The mirror won't stop screaming.

She was pretty when we first got the apartment. One of the many things that came with the furnishing, as the agent had said, and even though I'd already been able to see all the things wandering around the apartment even then, Lia and I had been dirt broke and the rent had been dirt cheap, so we'd signed the lease anyway.

Back then, the mirror had been one of the easier things to look at. Pretty---in a faded sort of way, as if all the life had been bleached right out of her bones. Sallow brown skin and jet-black hair tumbling down her shoulders like a waterfall, honey streaking itself through her wavy locks every time the ten a.m. sunlight had hit the glass. Dark, sunken eyes like holes in her crumpled skull, the bags lining them sagging down to her cheeks. I remember thinking she'd looked more haunted than any spirit I'd ever seen---as if the things plaguing her were far worse than just ghosts.

It's not the mirror, I remind myself. It's the thing---the person in it.

It gets harder to see her as human each day. Especially when her hair's fallen away completely by now, leaving nothing behind but a flaking, teak-brown skull. No amount of daylight can lift the grey hue simmering beneath her veins or the way her eyes are nothing but holes now, twin voids of midnight seeping out of her face. Even her flesh's started crumbling lately, sloughing off brittle bones that look like they might snap off any second---or already have. I haven't seen her right leg in a week.

She loses more skin each time she screams.

"Fuck," I mumble, rolling over to check the time. The screen of the digital clock settled on the nightstand remains stubbornly black, and I let out a sigh loud enough for the thing inside to hear---I hope. "I said I was sorry for throwing you the other day. Can we call it even, please?" When the clock doesn't turn on, I barrel on. "Dude, I even left extra offerings out for you last night. Forgive me?"

When the clock finally flickers back to life, I exhale in relief. It's basic knowledge that there's no sense in getting attached to the ghosts in one's house, but as annoying as they can be, I find myself subconsciously taking notes of their little quirks. The thing in my digital clock likes mango green tea almost as much as I do. I'd even sacrificed my last bottle to the tiny shrine in our living room after its impromptu six a.m. awakening two days ago had led to me accidentally hurling it across the room in a sleep-deprived daze.

Leave them alone and they'll leave you alone, as everything I've ever read insists. Keep them happy and they'll keep you happy too, as what I've come to find out for myself proves.

Sneaking a quick glance at the neon green numbers hazily flitting across the screen, I blink the sleep away from my eyes enough to mentally register the glaring, overly bright digits. 07:00.

I stifle a groan.

"R!" I call. "Maria's screaming again!"

Before I can stumble out of bed and hobble out of the room---or maybe fall flat on my face halfway, because I've never been particularly good with mornings---the bedroom door swings open with a loud thud, crashing into the wall. It's no longer the pristine, eggshell white it had been when we'd moved in, and despite the numerous bare patches where paint's already flaked off, I still cringe reflexively when a small cloud of plaster flutters to the ground.

"I heard," Lia grumbles, rubbing her eyes. "I was hoping that I was still dreaming."

The first time I'd met Lia, she'd had too much grime streaking her face for me to make out her features beyond the tears rolling down her cheeks, lithe body thrown over a tiny ball of singed black fuzz. Six years older than me but so much more fragile, glass skin and glass eyes and glass heart, as if one touch would have made every dandelion spore of her drift into the wind. She hadn't had hands back then. Or arms. They'd been burnt off to the shoulder, gritty ash dripping off the remnants of her stumps and pooling at my feet.

What's your name? I'd asked.

I don't remember, she'd replied. Plaintive. Terrified. Sweet as the summer sky.

There's no trace of that sweetness in the Lia currently leaning in my doorway, the pink streak in her dark bangs matted in five different directions. I'd help her bleach it in exchange for setting me up with one of her younger co-workers. The date hadn't gone well. We'd gone for a movie, she'd laughed at all my dumb jokes over dinner, I'd manage to wrangle us a free dessert after the most lovely conversation with the cashier, and then I'd turned around to see my date staring at me with fear in her wide blue eyes---which had led to the horrifying realisation that what I'd been chatting with used to be human at best.

