Page 14 of Melancholia

“Nell,” I correct automatically, but I don’t have any sway over hallucinations, unfortunately. Somehow, my brain always seems to work against me when it comes to them. “You know I hate it when you call me Eleanor.”

Andrew Elliot wouldn’t know that. Not the real one. But this one knows everything that I do, and nothing else.

He just smiles and I look around again, as if I’ll see something that I didn’t see before. But there really isn’t anything. No movement. No reason for the lights to come on and flood the parking lot with white hot LED illumination.

Just me. Just Andrew.

Just the empty dark that I feel better existing in than any light of day.

“Maybe you weren’t murdered,” I admit finally. “Seems like someone else was with you, though. That bite went almost all the way through your tongue. And it wasn’t from your teeth. Do you think—” My question cuts off when I turn to find the loading dock completely empty now.

“Well, fuck you too,” I grumble. Then, a little louder. “And don’t come back without some clothes on. You’re not my type.”

I’m only bold enough to speak openly to my ghosts when I’m alone. Otherwise, I’d never do it on purpose. The last thing I need is people realizing—again—that I probably need more mental help than the United States healthcare system can provide. But when I’m alone, I let myself indulge in this little guilty pleasure.

After all, the ghosts are the only thing that make me feel less alone, unless she shows up to ruin it all like she does once in a while.

But I refuse to think about that. I push thoughts of family members I won’t put a face or name to out of my head, knowing that if I think too much about them, then she really will show up to ruin my year.

I blink once. Then again, and realize I’m just stupidly standing here in the middle of the night, on the loading bay of a mortuary when I need to be finishing up my work. “Fuck.” Just like always. My hands come up and jerk my headphones back over my ears, letting my playlist take over as I head back into the mortuary to finish my work and hope the motion light stops going off.

6

Sleep hits me like a metal bat the moment I lay down in bed. I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but when I open my eyes again, I’m confused to be greeted by the sun in my window, peering down at me like I’m actually expected to be awake before noon.

Being a night shift mortuary assistant works out for my weird ass nocturnal schedule that I’ve never been able to shake; so to see daylight this early is troubling. Clearly, the world has gone out of whack, and I’m going to end up in some bizarro version of Still Pines today.

Somehow, though, I’m awake enough that I push out of bed. But the events from the night before rush into my consciousness like rainwater down a drain as soon as I’m vertical.

Jenkins.

Andrew Elliot.

The bite.

The motion light⁠—

Well, okay, the last was probably just an eerie coincidence that made everything seem creepier. And triggered my first ghost in a few days. Even now, I know I won’t see Andrew Elliot again, unless he comes back to my mortuary. His face is already a little fuzzy in my mind; his eyes are colorless in my memory, and his hair is varying shades of brown whenever I try to remember. I didn’t work on him long enough to get a good mental picture seared into my brain, strangely enough.

If anything, I would’ve guessed the opposite. That his face would’ve been caught in my mind after the strangeness of last night, instead of fading so quickly.

Checking my phone shows me I haven’t missed any calls or messages from Cecil. Which I take as a sign that nothing came from last night since I sent him a rapid-fire voice message to let him know what happened.

I just hope he isn’t upset with me.

A kind of anxiety I haven’t felt in years suddenly forms in my stomach like a stone, prompting me to stop and stare into the mirror, as if I’ve been caught and held by my own reflection. My shoulder-length black hair is a mess this morning, and my grey eyes look more washed out than normal from how wan my complexion is. The anxiety builds, becoming a boulder rather than a stone, and I sit on the edge of my bed, eyes still fixed on the mirror, as if I could somehow see the source of this unwelcome feeling.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” I whisper, the words strange and foreign on my tongue. I haven’t used them in so long in that order, and it brings an even worse sense of dread than anything I’ve felt lately. My fingers curl against my bare thighs, and to my eyes, my reflection changes, just a little. The girl becomes softer and younger. Her eyes get bigger, filled with dread and the fear of what she knows will happen next time Mom gets upset. The light from the window shifts, and I swear I can see the faint mottling of old bruises under my eyes, on my cheekbones, a split lip that⁠—

I jolt to my feet before I vomit, and turn away from the mirror that’s causing me to spiral into a place I try not to go. My head is spinning enough that I stumble and nearly bash my face into the bathroom doorframe, but getting into my morning ritual is enough to start pulling me out of the hole I unintentionally dug for myself.

Or rather, the one that was excavated in my mind years ago. Now it’s only covered by a disguise of leaves and branches, always waiting for me to step into it and fall to a very painful fate.

I’ve always been able to climb back out of that mental pit, sure. But it doesn’t make licking my wounds any more pleasant when it happens.

I almost don’t know what to do with myself now that I’m awake in normal people hours. But I end up getting dressed, though I know I don’t exactly look like a functioning adult with a budget when I come out of my apartment in dark olive shorts covered with flowers and skulls, topped by an oversized black t-shirt reading I have rabies. My shoes are the same scuffed-up Chucks I always wear, and my phone-wallet combo case sticks out, even after I jam it into my pocket.

Once I’m down the stairs, I swing into the coffee shop, hoping espresso will cure me of whatever this is, only to see that Hestia is not behind the counter where I expect her to be. Instead, she’s sitting at her favorite table, close to the TV that sometimes plays music and other times actually has something on it.