Creation

My name is Charles and this is my journal.
I keep it since Fate took me away from my family. It sure is weird – how can a dead man write a diary? Well, I don’t know the right answer, but I do know that my ghost hasn’t resolved all my things in life. My souls still has a will of its own, as my spirit soars through what once was my home and finds horrible scenes that should never exist.

My country needed me and I served it loyally, fighting against my biggest fears in the ugliest battles, seeing my brothers, friends and partners fade away for a cause that no one really defined. I served my country, fighting against those who were claimed to be my enemies; I was scared and I read fear in their faces as well, but I took all lives I could, only to avoid my own death because I had one needing father and one beloved daughter at home waiting for me to go back. However, someone shot my back and I never saw them again. I saw nothing more from that moment, but I knew I would never leave them alone.

I’ve always believed in the afterlife, probably influenced by all those fantasy stories and philosophical essays in which life wasn’t one thing to be lived in the real world, but an intermediary between two essences – the concept of life and the affirmation of the soul. That’s what I’m living now; my soul has found its plain essence, and I don’t ever fel alone, because my ghost is happy with the fact of nearly finding itself.

I am now some sort of a guardian to those I once really loved. A whole life as a human has given me the ability of feeling emotions, and not even death has taken them away from me. I’m still aware of every feeling that a human can feel, either good as love or bad as hate. I still have those enormous valleys inside me that keep the distance between the top of those mountains of antithetical emotions.

My death fell like a bomb in my family. My father got sick from the shock and my daughter cried for long countless nights. My father has hardly accepted my little Niamh when she was born…

Niamh?! I recognise that name from the two letters I got a few weeks ago. In the first one, she told me about how much she felt lonely without her father and how much she was our fan, and the weirdest thing was that she gave me her how as a heritage. I never knew where it was to even visit it and know where that letter was written, and after a while I forgot about its existence. It was only after the second letter though, in which I read that she was grateful of finding me and that she made me her reason to live. How could she ever think about that? She didn’t even know me, and I didn’t know her, but I sure liked her letter. Whenever someone complements us, of course we feel happy about it, and I was happy that she felt in our music a way for her to keep her life going. I’ve always supported that philosophy of living because of something – a person, a thing or a thought that always make us smile, keep our head up and move forward. I smile and I keep reading, because now I was curious about what this father was saying about his child that once loved me and wrote me.

My father has hardly accepted my little Niamh when she was born, because I was his only son and he wanted a grandson to continue the family’s genealogic tree with first-born sons. Life doesn’t always give us what we wish, want and desire, and we must adapt ourselves to its gifts. That’s what I believe in and what I’ve always stood for, but my father didn’t. he had his own antique way of seeing things, and I despised him for that all my life. I tried to talk to him about these ideas, in order to make him understand that I wouldn’t give him a grandson. You may ask why, and it’s my fault, because I didn’t told you that my wife, Niamh’s beautiful mother, the woman of my life, died a few months after Niamh’s birth. No one knows why, and no one single doctor has ever found an explanation to her sudden death. I cried for weeks, and stood always by my daughter’s side, to protect her from every single danger there is in life.

My plans of leading her into her adult life were torn apart by the war that broke out in one country, and I found myself dying all of a sudden. In a few moments I left my daughter all alone with my father, who never loved her and who never forgave me for not marry for the second time and try to have a male heir.

The day of my funeral, I found my daughter crying in her bedroom. I sneaked into her heart and I knew that she was sad of loosing me. I silently cried with my incorporeity. I wanted to hold her tight and let her know that I’d never let her go, but she laid her head on her pillow and burst into hysterics. I was also really sad for her; it hurt me to see her like that and not have the ability of stopping her tears. The room was filled with silence and the ambiance was painful; so was my and my daughter’s inside, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was lying my incorporeity in her bed, next to her shaking body. Her tears slowly faded away, as I kept one hand on her trembling shoulder and they actually stopped.

I waited. She was breathing calmly now; I looked over her shoulder and realized that she was sleeping. I soared to the other side of the bed and got down on my knees on the floor, looking at her now peaceful face, despite the red marks around her eyes and down her cheeks that her tears left on their way down her face. Her body had given up to the pain and let her fall asleep, offering her a good night after a bad day.

I stayed there for a while, I can’t say how long – I just stayed there looking at her face and stroking her hair softly from times to times. I knew she was sleeping and though she didn’t know I was there, I kissed her cheek, whispered “Good night sweetie” in her ear and walked away form the bed to check my father.

I was soaring past the mirror that had been her mother’s and out of nowhere, I heard a whisper about something. I looked at her, to see if she was awake, but I noticed she was still laid down.

“Father…” she whispered again.
I gasped and my jaw dropped, before realizing that she was most likely dreaming about me or something. I smiled softly thinking of that, but couldn’t help the tears from welling up my eyes. She was dreaming of me… and later in the morning, she would wake up to a life without me. It would tear my daughter down, as it was already tearing me down, and I wanted so bad to go back in time and refuse that application from the army. I wish I could!... but I couldn’t, and little by little a new wave of a stupid anger took control of me and I accidentally punched her mirror without thinking.

It smashed.