Seeing Things

I’m seeing things again.

I shouldn’t call them things. People don’t typically appreciate that. Then again, is that what it is? A person?

The anxious gurgle that can’t follow the risky page number in a choose your own adventure novel doesn’t allow me to address them so. At least, not without the impulse to apologize. I’m sorry. I don’t intend to be rude. 

I never have. It’s a reflex response. A knee jerk reaction to my periphery fishing for glimpses.  My sight line pulled like candy floss webbing around the corner. I swear to you.When I glanced in passing mirrors, windows, my undisturbed device screen, I wasn’t checking my lipstick or a loose pin in my hair. It’s them I was looking for. It reached a point where delusion deserved a name, but I was too dismissive to invent one. Just her. Why couldn’t she be a ghost? I think I could find solace if she were.

I can’t tell you when it started. Grind smooths the point of the pin. But I remember, she was wearing that shirt. The one I’d lost two apartments and a singular boyfriend ago. I thought so, I mean. By the time I’d made a vicious double take, she’d been a figment. The sour taste of nostalgia bore a cavity. 

Days passed, and I’d upturned my whole apartment, texted my sister, and made a kitschy post on social media about the maroon eyelet top I wore the night I’d seen some film in the theater. I didn’t have the damn shirt. She did. Mountainous piles of dread collected. Shameful mounds displaced from one side of the bed to another. No blouse.

I’d put it out of my mind after a particularly chaotic week. A flux. Glitch in my personal matrix. You know as well as I didn’t, it would happen again. It always happens.

I’d nearly scrolled past it. Work gnawed at my free time. It had gotten to such a state. when I’d reached my sofa, I’d lay there hardened, pale, and flavorless until it had reached an appropriate hour to call it a day. The only extremity getting some sort of play scrolling feeds as I slog in my materialistic swamp of crushed water bottles and half gnawed pen caps. I tucked them in the cracks, teasing another version of myself would clear the rubbish.

My thumb came to a halt after spending the better part of an evening watching others live the lives I so desperately wished I’d had the energy to. There she was, with perfect ombré curls enjoying a holiday with my friends. Razor thin insults filling my mouth with blood.

I was there when they mentioned the trip at brunch. I was there when they invited me. I was there when the news was broken that I wouldn’t be able to attend on account of some poor responsible excuse. Yet, she was with them and I wasn’t. 

A furious response metered out of my envious fingers, a scathing comment whipped fresh from jealous kitchen. “So glad you found someone to go!” Before launching the nuclear missile of passive aggressive replies, I scrolled back up to upset myself. As one does. She was gone. I didn’t notice the similarities, or recall what even stole me away from the plans. 

I deemed that an excellent time to sleep. I did not. Instead, I stewed on the maroon eyelet top I’d forgotten. Work was awful the next day. Certainly a Monday, though it may have been Thursday. The wherewithal of proper accounting of time gray cloudy smears in a rusted bowl. 

What should have been two fluke events, became so frequent and common, I’d hardly know peace. I saw her at work. I avoided her on the train. I violently shut photo albums at my parents when I caught her front and center with my family at the lake. There had been more places I’d seen her, than places I’d not. 

This would drive any regular person to the point of insanity. I was not regular. I am not insane. I’d grown vindictive and spiteful toward my imaginary nemesis. She dwelled into my past, tormented me in my present, and started to take things I’d carved away for my eventual future. No more. 

I would no longer bear the subtle jabs of split second robbery. I’d kept a mental checklist of what I would not allow this changling of sorts pickpocket from me. The process started slow.

I committed to things I’d never thought possible give my shameful function. I finally dyed my hair, the box is still in the bathroom . I bought new tops on credit and cataloged my closet. I took pictures in the moment, posting immediately with corresponding hashtags.  I won’t lie to you, it was exhilarating and exhausting. Life moved so rapidly around me, if she were there I didn’t have the ability to notice her.  Screw her for haunting me anyway. Those days were good, I suppose. I should be grateful I had them once. I think I got a full year. then I was sloppy. I pumped the brakes and made a cup of tea. 

I seldomly ever did so, a wild hair tickling me into the idea. I rifled to the back of the pointless set of cabinets above my fridge. The ones where all your objects with no home, find one. 

I set my clean mug down, and heard the whistle. In the rusted and slightly dented side of the silver kettle, she returned. The same sweet face I spent months pushing from my mind. I was too unsettled to even make the drink. I spiraled until the water went cold and the damn hand me down kettle weighed my trash bag. From the couch, I heard it. Muffled. 

The cavernous plastic cradled the soft titters of laughter as it pinballed around my garbage. My tv wasn’t on. My phone was dead. The bluetooth speaker on my counter, i haven’t been home to charge it. The kettle was there, It needed no plug, or cheap charging cord. My foot held precariously over the pedal, swallowing my sense. My skin turned goose flesh at the cheap spring’s squeak. Her.

I pulled back my foot, I didn’t want to see her decadent smirk lapping up my discomfort. I suspect she didn’t need to look upon me to feel it, and tip glass after glass of it at Sunday brunch. It teased in the hours it took me to tidy quarters of rooms. Jesting against my palms clasped to my ears as nine pm approached three in the morning. 

