There seemed to be a difference in the dead you saw.

Some were alive and could communicate with you, while others were just corpses that you would see as if the crime or accident had just happened, sometimes the corpses would seem very decayed too, just like the one at your friend's house.

At first, it was just it was just corpses that you were able to see, which really fucked you up when you saw them every now and then at different locations whenever you left you left your house. The first times you screamed, as far you can remember or have been told by your parents, but soon it seems you just got used to it as no one else were able to see what you kept on seeing. It didn't scare you as it did the first times after encountering new corpses, but then again it wasn't a sight that you looked forward to seeing either.

You could best describe it as getting sick, or getting injured. It sucks when it happens, but you can't really do all that much about it, and the only way around it is to limit yourself in the locations that you went. That's how you ended up becoming a shut-in, locked away in your room on your computer for whenever you came home from school or had free time on the weekends.

That's to say you weren't an emo loner or someone who had terrible serious issues that needed therapy, or at least you hoped so.

The screaming parts were just seen as a phase to your parents. Like sex or bad words, seeing dead people was something that you never really felt comfortable talking about with them.

In fact, at first, you thought everyone could see it, and they were just fucking with you when they said that they had no idea what you were talking about when you pointed at the corpses. It took months before you knew that it was just your own personal disease.

A disease that you knew would probably never get cured.

Waking up from bed, in a tired daze, you looked at your phone to see that it was Friday, and you had woken up an hour early before school. This was pretty unusual, since most of the time you would stay up till one or two a.m. and would usually miss the morning bus.

That had to mean you only got like four or five hours of sleep.

"Shit."

Taking the time that you had, you got yourself showered and dressed and went downstairs to make yourself some breakfast before you would walk to your bus stop.

Your school was close enough that walking could be an option.

Although usually, you run into a few car crash victims along the sidewalk, most of the time their heavily disfigured or heavily weeping.

You don't know exactly why you didn't notice them when you were younger, though you chalked it up to the assumption that you were always playing on your Gameboy on car rides or something.

There have been a few instances in which you've spoken to the dead, although most of the time they never ended well.

It seems that they're trapped into a sort of box, each box differentiating in size to reasons unknown to you. If they're lucky they have someone to talk to if the place they died has another ghost, or they died in pairs. When there's a lone ghost, however, most of the time they look miserable or heavily distressed.

You learned never to make eye contact, as that was a sure fire way that they knew that you could see them. There was one time that one on a road you traveled on was screaming at you, and that had caused other ghosts in the area to also look over at you as he screamed that you could see him.

You don't ever go on that road now on the way home, in fact, you stay try your best to stay away from that part of the city.

Though there a bit of you that was ashamed for being afraid of ghosts. If this was something you were going to live with for the rest of your life then you had to start facing it head on, or at least that's what you wanted to think.

You walk to school

You always wanted to actually try to walk to school again as you used too, but each time you ended up talking yourself out of it and putting it off until later. You didn't know what actually made you do it today though, maybe because you had been so bored for the past few weeks that you wanted something to spark your mood somewhat. It seems that you always forget though that you always regret your purposeful encounters with ghosts until it's too late to turn back.

Grabbing your bag from the counter after finishing the last of your breakfast, you call out to your mom that you're leaving and head out the front door.

Usually, you could probably get to school quicker depending on your pace compared to the bus with all the stops that it had to make. That would only be if you took the back alleys though, and that wasn't really the point of this walk.

Making your way onto Bradley Ave. you spot the first ghost around thirty yards ahead, facing the opposite direction from you while just huddling down on its knees amidst the oncoming traffic.

This was one of the ghosts who stuck out to you the most. As it was one of the first road ghosts that you had ever encountered. The other part of it was the fact that its face was heavily disfigured of what you remember. One of the eyes was bulging out like a stress toy, and half of its upper scalp seemed to be completely gone, giving the impression that it painted half of its head red sloppily. You assumed the reason what it was huddled was partially due to the fact that when you had seen it stand, its limbs seemed oddly bent in some angles, and when it had called out to you it hadn't moved at all, but instead crouched down into an animalistic like reflex.

It's not really like you could communicate with it all that much either with it being in the middle of an avenue and all, you would look like a madman just talking to no one or be mistaken for someone who was trying to jaywalk across.

Nevertheless with all these thoughts going into your mind, it was already too late to turn back now, otherwise, you would have been late to first period.

Walking casually, you tried not to make all that much eye contact, and instead were only going to engage if the creature noticed you or called out.

The closer you came to it, however, the more you started to regret what was about to happen, time seemed to slow a little bit as you could tell that you were now in the peripheral vision of the spirit.

What surprised you though was the silence.

It didn't call out to you.

You could have sworn that it knew you were able to see if from past interactions, and when it came to ghosts who knew they always called out.

This sparked curiosity, but also a bit of hesitation. The curiosity tempted you to immediately look over at the ghost to see what was up.

Waves of regret immediately came over your entire body and mind, as the two of you both met eye contact immediately.

Crouched down in its usual stance, its head was tilted at a total 90-degree angle as it gave you an eye to eye stare. Because of the dis-figuration and tilt of its head, you couldn't tell that much of the facial expression it was making, though you could only guess it was of confusion or wonder, though even that was hard to tell as one of its eyebrows were completely gone with red revealed flesh in its place.

You interaction

Silence took over the air between the two of you as no words were spoken. You could tell that it was fear that you felt, but you didn't know why. It couldn't get to you, and it couldn't harm you, but you still felt a tinge of fear.