The girl still sidesteps me whenever I visit Lia at work.

I gesture to the mirror. "You do the honours?"

Lia lets out an exaggerated sigh and stomps as threateningly as a five-foot Taiwanese girl wearing Hello Kitty pyjamas can manage over to the mirror, placing her hands on either side of the ornate frame. At the sight of her, Maria---as I've learned from trying to reason with her in one of her rare, coherent moments---hesitates, her screams dying down. She doesn't have eyes anymore, but if she did, I'd imagine they'd be wide with apprehension, anger, and maybe---hope.

I stopped hoping a long time ago. Some part of me is glad the ghost in my mirror still does.

"Renee?" she asks. Quiet. So fragile it hurts, like a butterfly pinned to a wall, paper wings stripped away. What's left of her hands reach out towards Lia, and the tips of her fingers crumble into pixie dust, drifting away into the empty void her existence has been for longer than even I know.

Even though we do this every Tuesday, Lia's expression softens.

"I'm not Renee, Maria," she says faintly, squeezing her hand against the glass. Maria's fingertips move to fit themselves opposite Lia's, separated only by the crystal between them. Lia used to flinch at first. Now, she just stays, baby pink nails pressed up against fissured, cracking bone. "I'm Lia. And this is Cary. Renee's not here." I don't miss the visible bob of her throat as she swallows. "She's been gone for a very long time. We're sorry."

Maria stopped being able to produce tears a long time ago, but she breaks down wailing anyway. Crumples like a sheet of paper, skin flaking off her slate-grey bones. There's something stuck in her throat---something guttural, an abyss of dreams that died long ago, the fire where a million promises were cremated. Ash in her lungs and glass in her mouth and betrayal in her scream.

Lia keeps her hand there as Maria's sobs fill the house until her skeletal form finally explodes into dust, and the rest is confetti.

🥀

"That was brutal," Lia groans, flopping down on the couch. It creaks under her weight even though she doesn't even break forty-five kilograms. We need a new couch. "How do you do that nearly every day and laugh about it?"

I shrug. "You know how you stop getting scared after you watch too many horror movies? Kind of like that, but it's dead people walking around everywhere instead of bingeing all three Hostel movies in a row."

"Of all the gory movie franchises you could think of, why Hostel? Hostel was shit." When I move to settle next to her on the couch, Lia makes a noise of disagreement, but shifts away enough to let me braid her hair. Or at least make sure that it isn't ready for birds to begin starting a family on it, because at least one of us has got to practice proper grooming.

"Because that's the only one I watched." I'd gone through all three movies in one day and woken up to a girl with half her face burnt off standing next to my bed. Not fun, ten out of ten would not recommend. "My life's already enough of a horror movie as it is. Can't afford to give myself more reasons to piss my pants. Not that I'm the one who does the laundry, but I like to pretend that I'm a considerate person every once in a while."

Lia yawns, rubbing at her brown eyes. She still hasn't changed out of her Hello Kitty pyjamas, and I see no reason to tell her to. "Speaking of laundry, where's Salem gone?"

"Hunting, running, eating mice, mating season. I don't know. What do cats even do in their free time, anyway?"

"Besides throwing himself at you?"

I stick out my tongue at her. "You're just jealous that he likes me more than you."

"And to think that I'm his owner. That bastard doesn't have a loyal bone in his body."

I laugh, brushing my dark bangs away from my face. "Well, you know what they say, R. Cats choose their owners." I glance at the clock on the wall. This one isn't haunted. Maybe I should move this one into my room instead. "Anyway, don't you have work in an hour?"

Before Lia can reply, the chime of the doorbell slits through the air, slicing the comfortable almost-silence into a million pieces.

