Sunday Scribblings # 276

She was skinny with knee-high socks and peaches and cream skin with an unconscious habit of pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose whenever she was excited. To him, she was everything good from the world and life he had lost when he'd died and seeing her was a breath of air his lungs could not manufacture on their own anymore. He liked to think that he was the only one who could see her this way but the truth was that her arrival in Kingsbury had stirred up the public and there were many others captivated-obsessed really-with her but nobody knew why.

"I'm just a girl," Wellsley told him once, frustrated with the scrutiny and heckling from other classmates and strangers.

"Not to them,"he said, "Not to me."

At that she had smiled. It was rare for him to see her smile, she was so shy and given so much attention out in public that he could see it bow down her small shoulders at times. Amongst the whispering he heard the name of her father, of the scandal that had shocked their society and the child that had lived as a result of his actions. While there were no marks to make her different she simply was, and he could sense it as could everyone else. She created a ripple effect wherever she walked. That was when he devised a plan. It was simple in theory to carry out despite the hullabaloo put up by the government and school officials; the Phantom District on the edge of town was strictly prohibited to the living. Too many people had ventured inside only to return severely damaged or never at all. But so confident in his own ability, so lost in his feelings for her that he was willing to risk it. Besides, he had lived there for seventy-five years, what could possibly happen with him by her side?

"I'm not afraid," she'd said in the moonlight gripping his hand tighter as they ran through the fencing, past pubs, boarded up houses and other nooks and crannies occupied by the dead. His place was on the far side of town in a dilapidated stone mansion nestled between larger, grander monstrosities also aged with time.It had been a ballroom at one time but he had moved in a canopy bed and mirrors and paintings into the corner near the large fireplace. 
"It's a little out dated I know," he said feeling suddenly nerve-wracked for her opinion.
"It's perfect," she said falling back onto the bed with her arms out wide as he lowered the shades and lit the lanterns. In the Phantom District there was no electricity for reasons not so obscure as to be imagined.
He watched her touch his dresser-empty-, the nubs of broken candles and books stacked in piles around the bursting shelves, wishing he was one of those books caressed by her hands, pressed to her nose and held tightly to her chest.