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It was winter. Eli hated winter. Well, actually, fairy lights and hot chocolate and snowmen were okay, but what Eli hated was the cold. She hated it when she could see her breath and she was shivering uncontrollably.
This winter was bad. She'd just been kicked out of her home and now had to figure out how to not be cold in the middle of December without any heating or blankets or coats.
She was hungry.
It dragged on.
She made it so far too.
It was almost March.
Eli was cold and filthy and starving and cold.
In the end, it didn't matter. She went to sleep in a remotely warmer street one night when she really should have found a shelter.
It snowed that night.
The authorities found her the next morning blue and dead. They thought nothing of it. Just another victim of winter.
The current owners of Eli's old house were none the wiser to what had happened.
~~~*~~~
Eli woke up in her bed. Back at her house. She knew that that was impossible. She knew that it wasn't a dream. She got up and moved to open the door.
She walked through the door.
Something inside of her broke.
She sat in her hallway and cried and cried and sobbed and cried some more.
She couldn't leave.
~~~*~~~
She tried to leave. She tried to phase through the door.
The ghost slammed head first into the door. Eli tried to grab the handle to turn it and leave. Her hand phased through. Eli panicked and ran at the wall that separated the house from the back yard. she was in her yard and she was running at the fence. And she slammed into it.
She couldn't leave her property.
Eli watched as the family that moved in renovated and joked and was happy and alive.
Eli was always cold these days.
It made her want to scream
~~~*~~~
Eli was screaming. Just smashing at walls and screeching like a banshee. She lacked a throat to go raw. She lacked a voice to lose. She lacked lungs to run out of air. So, Eli took advantage of that and screamed. It seemed to have some effect on the family. At night at least. They would wake up screaming alongside her. They had nightmares.
Eli took that as a victory.
~~~*~~~
Once, the family was talking about repainting the walls of her house. Every paint choice had been very sentimental to Eli.
She slammed her hands on the table. It shuddered.
The family kept the paint job
Eli took it as a victory.
~~~*~~~
Eli got little victories all the time, but it never did anything, it never filled that hole in her chest where she wanted a beating heart. She just wanted to live again.
One day, she had a thought that maybe she could learn to live again when she finally moved on.
That thought was shut down.
She never did move on.