From The Other World, By The Invisible

By Sara Fathima

I've known about their existence for as long as I can remember. Just like the sky that ran over us and the land that tethered us and the trees that gave us air, they've always been there. Their existence was just another constant, like many other things in our lives.

They don't know but we're always there, watching. They can't see us but we can see them. Some believe in our existence, some don't. They call us 'Ghosts'. I've heard many tales of us, written by them. Tales and songs about our grotesque bodies and our lust for blood and our hatred for them. Songs and tales that send their children shrieking and hiding, as if their wails and flimsy covers could ever truly protect them from our kind, from our so-called sharp teeth and all-knowing minds.

I've always been fascinated by their kind. Though most of my peers outgrew their curiosites and have come to terms with humans, I couldn't, for the life of me, look past their world, the human world. So different, yet so close.

It's always been thrilling for me to watch them go about their lives, these aggregates of tender flesh and warm blood and moon white bones. Seeing them struggle, succeed and fail, kill and get killed, love and be loved. These arrogant beings that changed the world as they pleased, who truly believed in their solitary existence.

It's funny sometimes, watching them live on in their own heads, oblivious to everything but themselves and when it's not funny, it's exasperating, it's humiliating to be not seen, not felt, not heard. I know it's not their fault, my kind has told me so numerous times, but it still stings when I see them walk by me without so much as a second glance.

Sometimes, I wonder if they ever get tired of being. Of being there. Of being present. Of being clusters of flesh and bone. Of having shadows. I wonder if they ever want to disappear and not be seen for as long as they live. Because then I'd have someone to trade places with.

Because I want to be seen by them. I want to be one of them. Sure, I'm seen and heard by my kind and I love my kind. I love my family and our home by the sea, but I want to be seen by them. I want to be heard by them. I want to be loved by them but alas, my wishes will never be nothing more than wishes.

I still remember the first time I saw a human. I was young and was playing outside our home when one came running towards me. I was afraid that one of them had seen me. Afraid that they'd hunt us down because that's what my father had said. He said never to linger near them. But then, it just went off running into the water. I watched it play in the water, its little head bobbing up and down as the waves hit and then…..nothing.

I waited for so long, trying to find its little head covered in pale skin but it never came out. I didn't know where it had gone. It just disappeared. Then another human came running towards the water, shouting and searching the water frantically. The new human looked terrified and the shouting grew louder and louder, then all of a sudden, so many of them came and started searching the waves. I couldn't help but watch. I ignored my mother's calls and just sat there watching the humans. Then, at dusk they brought out the little human that I'd seen. Its pale skin now possessed a bluish tint, its body looked swollen. Thin, intricate blue lines ran under its skin. It looked….strange, not at all like how it had looked like a while ago.

When they brought the little human out, the other human was hysterical, weeping and screaming and thrashing against the hold of others. At this point, all of my family was out and watching, my mother hugged me and my siblings close as the human cried.

The little human was then covered in a white cloth and carried away. It was that day that I first learned about human death. It was as terrifying as it was mesmerising. And since then I've seen countless humans fall victims to their inevitable deaths in other and much more gruesome ways. But even after all this time, I still think about that little human and weep into my invisible hands.

Dead people. Dead humans. Many tales and songs by humanity depict my kind as spirits of dead people but that's not the truth. We are not spirits, we are our own entities, living our life alongside humans. We do not have gory features, we are shadow and smoke, we're invisible.

We live by the sea and rivers, we inhabit the heavy branches of trees and walk on the creaky floors of long abandoned houses. We are everywhere. We watch from windows and listen through thin walls.

Humanity fears us, fear so strong, they run from the dark and hide in the light…it's hard not to laugh at their naivety, hard not to prove them wrong. Many of us ignore, but some are too evil, their beings too tainted, their invisible souls darker than the shadows humans run from and so, they toy.

They toy with the weak. Isn't that how it's supposed to be? The strong triumphing over the weak? We see it all around us, in the blue waters and the green forests, we see nature selecting, choosing, sinking its talons and picking out and colouring the earth crimson with the blood of the weak. So why shouldn't we do so with humans?

They torture them. Mess with their tangible minds, their feeble thoughts. I've seen so many of my kind drive them to madness, I've watched them rip their hair out, watched them lose themselves to their invaders. Watched them tear open their loved ones and chew on their innards and drink their blood to sate their insatiable, all consuming hunger. I've witnessed the light in their eyes fade into chaos. Unholy and disgusting chaos.

I've seen many invisibles fall in love with flesh and skin, love that shattered their souls, love that shattered the lives and minds of the ones they loved.

Not all of us, not all of us delight in their pain, but there's evil in us too, evil that consumes some of us wholly.

But the evil that shakes the ground beneath my feet and makes the sky weep is not rooted in me or my kind. It is rooted in them, darkening their very bones and running in their veins. I've seen some of them, seen their empty lifeless eyes, seen the devil in them, seen greed and envy swallow their beings.

I've watched them command my kind, I've watched the evil in them clutch the evil in my kind, watched them mould our wickedness and bind them to hair and bones of the ones they want damned.

I've watched humans possessing ghosts and abuse the ones they loathed.

When I lay under the endless sky, sometimes, I think of him, of what could've been, how the light in his eyes dimmed, faded. How his skin folded upon itself and ashend, how his little shoulders hunched, how his teeth fell, how his young bones turned to dust and how his blood drained, how his flesh darkened, thinned. How painful and slow his last breath was. I will never forget, for as long as I live, I will never forget the way his chest heaved and sunk, the way his eyes glazed over and the way the warmth left him, along with his tortured and dulled soul. All of it. All of it because he wasn't his father's child.

Maybe one day, maybe I can let it all go, let go of the pain and sorrow of their lost lives that seeps into mine, grief that shadows my invisible being, but for now, it beats every second in the place of a heart I was never given.

By Sara Fathima