Atlas could hear her words flatten against the dull and thick walls of the concrete block.

“I love you.”

Yet they echoed over and over through his brain like the ring of a bell chime, harsh and piercing.

It took him a few seconds to register within his mind what was actually said, and his blank expression curled into one of disgust and confusion.

“You...love me? What’s that supposed to mean? This was all for love?”

Harper nodded enthusiastically, obviously hoping for a good response from the ghostly figure.

“I love you so much Atlas, you mean so much to me. That’s why I wanted to be better than you, to show you I was worth something. To show you that I was different to the other girls that used to flock around you, different than my friends.”

Atlas felt his eye twitch.

"Oh different, Harper? That’s the excuse you’re using for all of this? You think that’s going to convince me to let go of everything that’s happened tonight? That you're cold and calculating and that you don't care about anything besides having a grand title an affection?"

Harper scrunched her nose up at his response, shaking her head with frustration.

"No no, that's not right at all. I mean the title you left behind is lovely and all, but it was all so that you could see little Harper and her talent. Behind that big ego of yours, you wouldn’t even notice her."

She laughed softly, smiling, and swinging his hand around like a limp string. He stiffened his arms to stop the motion with a harsh pulling motion.

"Harper, I knew you were never like your friends; it was obvious from when I first met you. I never thought you'd turn out like this though. It's...the pure definition of evil. It’s insanity, it’s so many things that I can hardly believe it all. Yet everything feels too real. I know for sure I’m not the same person I was yesterday, and neither are you. It’s jarring."

Harper's smile faded. Her attempt at covering her inner feelings failed as she squinted her eyes at him, her voice laced with an acidic quality.

"You think I'm evil? What makes you say that? What have I done that’s evil?”

Atlas blinked idly; he wasn’t sure how to answer the question without repeating what he’d already said to her.

“I...suppose, in a way, it’s like you described it. You’re truly not like your friends. Your friends are normal girls, they’re not murderers and they’re probably a lot more innocent than you’ll ever be now. Do I need to continue the comparison?”

Harper kept eye contact with him the entire time, trying to find her words while lost in his explanation, completely unaware of his bitterness towards her. She took in a deep breath and held his wrist tighter before responding.

“Strange meadow larks they are. Singing their tunes, deceiving the wise. You have no clue how innocent they might be, murders happen every day. Cold-hearted deceit and butchery, I did no such thing. Not Harper, not Harper the innocent little sunshine canary."

Atlas was hardly paying attention to her deranged ramblings. He was far too confused figuring out why a girl who cared for him so much opted to take his life. It was certainly not something he thought he’d be thinking about in his life, or death rather. He rolled his eyes, not caring for the dramatics once she'd finished.

"If you want to turn this into an allegory then sure, I can play this game. You’re not a bird, you’re Harper. A name that quite almost literally matches your personality now. A harper, harping on about lies, singing the tune that the people want to hear. You're deceptive, cunning, and it’ll be your downfall. You’re a deranged fairy tale villain stuck in your own twisted mental world. There’s nothing innocent about that."

Harper frowned, resting on a reply.

"Well, you're just a stupid globe or something." She blurted out.

"Book, Harper. An atlas is a book, not a globe. I've told you this before." Atlas replied, rolling his eyes. “This is really not the time to discuss literacy.”

Harper blew a raspberry at him, clearly not taking the situation seriously. Admittedly, she was a bit ashamed that she never correctly understood his name. She scolded herself inwardly for not knowing better.

"Okay fine you win. But that doesn’t change how I feel, okay? Can you please accept me now and move on?"

Atlas’s eyes widened in shock. Was she really about to drop the entire conversation they’d had? Was his death really that trivial to her? He could feel his nerves rising again, this time with a flush of anger.

"Win? I win? What on earth do I win?!"

He looked down at his wrist and shook Harper’s grip off before glaring down at her, dead in the eyes. She immediately paused, frozen in position. Atlas held his wrist as if her touch had pricked him underneath the skin. His expression was cold and full of hatred, his tone icy and monotone.

“If you don’t want to see my passing as anything important, then I'm perfectly happy if we part ways. You’re worth nothing to me, even less now than before this death pursuit. I despise this authoritative attitude you always seem to have, and I certainly haven't won anything from this situation as much as you have! Do you really think this is a pleasant condition to be in? I’m incredibly uncomfortable. I don't even know where my parents are and you're making a joke of this. I had so much to look forward to in life and you've taken that away!”

Harper stared up at the ceiling, nodding methodically as she listened to him.

"Hmmm, but why does that matter? I mean, I know how you really feel. You can say what you want but it won’t change the past."

He paused momentarily, unsure by what she meant.

"What do you know, Harper? What’re you hiding? Blackmail ammunition?"

She nodded a soft smile to her expression.

“Precisely! I read your journals. The ones you kept in your room, in that little secret box that you thought no one would find. The scribbled writings about your life were very appetizing, I was hoping you would expand on some of the points I read. How you felt all this success wasn't worth all the trouble, and how you wanted to run, and fall and tumble and just end up nowhere. A place of peace and rest. No?”

Atlas hushed her with a hand to her face.

“WHEN…did you do that? Harper, tell me, when did you manage to read those journals? Was it when you stole my half-written speech too?"

Harper wove her fingers together nervously and stared at the ground. Her voice was soft, a rather different attitude now that Atlas was talking to her with some amount of interest.

“Oh uh, it was a couple of days ago. You invited me over for that recording session, remember?”

Atlas shook his head, expression blank.

“I...I don’t really remember anything specific past this morning. Was that when it happened? In the recording room?”

Harper laughed and waved her hand at him mockingly.

