James and Angela || Probably More Bad Things
Sometimes the breathers talked about near-death experiences, when they’d endured a seemingly fatal situation and somehow survived. Angela was pretty sure that she was having a near-life experience. When she was with James, she forgot that she was dead and miserable. She forgot that she was supposed to be the bitchy girl with the sassy comebacks. He made her feel like her heart was beating and like she needed to breathe and feel the wind whipping at her hair. She’d never been so excited by another person before. She didn’t believe in God, but James was a gift from someone. Meeting him felt like a present from the universe for enduring on earth for so long. Not like she had a choice.
And to be honest, these days, seeing James was her only happiness. When she was alone, she was constantly replaying the night with Sean in her mind. All she could think of was the pile of dead bodies, growing and growing by the minute. She remembered Rachelle, the sweet girl who Sean had made her kill with her own hands. Then there were the countless other nameless bodies who she had either killed herself or watched die, paralyzed to do anything to stop it.
She turned on an old radio in the attic as she got ready, refusing to let herself think about it. She wanted the date to be nice, and she refused to let Sean ruin it. She slipped on a black bandage dress that hugged her small frame and came down only a few inches past her underwear. It was her favorite dress because she liked the looks that men gave her when she wore it; like they’d do anything she told them to, like they were putty in her hands.
She’d left a note under James’ door the day before telling him to wear something nice because she didn’t want to be the only one to look hot. She wanted to do something special with him, but she knew from experience that there were only certain places that ghosts could go to in Bentley, and most of those places were not necessarily fancy. She slipped into her black high heels and spread a light amount of makeup over her face. She didn’t bother to do anything special with her hair because she knew that it would just blow in the nighttime wind.
She left her attic and walked down to James’ room. She knocked on the door and called, “ready to fuck this town up?” through the door. “We can do literally whatever you want.”
