Silencing Alice

*Alice*

The dead don't speak. At least not to me anyway. I haven't met anyone besides me who can see spirits though so for all I know, maybe they just don't speak at all. You'd think that with a lack of communication skills they'd be a little less demanding, but to be honest they never leave me alone.

It's sometimes just easier to pretend I don't see them. It's hard though, because it's like they're drawn to me or something. It's like I have my own annoying magnetic pull to spirits. After enough of them gather around me, a rare curiosity among lost souls, they start getting suspicious. This suspicion quickly turns into attention seeking behaviors until I'm forced to acknowledge their presence.

I've never seen anyone more persistent then spirits. Once they know I can see them, they won't leave me alone until I've given them what they want. Some of them just want me to pass on last words to grieving family members (this is my most hated request since I myself have a bit of a communication barrier) or to return a lost and forgotten object back to its rightful owner.

Most of the time, once I've completed their request, they leave. I don't know where they go but I don't think I'm really supposed to know either. Some of them stay. My only guess is that they just aren't ready to go yet. They instead choose to linger around their loved ones and watch quietly from the sidelines as their family goes about their daily lives.

I try not to show it but the ones who stay always make me sad. I wondered if that's what my parents were doing when I sometimes caught glimpses of them. They weren't like the other spirits who lingered next to me vying for my attention. They kept their distance and were careful never to come too close. I couldn't always see them but every now and then, I'd catch a glimpse of them in the glass of the buildings I'd pass, their sorrowful expressions magnified by the perpetual rain that ran down their faces. When I'd run to where I saw them though, they would fade away. Gone as if they never even existed at all. Eventually, I just stopped trying to reach them before they both faded away. They weren't my parents anymore. They were just...gone.

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I pretended not to hear the voices of the group of teens as they discussed me from a distance and instead focused on my paint brush as it swept deep vibrant colors across the canvas. The park was unusually crowded today and the small group that huddled around an old truck drinking from suspicious cans only added to the noise of the clearing with their boisterous laughs and loud flirting.

"who's that? She's hot." One of them whispered and a loud snicker accompanied the question.

"You can't mean Alice Fields!" a girl crowed and I had to fight myself not to look over my shoulder and see which one of them knew my name.

"You know...." Her voice suddenly become lower and I had to strain my ears to hear what she said next, "a few years ago, her brother murdered her parents. They say she saw the whole thing. Now she doesn't even talk anymore and just paints those stupid pictures."

At this another girl joined in laughing and added, "Yeah she's super weird too. I heard she just randomly showed up at Bethany's house one day and tried to hand her this cruddy looking ring. What a freak."

I visibly cringed at this. The ring had been Bethany's grandmothers. Having been shoved to the bottom of an old storage box and forgotten, her grandmother had wanted me to dig it out and give it to Bethany. I probably could have handled the situation more delicately but Bethany wasn't someone who was overly reasonable. If anything, she was a bit of a drama queen and liked to blow things out of proportion.

Gathering up my painting supplies I decided I had heard enough. As I passed their truck, one of the guys threw a beer can in the grass and a bit of remaining liquid sloshed on my black marry jane shoes. I paused momentarily looked down and then back up at the guy who had thrown it.

"My bad." He said and he awkwardly raised his hand in mock apology before quickly using it to cover his mouth as he quietly snickered.

I stared them down a moment, my emerald green eyes cutting into their faces, searching for anything in them I could incorporate into my paintings. Deciding there wasn't I tucked my painting more firmly beneath my arm and continued past them. Even though my back was to them, I could still hear their rambunctious laughter echoing off the rows of parked cars reminding me that even if I wasn't the butt of some cruel joke life cracked, I'd probably still end up being the butt of someone else's. At least life had a sense of humor.

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"Oh honey! You're dress is filthy again." Jerry gushed when I walked through the back door. I looked down at the white frilly dress I wore and noticed the smudges of dirt and paint. I quietly fiddled with the lace on my sleeves as Jerry fussed over the state of my dress and tried desperately to clean the dirt smudges up with a wet wash cloth.

Jerry was a bit of a clean freak. Not being a clean freak myself, I sometimes found it difficult to deal with his obsessive need for cleanliness. The only thing stopping me from swatting him away and retreating back into the comfortable silence of my own world was of how much I was indebted to him for taking me in.

If it weren't for Jerry and his husband Vincent, I don't know where I'd be. Not being able to have children of their own, they adopted me instead and for that, I am eternally grateful. They gave me a home, food, and love and in return I gave them a daughter. I let them dress me in frilly dresses and tried my best to be the piece that completed their ideal family picture.

Jerry would sometimes tell me that I resembled a porcelain china doll and that he drew inspiration from me. He apparently put that inspiration to good use because all the clothes he designed for the store he and Vincent owned sold like mad.

They were good people him and Vincent. I couldn't help but feel a little withdrawn from them though. Mostly, I just felt guilty. They wanted a child to complete their beautiful family but all I could give them was this broken fragment that was me.

"There we are." Jerry said cheerfully and when I looked at my dress again I noticed that the brown smudges had become noticeably less.

"What did you paint this time?" Jerry asked reaching for the painting I had tucked protectively under my arm. I took a step away from him but then regretted it when a hurt look flashed across his clean shaven face.

Avoiding his light brown eyes, I offered the painting out to him hoping that the small gesture would make up for my previous behavior.

Hesitantly this time, he took it from my hands and admired the scene I had brought to life on my small canvas. Curious I looked up to watch his expression as he took in all the honest colors of my painting. I didn't speak, but my paintings always spoke volumes. I liked to look at people's expressions when they looked at them wondering if my silent words encrypted in rich reds, yellows, browns, and blues had reached them somehow.

A pleased smile stretched across Jerry's face as he took in a mother and a child sitting on a bench. The mother looked on with an adoring smile as her small son clung fervently to a children's book.

My own face fell when I took in his expression. Jerry didn't hear the words I had hidden in the paint. I didn't expect him to. No one has ever guessed the story behind my paintings. They live in darkness and silence like I do. If Jerry looked closer perhaps he would see that although the lady in the painting was smiling, there was a certain sadness in her eyes. The mother was dead and she had chosen to linger. Why couldn't he see that?