Lia shoots me a cursory glance. I sigh exaggeratedly, hauling myself off the sofa as it creaks with every movement. She'd handled Maria earlier. I owe her this one. Even if most eight a.m. callers never bring good news.

"Good morning," I greet as I swing the door open without bothering to peek through the peephole, placing a quick emphasis on the morning part in the often-futile hope that my visitor will get the hint. I'm expecting to see Salem---who has his own set of keys but never brings them with him---or even better, one of Lia's ridiculously hot co-workers. Worst case scenario, the doorbell-ringing ghost I dispatched last year is back for revenge, even though all I did was uninstall my client's doorbell so she couldn't ring it anymore.

Instead, it's a boy.

A cute boy, at that. He isn't particularly tall, maybe around my height, sporting a blue flannel jacket flung over his skinny frame and skin so pale it almost looks white. Dark brown hair falls into narrowed blue irises, his right eye covered completely. There's a scowl playing across his thin lips, and despite the hands shoved unceremoniously into his pockets, his back is stick-straight. Despite the pallour of his skin, the way he's still doing his best to retain his flawless posture no matter how much the foot tapping itself inecessantly against the ground gives away his inner turmoil lets me know he's as human as I am. Spirits don't try to mask their true feelings. I don't think they have enough life in them left to.

"Morning." It's a begrudging mumble forced between lips trying to keep themselves sealed as tightly as possible. His eyes---or at least, the one I can see---are cast towards the floor, avoiding my gaze completely. He really is cute. I love the ones who play hard to get.

"Are you one of R's new co-workers? She's not late yet, by the way," I point out.

"I have no idea who that is." Finally, he raises his head from the ground, the electric blue of his single exposed eye boring right through me. "I heard you can see them."

My heart stops.

"See what?" I chirp, doing my best to sound as clueless as I can. Lia says the dumb blonde act comes a little too easy to me. I say it's in my nature. Maybe I was a valley girl in a past life. "People? Yeah, my eyes are working fine. Did my optometrist send you? I know I haven't seen him in three years, but it's so sweet of him to check up on me. Do send him my love---"

"Them. Things," the stranger on my doorstep growls, putting a heavy emphasis on the second word, as if I'm supposed to know exactly what it means. I do, but I'm not going to tell him that. I promised myself I wouldn't take on any more requests. Not again. Not after---

I blink. "Yes, I can see objects perfectly fine too."

He hisses. "I'm not talking about your eyesight. You're the one who can see ghosts, right? My source told me to go to Number Sixty-Nine and look for a pale Asian guy with really dark eyes if I needed...help of that sort."

"I think you've got the wrong person!" I declare cheerily. "There are a lot of pale Asian guys with really dark eyes in this world, you know! In fact, there's one living just down the hall. His name's Jia Xing. Real sweet guy, actually, always brings me and R a cake when it's baking day. I can introduce you---"

The boy grits his teeth, and if looks could kill, I'd be set on fire and grilled on a spit right about now. With a Black Diamond apple in my mouth, obviously, because I deserve nothing but the best. Or maybe frozen into a Cary-shaped popsicle. He looks like he'd be a winter shade. "Look, I don't want to be here either, but can you stop playing dumb for a second and listen to me? I can pay."

"For my time? Well, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't really charge that way, but we do need a new couch," I wisp.

He sucks in a deep breath through his clenched teeth. For a moment, I worry he might start yelling at me. Then I spot the figure standing right behind him.

The thing about spirits is that they aren't always there. Sometimes, they materialise into thin air whenever they please. Sometimes, they hide in the shadows. Lurking. Watching. Waiting. Sometimes, they blend in with crowds, dissolving into just another face. Another human.

The other thing about spirits is that most of them are harmless, like the one in my alarm clock and Maria in the mirror. Annoying at worst. But then there's the vengeful ones. The evil ones. Or the ones who just woke up on the wrong side of the bed and decided they'd go terrorise some humans.

