Gray Man

The rain leaves the dead exhausted. It makes it harder for them to float through the world of the living. It slows them down. A raindrop bounces off of a bony shoulder or catches an eyelash, and it splashes in an unnatural way. Rarely would the living notice this, but I always do. The dead are actually everywhere. Like a fog rolling across a lake, their invisible bodies clog the streets and circle the lampposts. They are packed into the same spaces as the living. No one really ever detects them. No one except for me. I am dead, but I look alive. It was a fantasy at first, one that was crushed early in my life. I always knew I was different, but I didn’t dare say so until I met Georgia. She saw me. As improbable as it was, we had this in common. She confirmed my death. We both know the truth now, and that’s a lot to know for two little girls.

I am lucky. I found my human. It wasn’t my mother, father, or my sister. No. They knew I was different, and they let me drain the love from them daily. But they never let their imagination go far enough to see what I really am. At this point, it doesn’t matter. I feed off of them when I am home, but here at this boarding school, I take love where I can find it. My English teacher, Mrs. MacDonald. The cafeteria lady, Miss Shirl. The collective love of the PTA where I serve as a student ambassador. And Georgia. When I met her, I forgot the rest. I feed off of all of them, but Georgia’s the only one who knows. The others might feel a bit of a tug on their souls when I am around, but only Georgia knows exactly what I’m doing. She loves me more than I have ever been loved. That’s how we figured it out. It was her love that made me smile, something I had not done so before my life. Not an authentic, absentminded smile. But she pulled the corners of my mouth up, teeth showing.

Don’t misunderstand. I smile. I do. If there is a joke that makes a crowd laugh, I will smile. I’ll spread it over my face like peanut butter. I smile just to feel them. I long to be human so that my smile would be natural. It took a random wrong turn on my first week here on campus that brought me face to face with Georgia. I knocked into her quite by accident, and she dropped one of the books she was carrying. I began to shame spiral, and my pale hands turned red as I bent down to pick up her book.

“C.S. Lewis?” I said it under my breath. I was surprised, but then I rushed to hand her the book.

“Have you read it?” Her white teeth glowed from behind her brown lips. “Because I sure as heck have not.” She emphasized the last two words and then laughed. I had read the whole series by the time I was seven. Twice. But I was too stunned to admit that. Fantasy books, movies, and superhero comics always appealed to me since I never felt like a real girl. Living other-worldly lives felt right at home for me.

“Hi. I’m Georgia.” She cradled the books in her arm and reached her hand out to me. I shook it for too long, but Georgia just kept shaking my hand, grinning. She laughed. “Do you have a name?”

“I do.” My voice dropped as my chin sank. Georgia took her hand out of mine and lifted my chin just enough. “My name is Maddy.” I could feel her eyes on mine, filled with honesty and joy. I was eight and she was 10.

“Well, Maddy. What can you tell me about The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe? Because I can’t sit still long enough to read this….thing.” Again, she laughed. Her whole torso shook with her laugh. Maddy smiled a real smile. She felt Georgia’s warmth filling her.

Now, I am standing in the vestibule of our dorms, dreading the rain. Georgia is sorting her amazing halo of hair in the mirror. She throws a scarf over it, but it barely holds her natural curls. “Damn. We both hate the rain, don't we my darling.” She was always finding new nicknames for me. She never called me Maddy. She said, “that’s your dead name,” and we would both snicker. This is four years after we first met. She’s 14 and I am 12. We were both at the tail end of puberty. Of course, we were in sync. In truth, being dead gave me certain freedoms that other girls didn’t have. I didn’t have to age. Since I died young, I could have stayed a toddler for the rest of my life. It’s complicated to unravel, but the simple explanation is that mirroring others was key to getting supply. No one wants to love a freak. Of course, I am a freak, but I need to blend in and fool the masses enough so that no one is chasing me through town with pitchforks and torches. So I age.

I told this to Georgia. I told her everything. She not only took it in stride but she made it her goal to enumerate all of my “powers.” She called us the dynamic duo. I was Superman to her Batman. Despite Georgia’s lack of interest in allegorical fiction, she was a reader. She always had four books going at the same time, and she was eager to read more. She kept a journal on me. It was detailed with diagrams and flow charts. She took it quite seriously. It proved helpful when we encountered something off-putting or unexplained. Her expertise came in handy almost daily. Nowhere was that more on display than when it came to my interaction with the dead. They are everywhere all the time. Some see me, and some couldn’t care less. I was rare. So rare I have never met another dead girl or boy who lived in the life of the living.

