• I can still see him out of the corner of my eye.
    I see him in my room, at work, or in my class.
    He lurks there, breathing heavily, his dirty gray cotton shirt sticking to his flesh with sweat. I can see the drips of spittle in the stubble on his chin. For a hallucination, he always seems to be in striking detail. And no matter how far away he is when I see him, I can still hear his rasping breath and smell the sweat and dirt sticking to his skin. I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise and somehow I know that, in a way, he is actually there. I know he’s dead. But he’s there. And who knows? Maybe he will always be there. Maybe he will always be there at the back of my mind. Maybe he will always be there when I turn a corner or walk down an alley.
    Sitting in class, I finger the scar on my side. It’s been six months since that day in the alley and yet I can still feel the knife sliding into my flesh. I can still feel his dirty, wet lips clamping down on the wound and drinking in the red salty blood. I can feel it flowing out of me into his mouth. And I want to heave. He wasn’t a vampire or anything ridiculous like that. The police told me something about him being deranged from abuse or loss or something. I don’t know. I wasn’t listening. I haven’t done a lot of listening since that night in the dark alley between Elm and Mormon Street on December 6th, 2007.
    Walking home is probably the most difficult part of my day. The trees whisper to me, warning of phantom madmen around every corner and oh how my pulse quickens. My eyes dart left and right and the flickering lights of the lampposts mock me. They taunt me, flashing out here and there then flicking back to life when I pass. Every time they go out I see him there for a split second before the light sparks up again. I picked up some pepper spray the first time I experienced this phenomenon and every time since my hand darts towards it and I hold onto like a lifeline.
    I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist but it doesn’t help. Sometimes, sitting in her pristine office, always smelling of sickeningly sweet flowers and cheap fresh brewed coffee, I even see him there, smiling a crooked smile of yellow and brown teeth. He taints everything in that way. He loves to show up every time I start to feel secure and the least bit at ease. I can see in his glazed over eyes that he takes delight in ruining every little tiny ounce of security I gain.
    Sometimes when laying in the solitude of my permanently lit apartment, (I looked up a list of phobias and I guess you’d call what I have Lygophobia, more commonly known as fear of darkness.) I look around and think of all of the ways to end this misery. I could possibly jump in front of a car or O.D. on Advil. Of course I always get too afraid, saying out loud to no one in particular that “No. Suicide is the coward’s way out.”
    I like to think that one day I will develop some kind of backbone and finish myself off. But I know that’s not true. I can give a million possibilities as to why I can't take my own life. They say you go to hell if you commit suicide. What would my mother think? What about my friends? What would happen to my cat? But the only true, real-life reason is the fact that I’m afraid of death. Plain and simple.
    So I guess I will always be the skinny jumpy girl in a thin cotton dress with her hair pulled back in a bun walking stiffly and quickly home down the warm, busy streets of Miami, eyes darting around in nervous habit. Maybe the phantoms in the back of my mind will never leave me. Maybe I will always be just this.
    Haunted.