The ghost standing behind my eight a.m. visitor is definitely not harmless.

What I can make out of him is black and hazy, dripping in blood and gore from head to toe. Dried flecks of dark crimson decorate his shirt, flaking off his stringy grey hair with every step he takes. I can't see his face clearly, but his nose is evidently smashed, crushed right into his head until nothing remains but a sunken hole. His mouth swings open every time he takes a breath, blood spilling from between his teeth and down onto the floor. From where I'm standing, I can hear his heavy, rhythmic pants, growing more and more shallower as he approaches the boy on my doorstep.

Excitement.

My eyes firmly fix themselves on the glint of silver sprouting from his gnarled hands, wooden handle clasped between yellowed fingers curled into claws. An axe. An axe that he's raising over his head, inch by inch, slowly, slowly, slowly---

I don't think. I just move.

"What the fuck?" the boy yelps as I launch myself at him, sending us both crashing to the floor just as the ghost's axe arcs through the air where his head was just a second ago. "What's wrong with you?"

He lifts his head and his eyes widen instantly. Ah. So it must be revealing itself now. "What the fuck?" he repeats, voice pitching up an entire octave. His legs begin flailing, trying to scrabble out from beneath me, but I slam my hand into his hip, making him crumple back down with a low groan.

"Stay down!" I order, eyes pinballing around the otherwise deserted hallway. The man with the axe lets out a bellow of rage, hauling it back before swinging it down again. I duck just in time, flinging myself over the boy in a desperate attempt to shield him as much as possible.

My incense is in the house...so is my sage---ah, fuck it!

I reach under my shirt, yanking out the tiny Nerf gun Lia managed to rewire for me from where it's strapped to the thin cotton. Just as the ghost lifts his axe again, I pull the trigger---once, twice, thrice, fire.

His howl reverberates around the entire hallway as three bullets slam straight into the hand holding the axe. His palm crumbles into ash, and before he can react, I dive for the axe.

"Sorry, dude," I force out through gritted teeth, swinging the weapon back. It feels far too light in my hands---cold as ice, as if my fingers are slipping right through it. Like something that shouldn't have existed in the first place. "You picked the wrong place to follow this guy to."

I swing.

The ghost's head hurtles through the air, bottomless eyes going wide as a waterfall of blood drips from his mouth, viscera and poorly-severed tendons trailing from his neck. It lands on the floor with a soft thud, exploding into dust on impact. The stump where his head used to be twitches---once, twice, chunks of raw red meat exposed to the open air, and just as I'm wondering if I might have to attack him again, his body finally crumbles as well.

My heart's still running a marathon in my chest. I run my tongue around the molars in my mouth and taste metal. Blood.

"Shit," I mumble. "I really didn't want to have to do another job."

Slowly, I turn my head downwards. The boy is still sprawled out on the floor, bangs mussed enough to reveal a sliver of the electric blue of his right eye. His mouth gapes open and closed like a fish, before it finally settles on open.

"What the hell was that thing?" he pants. "What did you even do to it?"

I search the floor, hoping to spot the pink-tipped casings of the bullets I'd shot the ghost with. No such luck. The ground is empty. My stock's running low. I'll have to get Lia to make me new ones soon. "Nerf bullets packed with iron. Works like a charm against those things." I exhale heavily, feeling the weight of the world settle itself on my shoulders once more. "And as for what it was, I'm not exactly sure, but from what I know, my guess is that it's been living under your bed for a hot minute."

The boy pauses, before his mouth twists into a scowl once more.

"So much for being the wrong guy," he remarks.

Well. At least we'll be able to get that new couch now.

Before I can reply, Lia appears in the still-open doorway. "Cary? You good? I heard a lot of cursing---oh."

Lia regards the scene in front of her hesitantly---me still brandishing an axe at thin air, our early morning visitor glaring daggers at me from where he's sprawled out undignifiedly on the ground. Right in front of her eyes, the axe in my hands crumbles away into dust, trickling through my fingers and dissolving before it can even hit the ground.

