"What if-" The man said, picking up the dying lilies with his long pale fingers and they bloomed again in his hands. "-you were given the chance to live again?" 

Without hesitation, I said I would gladly take that chance. 

If only someone told me the price of coming back to life. 

If anybody would have told me that I was going to die, I would have forgiven my parents, even though they don’t deserve to be forgiven. I would have told my brother and grandmother to be strong. I would have told my boyfriend that I loved him.

But nobody could have predicted that I would be taking a bullet to the head. 

That is exactly what happened on July 6th. It was a warm summer night, my friends and I were out at the park doing what teenage girls do. Fooling around on the swings, telling jokes, and talking about boys. We had no idea that one out of the three of us was not going to make it out of the park alive.

The man seemed to have appeared out of thin air, sauntering over to us with a sinister smile on his face. At first, we thought he was some creepy pedophile, but that wasn’t the case. He was blood thirsty. He wanted to kill.

My funeral was a week later.

The sky was grey that day, but it never rained. Just misted, as if it were holding back its tears. My friends, who have miraculously gotten out of the park alive were there, sobbing into each other’s shoulders. My entire school was there as well. The only people who weren’t there were my parents, although I had already expected this. They didn’t care about anyone but themselves.

My heart broke for the ones that I left behind. My brother was inconsolable, crying into our grandmother’s bosom, while she herself had tears rolling down her cheeks. My brother, so sweet and so fragile. My grandmother, a kind woman who should have been retired by now, continued to work so that she could provide for my brother and I, since my parents had abandoned us. They didn’t deserve this.

Neither did my boyfriend. I watched Ciel as he watched my coffin being lowered to the ground. He stood like a statue through the entire process, not shedding a single tear. They only came when everyone had left, his knees sinking into the freshly buried ground in front of my grave and his entire body shaking as he tried to hold in the screams of despair.

That was the first time I felt truly hopeless.

I wanted to come back to life. My ghost wanted to go back into the ground where my cold body lay and crawl back onto the surface of the earth. I wanted to live again, so that the ones I loved wouldn’t have to shed another tear.

Ciel was forced to leave when his mother came for him. By then, his face was stained with tears and dirt, his once bright blue eyes dimmed by my death. How much I wanted to reach out to him and wipe his tears. How much I wanted to see him smile again.

But I was only a ghost, invisible to the living. Ghosts can only watch as life went by without them.

It was after Ciel and his mother left, that a man, whom I will later know as Marshal Valentine, came. He wasn’t like any man I’ve seen, not just because of his muscled arms that were marred with many scars or how the flowers seem to become more lively in his presence. It was the fact that he seemed to be able to see me.

“A bit unfair, isn’t it? To have your life taken from you when you are so young.” He said, looking directly at me. I was sitting on my tombstone, my white funeral dress fluttering with the wind, studying the first human who was able to see me. Bitterness washed over me from his comment.

“I want him to suffer. I want to kill him for killing me.” I found myself saying. There was so much anger in my voice that it scared me, but it was true. I never hated anyone as much as the man who put the bullet in my head simply because he found pleasure in killing people.

The man in front of me smiled with a sad look in his eyes, as if he understood what I was feeling, though I highly doubt it. He was still alive and breathing, his body solid in front of my transparent one.

“Of course you do.” He said, looking down at the lilies that were placed on my grave by Ciel before he left. I realized that the lilies were starting to droop, its white petals slowly turning brown. It was my bitterness and my anger that was killing the lilies.

“What if-” The man said, picking up the dying lilies with his long pale fingers and they began to bloom in his hands. “-you were giving the chance to live again?”

Without hesitation, I said I would gladly take that chance.

If only someone told me the price of coming back to life.