Prompt: Walking in the Woods with a Ghost

     Crunching leaves disturbed the serene surroundings of nightfall, save for the exasperated sigh coming from behind my crunching footfalls and the sound of crickets making music.

    “Am I bothering you? While I walk in the woods all by myself,” I turn to look at absolutely nothing behind me, but I hear a snort. “The least you could do was stop being a chicken and show yourself.”
    It's quiet as I walk a bit more, but a while later, I hear a grunt and grin. 

    “I don’t know about you, but I’m transparent.” A male voice grumbles.

    “Bull, I see right through you.” Another snort is when I start to see the outlines of the voice coming into slow, foggy focus. 
    The hazy body of a sarcastic ghost appears, hands in pockets. He stooped slightly forward, looking down at the moss before looking back up at me. He used to be a handsome living man, but one day, he just didn’t wake up, even though he says he woke up dead.

    Well, he woke up dead and attached to me. 

    “Your ghost puns are shit.” He deadpans.
    “Dying in your sleep is shit.” I flip him off as he breezes right through me, causing chill bumps to spread up my legs, arms, and even up the back of my neck. “Ugh! Why do you always do that to me?”
    “It gets a rise out of you.”

    “Until death, do your puns never part,” I trail behind his foggy form as he leads us further into the wilds of Ungoverned Wildwood, Georgia, “What are you out and about for tonight?”

    “I thought you had better plans than I did. I’d date, but everyone refuses to see me.” He slows, and I come to stride across the dark trail barely visible from the overhang above. “So, what are we doing?”

    “I think I found a cult.” I grin at him, lifting my camera and wiggling it.

    “You found a cult,” he nods slowly, “and you're photographing them?”
    “Nah, I’m photographing the abandoned recreation building they left behind because it’s creepy, and I’m pretty sure something fishy went down there. I feel it in my bones.”
    “That’s probably arthritis since you’re still alive, and you might want to get that checked out.”     t’s my turn to snort as I push some brush away before we come to stand on the side skirts of an open area where a very dark and ominous building is laid out.
    “And you couldn’t do this during the daytime because?”

    “Getting arrested isn’t part of my vacation plan, what? Are you scared?”

    “Of what? I am literally so dead. Nothing matters except for how dead I am.” He brushes off imaginary lint from his shirt as I unscrew my lens cap and slide it into my back pocket.
    “Well, do you want to see if the ghost hunters are full of it by trying to capture you on film?”

    “And put people out of their spiritual misery? Absolutely.”

Prompt: A Movement Of The Eyes

 There were only a few souls whose eyes could catch mine, along with my breath, and keep me in a suspended state of animation. Inanimation? Stunned stupidity? 

Whatever it was, his whiskey depths were like fly paper sticking me to the floor, keeping me glued to this very stupid spot. His eyes pinned me to a mental board for observation since the movement of his eyes caught me like the willing prey I was. 

It was just a Tuesday, and this feeling struck like lightning. I was brought up short, dead, and dumb when my friend walked straight into me and threw us both off-axis. 

“Girl, why?” Sasha snapped as I righted myself and my backpack, which I had thrown across one shoulder like a badass. 

“Uh,” I reply dumbly, I’ve got nothing. I’m more dumbass than badass right now. Her eyes retrace my gaze to the boy still in my line of sight.

“He’s your type?” She sounded surprised, but her look dripped sarcasm from every pore on her beautifully sculpted face. 

“What?”

“You heard exactly what I said.” She pushed me forward, but I couldn’t quite move yet, so I turned sideways and gave her a pleading look.

“He looked like he was going to talk to me.”

“He’s a million miles away, and there was no way he was going to talk to you.” She waves her hands in an effort to get me moving, but I bite my lip and whisper. 

“Not yet.”

“He’s not that special.” 

“Not to you, maybe, but his amber eyes call to my dark, wounded soul.” I sigh wistfully as Sasha makes a strangled sound in her throat.

“They’re brown.” She resorts back to snapping at me, “I bet he’s a big nerd that doesn’t even know your name, and you're mooning over him.”

“They’re not just brown; they’re warm, nice, and even soul-searchingly comforting .”

“And brown. No one likes brown anything.”

“That’s a lie. Brownies are brown. Chocolate and coffee, too.” I murmur. 

“The men who work at UPS are dressed in brown, and I ogle them from afar, but it doesn’t stop me from living my most authentic life.” She waves her hands again in exasperation. 

“See.” I lift a hand as I glance back to where the boy had been. He was no longer there, taking up beautiful space no more, was he.

“Damn.” I sigh, hand dropping. Hopeless.

“No fool would fall for a pair of pretty eyes. No matter the color.” She scoffed.

I only glanced her way for a moment before I felt my limbs weigh on me heavily. 

“You haven’t been struck by lightning then, is the simple explanation.” I back up, watching her before I spin and start walking. I hear her shoes tap on the ground as she rushes to catch up.

“I have to. But it’s never the eyes; it’s a bodily attraction.” She balls up her hands into fists and lifts them.

“It’s all in the eyes, this soul-deep connection when your eyes meet his, and they melt and meld like they were meant to be captivated for all of eternity.”

“So mine's sexual, and you’re soul-boning clueless men that have zero clue about you liking them.”

“Eh, basically.” I sigh.