Levi/Theo Meeting (LEVI POV, PART ONE) (Patreon)

The residents of Sleepy Birch thought the house at the end of Sunny Plaza, home 1478, was haunted.

Maybe it was.

Leviticus Blue was born into a family of faith, a family where Leviticus was law, and that name was given to him like an oath to be broken.

Leviticus was born to be blasphemous, and he knew this. He grew older and then came the treacherous gift of love, and that love centered his husband — who was told to be just as sinful as he. Some teachings carry, and some teachings don't, and that's why sometimes he feared this love, but he never feared things like ghosts.

Not even after his husband disappeared over a year ago, a penned and tear-warped note left in his absence, a note that sounded a lot like the end. A note that, to Leviticus, was goodbye. That absence grew in Leviticus. It festered like an open wound.

Leviticus was used to wounds, though. He cleaned it daily, washed it out — he made sure not to dismiss it. He wouldn't let it grow infected and ugly and rotten, because that was not what his spouse was. But he would not stitch it closed. It wasn't ready to close. It lingered full of warm thoughts, of thoughts like — his husband's crooked smile, his low laugh, his bow after a particularly prideful performance.

Not even with a home in Sleepy Birch, looming and vine-covered and full of secrets, did Levi think of ghosts. A spirit was just hope.

Yes.

Hope of something lost returning like a toy boat set out to sea. A ghost was a belief that that boat would return, would come home full of miraculous tales of overcoming and sights that would never be witnessed by anything other than an insignificant ship out at sea.

Leviticus knew this. He didn't believe in apparitions. He instead, unwillingly thought of old schoolings. He thought of sin and how he was undoubtedly paying for his.

Maybe that was his ghost, and perhaps it lingered in the hallways of this new home — in the reflection of his mirror, in the wind through the bottles that hung from his neighbor's trees. Maybe he was haunted. He tried to disregard these feelings that he found to fill him with guilt and tried to type away at the writer's block before him.

I'll just start with the dialogue; he told himself, a sticky note covering each wooden area of his desk with another half-formed thought scribbled, I'll fill in the rest another time.

Then he sighed. He grabbed an old newspaper, one he had wadded next to the rift between his mattress and its frame.

‘Everyone Has a Ghost in Sleepy Birch’

It said. Leviticus had read the article time and time again.  He tucked it next to him when he slept. 

Maybe the article had gotten to him. Little things had been disappearing in his home.  His questionable energy supplements.  The key to the guest bedroom.  His binder of photos to show to a potential renter last Thursday. Sometimes, he thought he heard the tea kettle scream in the middle of the night — or the house would carry the fragrance of earl grey.

Written by: Theodore Eldory

But as his eyes traced the first sentence, the sentence that said,

In Sleepy Birch, a ghost is the manifestation of hope, of guilt, and of things left unsaid.

The coastal wind picked up; the knocking bottles were so loud they sounded as if they might shatter. Leviticus startled. He heard the creak of his front gate, the sound of someone trudging through his yard —

and in a treacherous, hopeful way,

he thought of his husband returning to him. He thought of ghosts — of his home, haunted with love. He didn't think of the fact that he'd been working on the same scene for days — that he'd had very little sleep and too much caffeine.

He shut his laptop, his heart, and wild and restless thump, and ran towards his door.