Another short story
Hmm, I shouldn't have written this. I should have been writing an essay. I don't understand this inspiration that seems only to strike when other matters are so much more pressing than fanfiction.
I'm still waiting for any inspiration to write essays to strike whenever I read any poetry. I suspect I may need to wait a long time for that.
Title: Hisana: Ghost
Rating: For any age, I suppose.
Series: Bleach
Genre: Supernatural philosophizing!
Note: Many things inspired this. To me, I can see how I was influenced by a couple of novels I read recently. But I think this mainly came about because I sort of miss the supernatural element in Bleach. What happened to the ghosts? I want to give a ghost back.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.
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Hisana: Ghost
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A ghost walks through the House of Kuchiki in the middle of the night. She is not dead in the sense of a normal Shinigami, nor is she alive in the sense of a normal human being. But an important distinction separates the ghost from the Shinigami that reside in the manor-they are while she merely was. Communication with her, thus, is impossible, no matter how possible it was before.
What is the fourth dimension? She seems to sadly ask those unable to comprehend her.
Some will say it is time. A dimension is a property of space, an extension in a given direction; since time appears to move forward, it feels appropriate to call time the fourth dimension. Time may be measured, the same as the dimensions of height, width, and length may be measured. Time may be recorded, ignored, and forgotten. It is a dimension of sorts.
But, ask the phantom what it is, and her answer will not be time. Her lost soul will nod, knowingly, and say that life is the fourth dimension. She will say this aware of the irony of the dead speaking of life.
However, that does not mean she is incorrect; though she doesn’t live, she had lived as much as any other being. She has knowledge of the living world. She has knowledge the living do not have because the living lack the experience of death. Accordingly, she knows better than the living that life has both beginning and end, for those transient souls only have the experience of the beginning.
Life is a dimension, the ghost is well aware of this. It may be measured in units of time or heartbeats or the height of growth or the width of a waist or the length of a thread of hair or the number of atoms. Everything has a life-this dimension does not exclude any concepts or corporeal existences. Animate or inanimate, whatever comes to exist will eventually meet its end. No escape. No exceptions.
What of the ghost, then? She who passes through hallways and slips in and out of the fabric of reality? She who once was but no longer is? How is she a part of the fourth dimension when it is so clear she is not?
Look at the furniture near the ghost. She once sat on that futon. Long ago, she shared her first kiss there. Now she cannot feel the futon, but at one time, she sat there, anxious and excited, confused and content, loving and loved.
The ghost moves out of her former living room and to her bedroom. Or what was her bedroom. Since she died, the room has only belonged to her husband. At the present, her husband sleeps a restless slumber there. He has not slept peacefully since she died, she knows. Her ghost haunts his dreams, despite her desire for him to find happiness once again. In the past, the couple shared many nights in this bedroom. They shared their bodies, their futures, their lives. The nights were sometimes shared in sadness, but most nights were dominated by their mutual delight. Most importantly, the two shared these nights. Then, one night she died in this room while he did not. Now, his dreams belong to him alone. His restless nights continue.
Unable to be with him, she leaves the bedroom and enters the large kitchen. The kitchen is silent during the night but long ago, it thrived under her command. She controlled a cavalry of chefs and scullery maids. But not always. Before becoming the head chef, she was one of the lesser cooks and before even then, she counted herself among the lowest of the servants. All of this was before, of course, she caught the attention of the master of the house.
The ghost does not spend much of her afterlife in the kitchen. Soon, she walks away from the ovens and walks out the back door to the terrace. Outside the manor, a brilliant full moon hangs overhead. She walks beneath this moon, no longer able to appreciate its beauty, and enters the Kuchiki garden.
The garden remains as perfect as it ever was in her lifetime. Tidy, trimmed hedges form intricate lines and patterns, beside the sakura trees. The white moonflowers are in bloom this night, the pond shines in the twilight, and the cicadas sing. But the garden lacks a charm it had when she tended it. Some spark is absent. Her presence allowed her husband, a moonflower in his hand, to propose to her amidst the maze of flora. Her death pruned the joy away from the cherry blossoms.
Then, a noise, the sound of footsteps, disturbs the garden.
A figure enters the garden this night. It is the only living person awake at this hour. It is a woman. This woman cannot sense the ghost, cannot comprehend her existence, and cannot fathom how important she is to the ghost. Nor does she realize how closely she resembles the spirit beneath her notice. The two are sisters. Or were.
What is the sister doing in the garden? There is something hidden in her eyes, there is a tension in her shoulders. When she enters the garden, the sister does not observe the plants but chooses to look up at the white moon and the infinite stars. She is seeking answers for questions she does not know. The sister’s gazes upward, seeking her answers in the heavens for what little good it does her. After all, the ghost, the answer, is right beside her. The ghost lies within her face, within her past, and can only be viewed through reflection.
Eventually, the sister tires of the moon and retires to the manor.
How is the ghost a part of the fourth dimension when it is so clear she is not?
She continues to reside in the memories of those closest to her, in the memories of the places she had been to in her lifetime. As a result, small fragments of her life have not been lost and, so, she haunts the manor and her husband’s dreams. However, this will not always continue to be. The memories of her, the dreams, even the stone paths she has walked on, will eventually crumble and pass away. All vestiges of her will vanish.
Until that inevitability, though, a ghost walks through the House of Kuchiki in the middle of the night.