Part 1
Her hair was dirty, greasy and crusted with mud in some places. She appeared to be filthy all over but it was the new color of her once creamy bronzed skin that unsettled me. All of her form was now a green salow tone, eyes sunken and wrapped in a pit of grey. Even dead though, even a ghost, she was still a beauty to behold. An insane ravaged beauty I suspected was here only to bring me suffering. It was horrifying to look at her but impossible to turn away. Her once fantastic forest colored eyes with little fakes of brown and outer blue edges were a cat like lime green that made my stomach ache. Pupils like eager slivers preparing to pounce upon its prey. She looked positively mad. Certainly wildly mentally ill. I shifted sharply as she suddenly stalked toward me. The way she moved was utterly disgusting, body jerking and shifting in all the wrong directions. Her eyes were fixed only on me, my brain trying to calculate and make sense of the situation but misfiring and unable to reach its intended thought. Then I made it there, there's no way this is real.
This was my subconscious tormenting me, sending me on a one way ticket to wacky town. I let out a soft relieving laugh and let the tension my body had built leak out as I unclenched my extremities. "This isn't real," I laughed heavily, "you're not here you're just in my mind." I took back the room, resuming normal activity. Shutting out the idea this was even vaguely a reality. I might have been in shock, or a little hysterical. My words were shaken and I think I might have been yelling. The thought of all this just being in my head sounded better at first but I was quickly coming around to realizing that was equally as terrifying. Holy shit, this was some serious Tell Tale Heart shit. Nope, not going there. Shhhhh just guilt real it in. Now I'm trying to soothe myself, quiet my mind before I cause a massive fear stroke. Manifestations of guilt, relax. I kept chanting to myself inside my mind. A space I used to like to hang out, have a little chat among myself but this was too much. I clenched my fists against my temples, hiding my view of her behind my eyelids. I was ignoring her, pretending she wasn't still standing there like a figure in a hell house haunt. Bad idea.
I felt the air shift as she came closer, hearing her sniffing the air deeply. "I can smell your fear, seeping out of every little pore." Her voice was the most slithering vicious sound I had ever heard, it stuck into me hitting the bone. I killed her and she had come back for her revenge. It was as if all the parts of my body were seizing at once. True terror sweeping over and swallowing me entirely. Her laughter and screams mixed as one horrific siren sound and I fell to my knees losing all control of myself. No fight, no flight, just frozen, my brain like a puzzle swiped of a table. The laughter and screaming still flooded my ears, tearing me apart. Now there was glass exploding across various surfaces, pelting me over the back like an obstacle in the way of its adventure. I'm unsure how long I trembled as a pathetic hump before the noise stopped. The silence did nothing to bring me calm, ashamed to admit even to myself I was afraid to move, afraid to look.
I exhausted the tiny ounce of courage remaining in me and slowly pushed myself up from the floor to survey the room. She wasn't there, but her destruction was. Shards of glass and other things littered to floors and clung to the walls, just pieces of what they once were and would never be again. The feeling of vomiting my own intestines still ached against the walls of my insides. What was I supposed to do now? Thoughts racing rapidly I couldn't manage to catch one. Call the police? That would get me a murder charge and a few nights in the psych ward. Just go to sleep? Could I even sleep? Weave through all the broken glass and snuggle up for a good night's rest? That wasn't happening. I don't even know what's really happening. Was this real? It had to be right? The broken glass was real, so she was real. Or had I really cooked all this up in my mind, lost it and done all this myself. Blacked out and forgotten it was all only me. Just lost myself to my guilt of murdering her. I just lost it.
I didn't feel like that was the answer, but it seemed the most logical. My eyes fluttering around with curiosity, wide and heavy. Taking full concentrated breaths in an attempt to bring some type of calmness I attempted to swept up the intense mess before me. Do something simple and mindless, but focused and distracting. In this action I decided the conclusion I would accept of this situation. Ghosts were not real. I killed her, I was guilty somewhere deep in my brain and mentally could not handle committing murder. That was all, just a little freak out. I didn't have to lose my mind and end up a front page news story. Just pull my shit together, move on. Done. I flushed everything from my mind and swept, doing my best to gather the remains into a single pile near the garbage. I knew I had likely left one behind and would end up cutting my foot on it later. It would remind me of this event and I would have to do my best to forget again.
Written By Chelsee Mundy