With Georgia’s help, I learned to let the dead walk near me or pass through me. I mastered ignoring their endless chattering and mumbling. It was hard to say if they even saw each other or why they were here on earth and not fading into oblivion somewhere else in the galaxy. We couldn’t solve the algorithm. I learned to be comfortable with the sprites and spirits and ghouls and goblins. The only exception was the rain.

For me, rain hurts my skin. It’s all in my head, though. I was never bothered by water (although I did avoid swimming pools or venturing into the ocean.) No, it was different with rain. When the invisible dead (Georgia’s term to distinguish them from me) got wet, they didn’t pass through me so easily and I would wind up picking up on their thoughts and feelings. I might even get a glimpse into their living years. It was not only uncomfortable. It was destructive. It was the opposite of supply. It drained the love from me. Georgia’s solution was to hold my hand and hug me with her other arm. She would tell me she loved me over and over, doing her best to battle the dead.

I wore a blue poncho and clutched an umbrella. I just hated the rain.

We stepped out of the dorm and headed to the library. The school put restrictions on the number of books you could borrow. Eight. This boggled Georgia, but it meant we had to go to the library almost every other day. It’s like eating potato chips for her, (only without the greasy fingers). I read a lot, too, because I don’t have to sleep. With Georgia as my roommate (a story in and of itself), I don’t have to pretend to sleep. So I read my sci fi and fantasy novels while Georgia dreamt. (She always says the same thing when she awakens: “I dreamt of you all night, my little Gremlin. Every dream is better than the last because you’re always there.”) You see, when I feed off others, a little of me gets inside of them. Most folks forget they dreamt about me, but Georgia worked hard to keep her dreams at the front of her mind. “Babe. I got you.” I laughed with Georgia. The dead in the world never laugh. They are mostly angry to be dead and vexed to be stuck here on Earth.

It doesn’t take long before the dead are crashing into me. I close my eyes and let Georgia guide us.

They pass through. Our hands touch, but the dead don’t notice. There is no supply, only the staggering pain of lost love. Despite Georgia’s best efforts, she can feel me slipping. The rain is heavy today. It waterlogs the dead. Each one passes partially through me, and I feel my energy sink to the bottom of my shoes. They get stuck for a second or two, but each moment with them inside of me is brutal. I feel on the verge of collapse when Georgia stops us and makes me leap up on her back. Georgia is tall and thick and plays on the Catholic League’s champion rugby team. She could carry me all day. She hustles us across the commons to the library.

We make it to the dry vestibule. I slide down off of Georgia’s back, tossing the umbrella aside. I wrench my poncho from my body and gulp air. One of the dead follows us into the library, but of course it doesn’t see us. I stumble to the left of it.

“Is there one in here?” Georgia crouches like a ninja ready to fight. I hold up my hand.

“Yes, but it’s going away….back out the door.” I pause to see it glide through the sliding doors. “Okay. It’s gone.”

“Good because I was about to beat its ass!” Georgia stands up and comes to my side. She hugs me, and I smell the coconut in her hair and the lavender on her skin. I feel like a baby with the croup. She rubs my back until I start to breathe a little deeper, smoother “Are you okay, pumpkin?”

“Pumpkin?” I smile and she laughs, squeezing me harder until I feel her love flowing into me, again.

“I love you.” The words just fall out of my mouth and before I can pick them up, she kisses me and whispers, “I love you, too, pumpkin patch.” I am red with embarrassment and the flowing love I feel on my lips. It’s like there is a bridge between us as she kisses me again. Romantic? I guess. I don’t know how to process my emotions, but I certainly stop worrying about the dead bodies that just float past us and into the library.

Staring deeply into my eyes. “Where are they? They’re going to feel the fury of my fists. Let me at ‘em!” I squeeze her hand.

“Thank you.” The rain on my face hides a tiny tear that squeaks out of the corner of my eye. It's a tight fit, but she notices it running down my cheek.

“A tear?” She goes to touch it, but stops. “Have you ever cried before, honey?”

I am taken aback. Why did she stop herself from touching me? Is the tear dangerous to her? I am hurt, and my fingers unravel from hers, but she grabs my wrist. “I don’t want to touch it, babygirl, because I want to see where it goes. Is it your first? Yes?”

“Yes.” Had I reached the end of love? I can see the tears pooling in the bottom of Georgia's brown eyes.

