Chapter 9

Andrew watched as I rapidly cleaned up his apartment. After I was done cleaning up the mess, I turned to face the broken balcony door, which was now nothing but shards of glass.

“AAHHH!” I screamed loudly as I hit my head against the wall. 

I stopped abruptly because I realised that I could make a hole in the wall this way. I patted the wall and internally apologised. I turned to face Andrew, who was looking at his fridge.

“I was sick because of alcohol withdrawal symptoms. I think it’s probably best if you throw the bottles away. Just drain the bottles first and put them in those empty cardboard boxes.”

I didn’t know what a cardboard box was, but luckily, I guessed correctly. After a while, there was only one bottle left in the fridge, and I found myself feeling guilty about all the waste. I caused Andrew so much stress by trashing his house, that now I felt incredibly guilty that I was letting hundreds of dollars go down the drain. 

“So, where did you go? Why did you arrive back crying?” Andrew asked abruptly.

At that moment I felt an intense amount of dread. I grabbed the whisky bottle and chugged the whole thing in front of Andrew. His mouth was agape, and I started to feel dizzy and less in control.

“Vita?! What the hell!?” Andrew swore as he jumped towards me.

“It’s okay.” I said, not thinking at all.

“What’s okay?” Andrew questioned.

I started petting Andrew with an unusual grin on my face. I then burst out in tears and hugged him tightly.

“I’m sorry!” I cried. 

“Shut up! The neighbours will get angry. It’s nine o’clock. The grandma next door has, like, five grandchildren living with her! Be quiet!”

I covered my mouth and shushed. At that moment, Andrew felt like he was babysitting a toddler.

“How could you become drunk so fast? When’s the last time you had alcohol?” 

“On my twenty-fifth birthday.” I replied.

“When did you die?”

“On my twenty-fifth birthday!” I cried.

Andrew watched as I sobbed loudly. He thought to himself that he shouldn’t ask anymore about my death and just agreed internally that I’m most definitely a light-weight. 

“You know Vita. I hate being a rabbit. I’m probably going to lose my job because I haven’t even been able to phone in, and I definitely am going to end up being evicted. Will’s probably going to worry about me and think I’m dead in some ditch. You can’t stay with me forever.” 

Something ticked in my brain, and I became more depressed than I already was. 

“I don’t want to bring you to the mountain.” I whimpered with only sadness trapped in my mind. 

Andrew almost fell over. He felt like he had uncovered some massive mystery.

“What mountain?!” Andrew yelled.

My head went fuzzy, and I fell to the ground and immediately passed out. 

I awoke with thunder echoing in my brain. I was lying on the floor, and I didn’t remember how I got there. I sat up quickly, and was burdened with an intense dizzy spell. I managed to stand up with much effort, and I looked towards the balcony. The sun was high in the sky, unlike the last time I checked. I was confused on how I managed to lose around eight hours of memory, but quickly, after seeing Andrew staring at me from in front of his ferret cage, I remembered what happened last night. I started to panic. How did I manage to mess up so horribly? All I wanted was to get away without telling Andrew where the curse was, but now I was trapped.

“So, what are you hiding from me?” Andrew asked.

It was really strange how such a tiny and cute creature could look so stern. Clearly, Andrew did not take this in a joking manner, and for all he knew, I was keeping his cure away from him. In his mind, I was the villain, and the only way I could redeem myself was to tell him where it was. I couldn’t bear to tell him that I had been lying to him the entire time. How could I? This man was already at war with heartbreak, his emotions were a tightrope in the wind. It would kill him for me to say that I didn’t have a cure, there was most likely no cure in this world. I thought that I must have been evil, choosing myself over another person again. Andrew must have noticed my internal turmoil because his face turned smug. 

“You mentioned that you don’t want to bring me to a mountain. Is this where the cure is?”

He hit it right on the mark, and it was at this moment that I wished that I had a face made of stone. Within a millisecond, I could already tell that Andrew saw through me, because at the twitch of my finger he had already let out a sigh. 

