A/N: Quick heads-up, this is mildly depressing. Otherwise, it's just another one of my strange pieces of writing - which you're probably quite familiar with by now.

Odd

He wanted to be odd.

He used to be a she, but that was back when he was normal – a normal kid who said and did normal things.

But he wasn't normal anymore.

He had wispy, white hair that looked like it was made of snow. His skin was so pale that you could see the faded blue and red patterns of what lay underneath. His jaw was sharp, but his features were soft. His eyes were the most intriguing of all – people often described them to be the colour of a raindrop on a fresh leaf when it was reflecting a ray of sunlight.

However, they hadn't shone that way in a long time. The spark of life in their gleam was gone – he had become empty.

He was following the cracks in the pavement while he walked. People stared like he wouldn't notice it. Like he was nothing but a shell of a person – beautiful without, but hollow within. He paid them no attention as usual.

This was what he wanted, wasn't it? To be odd? He had wanted to have everyone judging him as much as they possibly could while he went on existing the way he wanted to exist. What was it to them if he wanted to be a boy? What was it to them if he wanted white hair?

What was it to them if he wanted to be strange? If he couldn't live in his dreams, he might as well bring his dreams down to reality.

All he desired was a taste of infinity.

Just a miniscule lick of how it felt to be unreal.

His mother said it was because he was depressed. That he didn't have enough friends at school. That he didn't spend enough time out of the house.

She was wrong.

He had so many friends – endless clusters of companions. He just didn't want them.

It wasn't that he didn't go outside into the open enough, either, because he loved the outside. He would give anything to stand under the blue sky and feel the wind stroke his cheek for the rest of his life.

He'd rather a crying sky than a smiling one, but he didn't mind either way. There was nothing he disliked about being in nature.

He stepped into a puddle of water and looked down at the soaked ends of his black skinny jeans.

Skinny.

People called him that a lot.

He had lost a lot of weight since the... 'transformation'. He didn't want to feel alive anymore. He didn't want to feel his thighs touching or his arms brushing his sides. He hated it when his skin crinkled and he'd feel the folds at the base of his neck when he lolled his head backwards. He knew it wasn't because there was extra fat there – he knew it. He didn't need anyone telling him that.

He just didn't want it there. It made him human. He didn't want to be human.

A low growl rippled the atmosphere and he looked up on impulse. The clouds had become a dark grey, floating low in the sky.

He liked the rain.

He even liked the sound of the thunder rumbling, like a beast that was hiding behind the grey clouds. He thought lightning was beautiful – a streak of brightness cutting through the thick haze of a storm.

He wasn't depressed. He'd know if he was. Wouldn't he?

Did he want to kill himself?

Well, he wanted to die.

But that was something entirely different, wasn't it?

Everyone wanted to die on this planet. His friends said so every day like it was nothing. Whether it be because of an exam they hadn't studied for or because their crush didn't reciprocate their feelings, they all wanted to die – all the time.

Surely, he was no different in that case. It was probably the only human thought he'd ever had – the wish to just die.

But he wasn't here because of that. Well, it was partially the reason, but the truth was something else entirely.

He'd met a ghost.

He was still a girl back then – just a normal girl making her way to school. At least, on the outside. He was always himself on the inside, even before he'd become what he was now.

He remembered seeing an abandoned art gallery on the way. He'd never seen it before. They'd moved there only recently and it was the first time he'd bothered to pay attention to that part of the street.

He didn't know what it was that made him divert from his path and approach the building. Fate? No, it wasn't fate. If it was fate, something life-changing would have happened from his entering the odd place.

What happened in there, rather than changing it, managed to end his life.

Once he'd stepped inside, he had seen that there were still paintings on the walls. Most of them were smothered with dust and the paint had worn away to reveal the ancient canvas underneath. There were tattered rags draped over some of the works, unsuccessfully trying to protect their beauty from the dirt and debris in the air.

He remembered wandering further in, drawn to the energy that seemed to live inside the walls and the masterpieces hung on them.

All he could remember was staring into the eyes of a boy in one of the portraits before everything went black and he'd been transported into this world – a world of the half-dead.

Somewhere between the journey, he met the ghost that had granted him his wish. He could no longer remember who they were. Not even the sound of their voice when they'd spoken to him.

Their words, however, he recalled.

'You're dead,' they'd said at first. He was never one to react too much to such news – it was something that often scared his family a lot – so he made no projection of being surprised or shocked.

He had asked how and the ghost had answered, 'In a special way, don't worry.'

He didn't ask any more questions about his death – curiosity wasn't that strong of a feeling in him at that moment.

'What do you wish to take with you once you leave the mortal world?' they had asked him next.

He had taken a while to ponder in it. There were no materialistic possessions he wanted and, if it was possible, he did not wish to take a person along with him either.

He didn't mind taking nothing even.

So, he'd experimented and wished to take the body of the boy he was now, in replacement of the body he had had in the mortal world. And so, that was what he'd been given. He hadn't expected it to happen. He was just being his usual self and saying whatever came to his mind without considering the consequences.

He was not the normal human being he'd so detested being – he was an immortal boy. He had become his desired version of a person he no longer knew.

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A/N: Yeah... My usual weirdness is pretty clearly portrayed in this part. Vote or comment your thoughts, please. I'd really appreciate it. - PBJ