Perspective of Zolace 

Before I knew what was going on I blacked out, and woke up in some child’s room. The place was covered in near a foot of dust, which made it painful to breathe. There were stuffed animals, games and floor to ceiling bookshelves but the place looked like it’d been empty for decades. Next thing I know, there’s this kid, pale as a white horse, watching me like I was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. 

“You’re different. You’re not one of them. So I brought you here,” he whispered.

He looked like he’d collapse if I so much as breathed on him. He was rambling on about something but I wasn’t paying attention. Instead, I was busy trying to figure out what was wrong. The frosted windows creaked in the back of my mind, not quite reaching my ears. Something felt out of place. Fundamentally wrong. Something obvious that I couldn’t quite place. 

I felt like I was shooting in the dark, “What’s with all the dust?”

He looked at me as if it was the first time he was noticing it. “I… it comes in from outside.”

It still felt off. 

“Why not sweep it up then?”

“I guess… because it just comes right back in,” he said, gripping the bottom of his sleeve.

I looked again around the room. The sun began to lower itself through the window, the stained glass shimmering in red, teal and yellow. City landscape outside decayed, buried in sand and limestone.  The room itself was small. What were probably once white walls, were now a bleached cream color and paint began to chip in the corners and anywhere the sun touched. There was no sound aside from the occasional shifting of the building, caused by wind that never seemed to stop blowing entirely. The books on the bookshelf looked fake, like false backs that would lead to a secret door. Sad eyed teddy bears layed neglected by the window, some too discouraged to sit upright. Then there was the kid. A 3-4 foot something with sparkling white hair and blood colored eyes. He stood wide eyed and barefoot next to the bed, wearing a linen button up shirt and white schoolboy shorts. He grinned shyly as I looked him over.

“Where are your parents?” I asked.

He looked as though I spoke another language, “My what..?”

The funny tingling ‘off’ feeling I’d been feeling was stronger, reverberating within my cells. I knew then why I was there. If not, I thought I did. 

“Then who takes care of you? Who feeds you and dresses you? How did you get here?”

He didn’t answer. He stared out the window, captivated it seemed, by the sunset. No, not captivated. 

Afraid. 

The sun turned his hair a golden orange, distracting me for a moment, “We got to go to sleep now. We can’t stay awake anymore.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll get mad. We can’t stay up anymore. Please.”

I complied as he curled up next to me in bed, I held him to my chest. He was practically shivering. I still felt weird, mostly confused. The confusion tugged at my chest, annoyed my peripheral vision, but I ignored it.

“What’s your name?”

“Shhh, be quiet.”

I didn’t sleep very well. The house was darker than hell and it creaked like the wind was walking around the old wood. No crickets chirped, no rustling of trees, simply the cold wind wandering from room to room. I opened my eyes the smallest bit to see what was causing so much noise in this empty place, expecting rain or . Instead, the room was full of shades, an awful concoction of conscious death and misplaced emotions, immortalized as a cloud of void matter. They were a black smokey crowd but their glowing red eyes were unmistakable. The vengeful dead. 

I tried not to panic, faking sleep so they wouldn’t notice me.

“Why are there so many? They shouldn’t be here, not to mention in this number. How did this kid get here?  How is he still alive? This whole situation makes no sense.”

Confusion swirled around my brain until I fell asleep. 

Sunlight bore through my eyelids causing my waking mind to wonder if the planet could survive without it. Probably not. The kid was still fast asleep on my shoulder, his cold little nose against my neck. It looked as though this was the first time he’d slept the full night through. There was no sign of the shades, nor anything that hinted they’d been there. For the longest time he breathed quietly, leaving me to my thoughts as I looked for any changes in the room. 

“What were they doing here? Did they sense us?”

Finally, the kid began to stir, grabbing my shirt and squinting in the sunlight. 

“G’morning,” he yawned.

“Morning sleeping beauty. Here I was, convinced you’d sleep forever.”

Blood colored eyes looked deep into mine, “I wish I could.”

His cold honesty ached in my chest. Or maybe it was the dust. I’m not sure.