Untitled ( Part 7 ) Ghouls

I have decided to call them Ghouls.



I can't think of a better way to describe how they look and how they make me feel but they make me feel like somebody is tying a knot in my stomach the way you would tie up a pair of shoe laces.


I have never spoken my Wombday words in front of anybody else before but I had to. She was there and her ghoul was there at the same time and I had no choice but to let him become part of our secret conversation. Of course it was all deeply forbidden. Nobody is allowed to speak their words to more than one other person. And on Wombday it's Mentha. It's always Mentha because she holds my hand and doesn't let go of it.


' You feel anything?'


I felt guilty straight away for asking a question. You never ask a question because then they are forced to waste their three words on answering your question instead of thinking up their own words. I could feel myself going red and I tried to apologise inside my head, in the hope that she would hear me. In the hope that a Crackle really had given her the gift of mindspeak.


I really was pulling at straws though and by the look on her ghouls face he knew what I was thinking.


'I feel nothing.'



I felt bad all the way back down the colourdoors so I gripped her hand tighter than I have ever done before in the hope that it would be a kind of apology. I felt terrible and I would have to wait another week so that she could say her next three words to me.


Words are precious. We don't have much else. Except on Exposure Day but I would feel bad all week for what I said.


I'm sorry 


I screamed in my head.


I'm sorry.


If  only she had the gift. If only she could hear me and we would be ok the two of us until next week. But he could hear me. I was sure of it. Her ghoul. I could see it in his eyes, his dark eyes. Eyes that looked through me as if he was looking at somebody behind me and not me.


But maybe he was. Maybe I had my own on my back and I just couldn't see it or wasn't supposed to.