Whitman

Whitman walked down the hall in between the men and women, through them even, but don't tell them, they'd never believe you. It's not that Whitman is/was a ghost, it's that Whitman was Whitman, and no one held any inkling of who or what Whitman was.

Sarah was crying, Whitman noticed. She sat there, in the middle of the hall, nested near the center floor closets, right between the water fountain with the chewing gum on the spout, and the other fountain that only spouted warm water. She wiped her tears on the sleeve of her pink hoodie, then wiped her running mascara with a tissue she picked from her purse. Whitman urged to ask Sarah about her troubles, but no one ever heard Whitman. He could yell until his voice cracked, but no one had ever heard him; not since that night.

It was a night Whitman replayed in his mind like the sun rises once a day, and even revisited more often than celebrating anyone's birthday. He could hear the men with knife-knees stalking their way up the stairs. The window was nailed shut, the door was only wooden, and the rest of the children had stopped screaming long, long ago. In fact, he had smelled burning meat earlier in the evening, shortly after the screaming ended. They were all out, and Casey had been killed when she returned from the grocery store. Whitman saw it through the window. The meat she had bought was still outside, thawing on the sidewalk, next to the bloodstain that used to be Casey.

Sarah ushered herself up from the ground, swung her purse around her shoulder, and like everyone else that day, walked past Whitman. Her tears had stayed, and a smile had won over her expression. Whitman turned around. Sarah was in the arms of her boyfriend, Chaz, or Chad, or Bill; one of those.

Whitman let them go, and continued down the corridor, persuing the attention that he never hoped to need, but now desperately desired. It was the only way he was going to transition from obscurity to memeory, reaching existence, and abandoning it as soon as he arrived.