“No no, not at all. I wanted to record that song, after all, it was so well written! I read your journals when you left for a bit to go get some water, I got a few ideas, pieced together some equipment I could use and-”

She stopped as Atlas raised his hand to her face again.

“I’ve heard enough. I don’t want to hear the plans of a murderer, of a heartless necromancer. That’s...just so unsanitary.”

Harper shrugged, whispering the word ‘necromancer’ under her breath as if she didn’t understand it. She shuffled her feet on the ground, quickly changing the topic.

“You never really wanted to live though, did you? I mean, that’s what I gathered from what you wrote. You knew you’d be better off dead than alive, being overstressed and having nervous breakdowns all the time. I knew that after reading your notes that you weren’t ever going to be happy being alive. I envisioned a plan, I did you a favour.”

Atlas's expression softened. He didn't know how to react to hearing her side of the story. He wasn't even going to confirm the truth in all of this, he felt it gave her a solid motive otherwise. Again, she continued, voice rising in a fit of sudden anger.

“I wanted to end it for you before you had the chance!!! Don’t you understand? You should be grateful!”

Atlas held his hands up as a defence quickly.

“Hey, hey, you don’t need to yell, people can actually hear you, not me. I understand your point of view, I get it I really do. But to go as far as murder, that’s just unhinged. You could have thought of something more practical.”

Harper stared at the ground with a quiet sob.

“I couldn’t think of anything else at the time. I didn’t know what I was doing, it was an improvised in a moment of desire. You really don’t like the end result?”

Atlas breathed a sigh. He had to face this head-on, even if his scrambled ramblings in a journal started it all. It was her fault for getting involved in his private business, but he had to take accountability somehow.

“Just seeing how you did it, just looking at the state my body was in wasn't the nicest feeling. Do you understand how horrifying that concept is? To see your own dead body, not being able to do anything about it. I didn’t expect to wake up dead today, Harper, and I certainly don’t appreciate the end result. You should probably think about it from my perspective before we continue yelling and getting nowhere with the conversation. Did you even know about all this ‘ghost’ stuff? Like, this is actually ridiculous if this is something you planned out."

Harper shrugged and stared at the ceiling again.

"That's for me to know and for you to find out."

"HARPER!"

She jumped, eyes widening.

"OKAY, no, I didn't. Sorry. I didn’t know at all."

She hung her head low and kicked her foot against the tiles. The sound bounced around the room, as the conversation hung in silence for a moment.

"You never yell like that. There’s something not right with you, Atlas. I’ve never seen you so angry before. You’re usually silent."

Atlas arched his eyebrows, feeling frustrated that she had yet again pushed the topic to his flaws yet again.

"Yeah well, I'm super stressed right now, my nerves are killing me. Wait no, I retract that word. I'm extremely nervous, I feel cold, and I really don't want to be here."

Atlas placed a fist to his forehead in concentration, this was certainly not the way he saw this discussion going. If she didn't know how to fix what had happened to him, then how was he supposed to escape the limbo situation? He had no choice but to end the arguing here.

“I already know you’re not able to help me, so I have no reason to stick around anymore. We’re both going to leave this dusty block and go our separate ways, okay? I don’t think we need to talk about this anymore. It’s over Harper.”

Harper quickly raised her head to look up at him again, the panic in her eyes was evident. Like a sad pet, she had a begging sort of stare.

"No, you can't just undo everything that’s been done! I didn't do this for nothing! Atlas you can’t leave! Not yet! I promise I’ll make everything better!"

Atlas glared at her, then turned his back to her to look out of the toilet block entrance. Thankfully, there was no one outside as of yet, he had neglected to check that during the conversation. As he went to step out, he felt Harper grab his wrist yet again. With a piercing gaze, he looked back at her, ready to shoot back with another request to be left alone. He was swiftly interrupted.

“You still wanted to die, right? I did the right thing, didn’t I? You’ll be happy now?”

She smiled weakly, unsure that she was going to convince him at this point by saying the same thing over and over.

“Harper I…can’t believe...”

His voice drifted off suddenly, he felt somewhat odd as his frustration manifested. Something within him felt wildly different.

He didn’t realise it until now, but that creeping feeling of anxiety in his neck was growing quite literally, and it only grew stronger with her pathetic attempt at stopping him. Feeling underneath the neck of his shirt, he felt the faint outline of something there. He jumped back in a moment of fear and shook himself free from Harper’s grasp.

A pair of torn and sparking electrical wires had slithered out from under his turtle-neck shirt and they hovered above his shoulders. Growing directly from his collar bones. Like that of the fabled Medusa’s snakes, they hissed with electricity. Much like the rough tear that had appeared on the chest of his shirt, he remembered his corpse being donned with cables. He recalled the electrical cords from the music kit restricting his neck, ripping into his flesh.

It filled him with such wrath to be brought back to that horrible imagery and he felt the tension inside him snap like a brittle pane of glass. It was so sudden but all he could see was red, and the horrible stare that Harper gave him.

The electrical power expanded inside him like gas to a flame. It all ended with a burst of energy so powerful that he lit up like an electrical fire. A ghostly envelopment of cold flames that caused Harper to stumble backward and fall against the wall. Even she wasn’t expecting such a supernatural thing to happen right before her.

Atlas, filled with so much adrenaline, yelled an explosive response that lit up the small block with a bright white electrical spark.

“DON’T YOU DARE GIVE ME AN EXCUSE LIKE THAT AND THINK THAT IT’S FINE TO KILL SOMEONE, YOU FILTHY MURDERER!"

Harper could only watch in awe at the bright ghostly body before her. She had already been scared of his unusual outbursts, but this was something far more monstrous.

It didn’t last long, however, and the exhaust of power had Atlas dizzy to the point where he couldn't stand up straight. The last thing he heard was a shocked gasp from Harper as he fell to the ground, completely unconscious.