I brushed my teeth in the shower, stopped wearing makeup. I couldn’t tell you if my outfit coordinated, I threw it together out of my dryer for weeks. I couldn’t bear to invite people over anymore. I didn’t want to confess I’d been acting differently, why my full length mirror faced the corner, or that the mess is due to I live here. The TV was always on. 

If I was out, she was here fermenting. If I was home festering, she was out. No matter what I was able to do, she chased the other flawlessly. It wasn’t fair. Yet, I saw her on the screens, and on my feeds. I had to nod on phone calls detailing how good it was to see me. They’ve been worried for so long. When my homage to a single white female did a tour, no one had really clocked she wasn’t the same.

She deserved it more than I ever did. The tenacity she has, the bite. I’m beat from chasing the woman I wanted to be, the one I could be. That’s not me. This deluge of doubt is eroding into secondhand cushions. This lazy stain of illegitimate existence is padding around in secret. That disgusting creature, that’s who I am. I’m real.

Still. God they loved her, this pristine version of me. I chewed my cheek into viscous pulp at the sight of their reverence. Then, It dawned on me. If this phantom could take my place, and on such a media display to rub my nose in my misgivings. I’ll take it from her. Yes, take it back.

The forthcoming Friday evening, I turned the hulking furniture around. the dusty glass breathed the apartment’s muddled air once more. My fingers combed through the greasy clumps of grown out highlights. Not that I could tell in the reflection, her perfect ringlets took its place. By all appearances, I was perfectly dressed for an evening out with the girls. 

The rear view mirror in the cab smiled Cheshire as it sidled up to the curb. The tete a tete thick between us. She knew of my quiet challenge, reminding me in fewer words. She’s well versed in the game, and I were fool to play it. 

My sister cradled me in a lingering hug the moment I entered the boutique bar. She recommended some therapist or some prescription. Thinking my malady treatable, rather than supernatural. No matter after tonight, I will require no such pill or appointment.My grimace reminded her of the reason of the hour, my birthday. She quickly rattled on about the perfect gift, I’ll never guess, though it’s embarrassing, she’d rather gift it in private. 

After an hour of feigning excitement and blowing out candles, I’d excused myself before karaoke began. Knowing I made the rounds in banners of digital tags, she was waiting scalding emerald. The single restroom is perfect for my face off. 

I could give her a name, I learned their fiendish tricks, the internet is such a useful tool. Most comforting of all, I wasn’t the only one chased by visions of self. I wasn’t alone.

 I ran the sink, the hottest temperature possible. Shoving my jacket in the crease of the door, I waited for the steam to fog the mirror, preparing to write my message in the condensation, stark streaks making an M. 

In the streaks, I watched the press on nails crack and bend to the glass. One by one, they popped off her nailess smooth fingers. The hairless limb metered out, my stomach lurched while she coiled around the faucet. Each clockwork turn, I steadied myself. The glass cracked in labyrinthine skinny fractures as much more of her climbed through. The jagged edges stretching her smile back to her ears as her form lumbered out the remaining pieces. 

A knock rapped as my sister asked if I were alright over the caterwauling of a girl beyond her beers. She replied in perfect stereo with me as I assured her just a minute. All her movements toward me careful, her head lolling disconjointed, copying my posture live. Her hands reset her lumbering form normal like. 

I reached the silver nodule of a lock. Two of me couldn’t exist in one space, surely exposure would remove the pest from my life.surely it would encourage her to retreat. She was faster. She was fitter. 

I was stupid. 

Her arm extended to my midsection, dragging me, kicking and screaming back toward the mirror. I wouldn’t question the hook or scythe swaddled in flesh. My body bucked like a horse, shouting my sister’s name. My teeth rubbing against her shiny malleable skin, itching to break it. 

She was unfazed, pressing my face to the spiderwebbed pane. Grinning while she did it with force I’d never imagine with the malice to mock my unsettled pleas. A scorching sizzle bubbled the skin that made contact with the realm she taunted me from. Cavernous pain seared through me. I didn’t know if I were melting into dripping flesh, or if she were forcing me in her place.

It bore into my nose as if it were the former, until the boiling sensation gurgled behind my eye socket.  I gazed upon the photographer’s dark room that was her scarlet stinging domain. Her cackle was more melodic than my wry laugh while she pressed. Her shell did not peel hardboiled as it gripped my jaw. The printless nibs like silicone pads under furniture tensed along my bone.

Soon, my jagged noises were not echoing into a world of my own, but rather a grungy iteration. My knees pressed into the uncomfortable shards of plastic left behind. I banged my fists against the surface, trying to fit through the whisper thin cracks she had. My efforts wasted.

She unrolled a lipstick tube from the scattered remains of my handbag and calmly let my sister in. I overheard a muffed explanation of the damaged mirror. My eyes stinging with tears calling out for her, she didn’t notice. All she wanted me to be was right before her. That thing opened my present preceded by a humorous apology. 

My maroon eyelet top, My sister had it the entire time. The one I  had two apartments, and a singular boyfriend ago.