I Love The Idea Of Ghosts Not Being Dead People But Just Places Where Time Is Kind Of Thin

fish song

Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, Chen Chen

truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.

the year was Two Thousand and twenty-four. I took a puff of my Electronic-Cigarette, inhaling the vapours. my mobile terminal buzzed in my pocket, a flat slab of microchips and glossy touchscreen. I ignored it....... probably another Electronic-Mail

Is it really sacrilegious if I'm Right?

A young student's selfie

Early summer, just before our last summer holidays, we got into a discussion with a teacher at recess.

He had a topic for us. Evidence. An opinion.

One more year and we'd be done with school. We felt so mature.

His discussion? Why, young girls and body images of course.

Oh, we were so in. He started on the young girls in his class, how they dressed. How they walked. How social media was trapping them. We nodded along, thinking we were talking about the same thing.

We thought we were talking about Instagram's clutch on our young sisters. The twelve year olds with eating disorders. The sleekly styled hair of middle schoolers with baby fat and round eyes.

He pulled out a photo.

A girl. We'd seen her. It was a good pic, her at eye level with a statue in a museum they'd gone to. A class trip. She'd asked this teacher to make the picture of her, all golden curls and brown lashes.

Look at what I had to photograph, he said. Showing us the lace bra peeking through her shirt, the pose she stroke like she was twenty-five.

We said all the right things. How horrifying it was. That society shouldn't do this to girls. Satisfied, he left, pocketing his phone.

That was two months ago.

Someone realised it yesterday. That class trip to the museum was four months ago.

He had kept the picture of her on his camera roll.

Lace bra and baby round eyes.

anon hate

Witty response

YOU WILL FIND A WAY!!!! YOU WILL FIND A WAY . You will find a WAY ….. you WILL find a way . You will find a way you will find a way……!! YOU WILL FIND A WAY YOU WILL FIND A WAY you will find a Way you will (find) a way you will find. a way you will find a way YOU WILL FIND A WAY!!!!!!!