"So, uh," she starts. "Does this mean I get to call in sick to work today?"

CARY: Is this thing on?

[He grabs the plastic bottle of mango green tea in front of him, shaking it violently before tapping it on the cap in quick, rhythmic pulses.]

CARY: I guess not. Should have known he'd be too cheap to buy an actual mic.

[He fiddles with the candle in front of him, careful not to accidentally extinguish the flame. On the table, more candles, too many for Cary to count, line the chipped wood in neat rows, blazing with fire as golden as the morning sun.]

G: You really shouldn't touch those.

CARY: Oh, look who finally showed up! [He stretches his arms behind his back, yawning exaggeratedly.] I've been waiting for hours.

G: You've been here for five minutes, and two of those were used to help yourself to another bottle of...whatever that is.

CARY: You know what that is.

G: I prefer to pretend I don't so you don't make me fund your addiction.

CARY: [With a dramatic pout and a loud sigh that blows his dark bangs away from his face.] Spoilsport. I practically survive off these things, you know?

G: There are many better obsessions to have.

CARY: But this is the one I got blessed with, so c'est la vie. Shall we get this party started? How's the weather in your world? Seen any cute boys lately, G? Or cute girls. Or cute anyone. I'm really not picky. Speaking of cute guys, the dude that broke into my house this morning was actually pretty hot, but he's so mean. I saved his life and the first thing he does is interrogate me---

G: Why don't you start by introducing yourself?

[Cary stops short, the colour momentarily draining from his face. He lets out a nervous chuckle, fiddling with the bottle in his hands.]

CARY: Already? Don't you want to, you know, catch up for a bit? Chat about the weather? [When he receives no reply, he exhales loudly.] Fine. I'm Cary Leong, nineteen years old, blood type O---

G: You know what I mean.

[Cary frowns, looking disgruntled. Despite his evident efforts, his fingers tremble against the plastic of his mango green tea, his other hand tugging nervously at his sleeve.]

CARY: Does this count as one?

G: Unfortunately so. You have a few to go through today, so---

CARY: I should get started. Right. [He unscrews his bottle and tilts his head back, taking a tentative gulp.] The third eye is often regarded as a doorway to the spiritual world. When one possesses a third eye, they are believed to have the ability to see creatures from the other world.

[Cary pauses. Takes another sip of his drink. Squeezes one eye shut in a dramatic wink---or at least attempts to, considering how both eyes close instead by mistake.]

CARY: My name is Cary Leong, and I have a third eye.

[The candle in front of him flickers---once, twice, thrice---before it goes out with a quiet hiss, leaving nothing but smoke behind.]

word count: 3340
total word count: 3340

this chapter was actually supposed to be out yesterday, but unfortunately, i came down with a cold after all the CNY festivities and slept for about 16 hours instead of writing. so yeah. but!!! it's done!!! and i've hit the round 1 milestone and more with just 1 chapter 😭

haunted hour with cary leong is a new thing i'm trying out! as i said, while everything in this book is fictional, most things are based off real superstitions and creatures. so i decided, instead of having a boring wikipedia ass explanation in my author's notes, why not have my main character explain the lore behind each spirit himself? with the help of G, of course. and who's G? well, you'll find out soon ;)

do let me know what you think of this chapter! it's been 3 years since i last wrote in first person (YEAH LMAO I'M NOT KIDDING like who even writes in first person on ao3??? i obviously don't) so i'm slooowly getting back into the flow of it, haha. feel free to share any thoughts, constructive criticism, point out any spelling errors, etc etc.

good luck to all my fellow onc participants! if i'm not already in your votes/comments section, do let me know what your entry is so we can support each other! and as always, have a fantabulous day, and i hope you're enjoying Pretty Dead Things so far!

xoxo, alex