“Why are you keeping the cure away from me? Are you not on my side after all?”

I felt my heart lurch, “I am on your side! I promise!”

“So, why don’t you bring me to this mountain? Why don’t you want me to be happy again?” Andrew asked as he choked on his last words.

That was the least thing I wanted. If there was one way I could redeem myself, I would choose to cure him, but I lied. It was all a lie! I felt like a selfish jerk who deserved my place in the underworld. Yet why couldn’t I just leave and return to Jayin? Why did I have to grow attached to Andrew? 

“I’ll take you to the mountain. I had always intended to, I just wanted more time to assure that this was the correct cure.” I lied.

“I don’t have any more time! I want to get my life back together! I can’t lose my job, I can’t lose my friend, and I can’t lose my home! You have to understand, either we leave today or I can find another demon boy to help me.” 

I wished Andrew had never met me. I assumed that a curse was put on him because of me somehow, everything bad happened because of me. I wished I was never born. 

A few hours passed, and I carried Andrew in my arms as I stood on the railing of the balcony. I was wearing his messenger bag on my shoulder, it was filled with things he instructed me to bring. We brought a lot of canned food and water, that's as much as I remember. I was absent-minded the last few hours, I couldn’t sort out what was happening. Now that I was facing the breeze, I was able to come back to reality. Andrew and I were about to go find the mountain. Even though I knew the general direction, I didn’t think that we would find the mountain. Instead of bringing him to the mountain, I planned to get us lost in some way or another. Andrew squirmed in my arms and begged, “Can we go now? We have been standing here forever!”

Andrew looked down at the cityscape below. The people moved like ants, all with their own paths, all with their own stories. Andrew always thought that he could never compare others to ants, yet it was impossible to not think so from this height. The longer I waited, the more Andrew felt like the buildings were getting farther away. I sighed one final breath of relief, and my wings sprouted out of my back and lifted the back of my shirt upward. Every feather was specifically placed in the most perfect place. Every feather was defined and fluffy. I spread my wings wide and revealed a pattern that was a slow gradient from black to white, it was almost like a blue jay’s pattern. 

I fell forward slowly, and we dove towards the ground. Andrew screamed in terror as we got closer and closer to the swarm of people down below. Then, all of a sudden, we rocketed towards the clouds. Andrew couldn’t even breathe, it felt like he was on a roller coaster. We broke apart a cloud and at that moment Andrew couldn’t determine if he was afraid or excited. Andrew looked up at me and saw a smile that shook and eyes that a rainstorm was trapped in. It was magnifying. I looked like a flower that had been rained on, all alone in a vast field of grass, without a single tree in sight. Andrew felt the sudden need to be that tree, but then he snapped out of his trance when he heard the sound of geese. Geese were flying all around us, we had joined their flock. The geese slowly moved away from us, for my wings were too large for them to comfortably fly beside. Something ticked in Andrew's mind and he looked down. At that moment Andrew felt his whole body latch onto me in response.

Andrew screamed, “Let me down! Let me down!”

I was dumbstruck. “Let you down, where? Do you want to free fall or something?”

Andrew screamed in terror, and he gripped me even harder. He shook violently, and at that moment I understood what was wrong.

“You’re scared of heights?!” I asked in astonishment. 

Andrew begged, “Yes, yes! Let me down! Please!”

Andrew gripped my shirt and stretched it. His sharp claws dug into my chest, close to a massive scar on my heart. I froze in response, and I felt my lungs lose air. I breathed rapidly with much effort, but I could not calm down. We plummeted to the earth, both too afraid to control our actions. I landed in a tree and let go of Andrew. Andrew lightly tumbled to the ground, and spread all his limbs apart lazily. After a few minutes he managed to collect his breath and stabilise himself. He turned to me and saw that I was stuck. I hung upside down and was sprawled out. I still had not calmed down, and I reached to touch my chest. The scratch marks were only a few centimetres away from the scar on my heart.