“Aw, baby, do you know what it is? It’s a tear of happiness. It means that you're full. That’s love leaking out of you.” Her voice is calm until it cracks and her own tears race down her warm skin.

It was at this moment that I forgot about the rain or the dead or being empty, longing for love. I was filled with sorrow. Sad for the girl who lived 12 years on this earth without ever being “full” of love. More tears break free. I crash my head into Georgia’s chest and sob. She hugs me with the strength of a rugby union back, racing to score.

“Shut the fuck up! Stop your crying!” A voice pierces our teepee of love.

I whip my head from her chest. “Quiet your tears, dead girl.” I wipe my cheeks and look around. Standing less than a foot away was the strangest sight I have ever seen. It was a man in his 40s or 50s, soaking wet with rain, red in the face and yelling at me. “Get away from your little bitch friend," he growled. "Walk away!” I leap back and raise my finger to point at him without thought. “Yes. I see you, Maddy. And more importantly, you see me!” He was taller than either of us, and his soaking-wet skin was gray, not blue. The forever dead are shades of blue. But clearly, Georgia could not see him.

“What’s up, hon. My tears are happy, too.” She reaches out for me, but I back away without thought. I cannot stop looking at the gray man.

“Who…?

She spins around with a tiger’s acuity, but she is staring into nothing. She is blind to him. “Who? What’s going on…wait! Is there one of them here? Right now?”

“I said, get away from your little whore girlfriend! I know who you are, Maddy. I know you better than ten thousand ‘Georgias.’” I am gobsmacked. He is not dead, but he certainly isn’t alive. Georgia was screaming at the air between us, but her voice grew fainter and fainter. The man was talking to me telepathically. “Didn’t know about this little trick, eh, Maddeeee!” That name. It stirs something terrible in me. I stumble backward and raise my finger to point at him.

Is he another one of me?

“Who are you?” I react in my head. Georgia follows my finger and runs right through the man. Her anger is useless. She can’t see or touch him. I feel love start to drain from my body. I fall to my knees. What is happening to me? I look up at her as she is swinging her arms through the man. “Georgia?” I am crumbling into the rug of the library’s portico. Georgia finally looks back at me, and anger escapes her, replaced by fear.

“Maddy!” She rushes to me when she bolts up for a minute and looks back at the spot where she thinks the man is standing. “Love!” She turns back to me and wraps her arms around my head. “I will love this monster away from you. He can’t drain this love. No way!” She squeezes my head and kisses me again and again.

“Forget it, Maaadeeee. Her love can’t save you.” He twists his body in a completely unnatural way and uncurls himself quickly as he shouts, “Get away!” He is shouting, but instead of his voice, my voice shouts it.

“Get away. Get away, Georgia. I’m dangerous right now. Move away from me. Stop hugging me!” And with that, he reaches forward and grabs Georgia by the shoulders and pulls her down onto her back while lifting my arms without my control. It was as if I was pushing her away.

He is operating me like a marionette. I look over at Georgia, and the man is stepping on her throat. “I can kill her, you know. I can kill the living. She’ll just be another shade of blue clogging up the universe of the dead. You see that?”

“Stop it!” I love her! I shout it in my head. Georgia is struggling to breathe, but she is smart enough to figure out that some invisible dead man is choking her somehow. She stands up quickly, and the man falls backward. My eyes open. I think, “So you’re not invincible, eh?” I surge forward and throw my whole body at him. I make myself hard like a tree. Georgia stands there, catching her breath and marveling at me. He’s been dead like me a lot longer. What else does he know about my ‘powers’?

“Babygirl...whoa.” I am okay. This is new. I didn’t know I could do this to my skin. With that, I shoot my fist like a tree limb through his chest and feel the cold dampness that is inside of him. It runs up the veins of my arm and fills my heart with nighttime. It hurts, but I am not going to relent. I have forced my fist through his chest so that his heart is free from his body. He gasps, looks off, and whispers,

“I am you.”

“You are not me!”

“No, Maddy.” He pulls himself free of my fist, puts his heart back in place, and pauses, pointing a trembling finger at Georgia. “I am her.” He then indicates to himself. “This is what will become of her.”

And with those last words, he disappears.

“Is he gone?” Georgia shudders and falls to her knees. I want to run to her, but I am flooded with regret. I feel the iciness of his blood on my skin, and I turn my head away from her. Nighttime fills my heart again. And then tears fall. It’s like the rain now. Terrifying. I bend over and grab the umbrella. I want to speak to her, but I can’t. I can’t say what he said. I can’t tell her. Not now. Not ever.