate. “So, it’s like a good ghost scaring off the mean ghosties?” I smiled at her.
Then she shook her head and my smile disappeared.

“The bad ghosts, the creepy things, and all of the nightmares that go bump in the night are being scared off by something that’s bigger and scarier than them,” Brittany said.
I looked out into the skyline, but I couldn’t focus on it at all. My mind was spinning in a horrible tornado of fear.
“It’s like they scared,” she finished.

Room 1138 popped into my head. Tate’s room. The memory of our first kiss first passed through my mind and made me smile. All of those feelings I felt with a single touch of his lips. Then my mind put everything together. I probably should’ve realized it before, but to be honest, I didn’t think of it until then. Tate carved in “Tate Langdon ‘94” because it was the year he was going to shoot up Westfield.
The massacre. That swam through my brain as well. That dream, or memory, that him and I shared. All of the bloodshed and horror. God, my mind became a bloodbath.

“Want to go to lunch now?” I asked quickly. I wanted to get off the subject of ghosts and let my mind rest. Brittany looked at me with a puzzled look.

“I’m not really hungry,” she replied.

“Please,” I snapped.
My breathing elevated for some reason, probably because I was so anxious to get out of there. Maybe I was angry because Brittany couldn’t see my anger. Either way, she saw some form of intensity in my eyes. She knew something was wrong. We were best friends. We could communicated using facial expressions.

“Yeah, lets go,” she said sweetly.

I didn’t want to come back to the asylum ever again.