"I remember you."

With little cars currently passing by, you didn't really have all the much trouble hearing its voice clearly. It had almost no emotion in it, though it sounded almost normal, as you wouldn't think the person was dead. It didn't say anything after, seemingly waiting for you to reply.

"I remember you too." You reply with a voice crack, in which you started coughing to get your vocals straight.

"You can....see me?" You couldn't tell if that was confusion or a bit of desperation in how that was said, but you nodded back silently.

Seeing your confirmation, the ghost started to drag it's body with its arms, slowly to where you were. Seeing the task made you feel pity for the poor thing with how much trouble it seemed to have had.

It took about half a minute for it to finally reach its barrier, which seemed to be the sidewalk that was next to the road. This led the spirit to be a few feet away from you, in which you could now clearly see it's entirety. It was a girl, or so you thought. Besides the missing hair and bulging right eye, the right side of her cheek was torn off exposing dark golden teeth that were blackened by plaque or insects, while her nose was also crooked the right side.

As hideous as it all was, you couldn't help to not look away. The fact that you couldn't stress you out a bit.

"How long have you been here?" This was the first question that came to your mind, and it was the first one blurted out of your mouth without thinking.

"I think...It'll be six or seven months soon..." You could hear the immense sadness and emptiness that came with those words and pauses. The whole situation was already making you feel extremely uncomfortable, but you couldn't really walk away from this now, or at least it wouldn't be right.

You didn't really know what else to say though, questions started swarming into your mind, but which ones to ask and how to ask them made you freeze before anything could leave your mouth.

"Are you leaving soon…?" She asked you before you could come up with anything.

"Ah...yeah, I have s-school so…" The words stuttered out of your mouth as you didn't want to say it impolitely, but then again you felt horrible as her face reacted to these words. She looked at the sky for a bit before half smiling at you.

"Thanks for talking to me, you can go now so you won't be late."

Even though she gave you the permission, your legs were moving. There had to be more you could do to help this poor soul. What really worried you thought was how calm she was, she didn't scream like the other ones, but she seemed just as broken nevertheless, maybe even more so.

You stay

You didn't move, but instead, help your ground as the ghost continued to eye you.

"What's your name?" You ask, a little more steadily then your wordings from before.

The ghost stood motionless her a second as her pupils moved from side to side, as if thinking heavily on the answer to your question.

"It was Gwen."

"Well, I'm sure it wouldn't be all that bad if you still decide to go by Gwen." You joke a little with a smile.

The humor doesn't seem to be returned though as her face shows no emotion, making you feel a bit awkward for what you just said.

"You're not going to go then...?" Gwen asks in a lower voice than before.

You shake your head. "I usually don't like going to first period anyway, It wouldn't be all that bad if I just killed time here with you for a while.

You knew your mom and dad would seriously have your ass if they found out you were ditching, but you would worry about that at a later time.

"I see.." Gwen replies as she makes direct eye contact with you once again.

"Do you have anything you would like to talk about, anything you'd like to ask me?" You had run out of things to say to her so you decided it would be best to let her do the talking while you came up with more topics in the back of your head for later.

"What grade are you in?" This was probably the first time you could directly hear emotion in her voice, which was no doubt curiosity.

"Oh, I'm a senior, this will be my last year before I graduate."

"I was a Junior...I think I know school was just starting though." Gwen replies with her own memories.

"Oh really, did you know which school you had gone too?" you asked a little too quickly since you were interested if you went to the same school or not.

"I don't know..."She says sorrowfully, breaking eye contact and looking down.

For someone who has been dead for less than a year, this girl seemed to forget things rather quickly. You had met one or two ghosts who seemed rather old, and even they seemed to have more recollection about their past than she did. You didn't want to pry too much though, as the questions seemed to be bothering her somewhat given on how they were making her act.

You decided that it would best to come up with questions on your own.

You how did you die?

"So. how did you die...?" You asked carefully.

You weren't expecting to get an immediate or happy answer, but her reaction to what you just said startled you as her whole body started to shake vigorously. Her working eye turned white while the bulging one looked dead in place.

"Woah hey, are you o-?" You tried to reach out to her with your hands, but she swiftly pulled her body back from your grasp as she let out a shriek.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!"

Your eardrums are stunned as you take a step back and cover them until her shrieks die down.

Looking at her face, made the breakfast this morning feeling like it was about to come right back out.

Her face seemed more deformed and rotten than it had before. The bulging eye was replaced with an empty socket, her entire nose was missing leaving a grey crevice with a few maggots entrenched within. Her left hand was gone, and white bone was visible with hints of flesh still attached to certain areas. What clothes she was wearing looked extremely raggedy and torn, more than any homeless person you've ever come across.

Before her appearance didn't affect you all that much, now though you could barely look at her longer for two seconds before you wanted to vomit again.

You rage

You backed away slowly as her body kept on transforming in that of a decayed skeleton, but as soon as she noticed this she seemed to charge directly at you.

Never has a ghost been able to touch or affect you physically, you still started to instinctively run away, but she was faster and caught up to you before you could leave her boundary.

You felt something enter inside of you, and that really freaked you the fuck out as you started to hold your head in pain.

"HNNGGG." You let out a large yelp in pain as your ears were immediately pierced by a woman shrieking, causing you to fall to your knees and start wreathing around as you couldn't escape what kept on screaming.

This took place for around a whole minute, finally though it stopped, and everything was quiet, totally quiet.

Before that, though you heard a small *pop*, and with that you lost all your senses.