Andrew asked, “Vita! What was that?!”

I unstuck myself from the tree with much effort and landed on the ground like a gymnast. I folded my wings back into my skin and took a big huff before yelling, “What do you mean, what was that? You were the one who made me fall! You have no excuses! I know you were afraid, but you didn’t have to be so violent about it!” 

Andrew choked on his words and only managed to yell, “Shut up!” 

We both caught our breath and looked around us. We were in a giant wheat field with no civilization in sight. A dirt path was to our right, and hills filled with wheat were to our left. A few dead geese were on the ground around us that I must have accidentally knocked out of the sky with my wings. 

“Where are we?” I asked, expecting no answer.

“Somewhere north since we were headed there, duh. We should follow this dirt path, and eventually we should find a house.” Andrew responded.

Andrew’s ongoing annoyance was clear to me after he refused that I carry him down the long, winding dirt path. We travelled endlessly until nightfall. I stopped and stared at the sky above. Andrew stopped once he heard no sound of me behind him.

“What’s it now, Vita? Need to use the bathroom again?” He teased nonchalantly.  

The sky above was full of cosmos. Millions upon millions of stars were spread around, even Andrew was dumbstruck by this site.

Andrew spoke with awe, “Woah, this is something you never see in the city.”

I squinted my eyes and saw something that did not fit. Upon further inspection, I saw them everywhere. Eyes, giant eyes watching me from the sky. The black eyes could be mistaken for dark clouds, that was how they were designed to be. Jayin was watching my every move. I was not safe here, I was not safe anywhere. Andrew noticed my ashen face and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Andrew stared at the sky and caught sight of something strange. Eyes! There were eyes everywhere! In between the stars, behind the stars! All around the horizon, thousands upon thousands of eyes were spread in the sky. Watching him and me, staring us down like predators. When he thought he saw them all, more and more eyes showed themselves.

“What the actual fuck!?” Andrew asked as a cold chill spread up and down his spine. 

I spun towards him after realising that I had given my fear away.

Andrew asked profusely, “Why the fuckety fuck are there eyes everywhere?!”

“His name is Jayin.” I started to say before a hand touched my shoulder.

I swung my fist back and punched the cheek of a man. Except the punch did not land, instead, it went through him. Further ahead was a forgotten, overgrown graveyard. The man who I attempted to punch flew back in response to my attack, he acted like he was actually hit. 

“What was that for?!” The man shrieked.

Andrew was agape, the man in front of them was like a hologram. He wasn’t transparent, like the way he imagined ghosts to be. The man had curly brown hair and a scruffy brown beard that was turning white. He was a bit out of shape, and he wore jeans and a t-shirt covered by a leather jacket. The man did not look dead at all. 

“Sorry.” I apologised slowly and cautiously.

In all the time I had lived, I had never seen a ghost before. They were invisible to the mortal eye, but they only roamed in the mortal realm. When a human died, either they went to Purgatory or they stayed on Earth. Usually, a dead person got stuck in the mortal realm when they had unfinished business or had forgotten who they were. 

“Are you lost? It’s quite a far way from town. I’m staying in a shed just beyond that hill over there. I don’t mind if you and your pet stay there tonight. It’s quite chilly out.” The man asked with a prominent British accent.

A cold gust of wind quickly shot through the forest to the wheat field. Andrew looked at me cautiously and I nodded. 

“Sure, thanks a lot.”

I knew I could not touch the ghost, but he could touch me. That didn't mean I had no means of running away, so I fought with my idea of staying with him. We followed the man, passed the moss-covered graveyard, and arrived at the shed. The shed was just big enough for all of us, and we laid on hay spread across the ground. The man quickly fell asleep, and Andrew and I laid quietly. After hours, Andrew couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore, and he curled up beside me, away from the ghost. I stared through the broken roof at the eyes above. I thought of flipping him off, but decided not to. I touched the scar on my heart instead.

“Fuck you,” I whispered.