I’d felt ‘wrong’ from as young as I can remember; the way I interacted with people, the way I felt, the way I looked…all of it. I was an odd child who grew into a more noticeably odd teenager. The first time I found my online forum I felt a connection. I’d stumbled in accidentally, and discovered a digital home for people just like me. People who felt ‘wrong’. People who didn’t fit in.
I found myself running home from school with the pressures of the world bursting out of my skull, to find my refuge in this new community. We would talk about our days, and how we didn’t fit in. It was more than an online forum; these were siblings connected to my spirit, bound by a unifying darkness and understanding.
In my desperation to never go without this lifeline, I stole a phone from a girl at school’s backpack. I never got caught for stealing it, which almost justified that it was always meant to be mine in the first place. I saved money to buy a new SIM card with as much data and minutes as I could afford, so I could keep connected to my safe haven.
That’s when I met her- Sophia.
Sophia and I existed as one spirit, sparking through the night. The communication was as consistent as our pulses, delving into the hidden chambers of our beings and finding our innermost secrets to share only with each other. My life was nothing but my time connecting with Sophia, and my time waiting to connect with her again. Every feeling and thought I’d have, she told me before I had felt it enough to express it. There were moments when I wondered if she could read my mind. I was not afraid when I realised I was in love with her; I didn’t need her to say it back, I just knew it to be true.
The teachers at school said they were ‘worried’ and called my mum; a woman more concerned about appearances than understanding. It didn’t take much before I decided to abandon both, packing a bag and taking anything I may need to start this new chapter of my life, far away from the misery and restraint of my existence.
With Sophia’s guidance, I found refuge in a decaying house. As an expression of my love, I painted the walls with floods of purples and reds, filling the house with everything that represented the freedom me and Sophia would experience together. I was desperate for her to join me, but she’d only laugh and say it would all come in time.
Soon after, Sophia shared with me her ethereal connections- She revealed her unique ability to bridge the gap to the spirit world, toeing the line between the living and the dead. Her words engulfed me as she spoke about entities beyond our reality, entities that were drawn to people like me- people with fractured souls and hidden pain beyond understanding. She spoke of a spectral realm intertwined with our own; a place where people like me could feel ease.
Her words held me captive. I listened to her stories of whispered voices in the darkness and shadowy figures that danced at the periphery of vision, I found myself simultaneously drawn to and repelled by the idea of this otherworldly connection. No matter how unsettling her tales were, I would always be drawn in deeper, and deeper, and deeper. The more she said, the more I understood.
As our connection grew, Sophia introduced me to Kirot - a spirit drawn to the fractured soul she sensed in me. It was through Sophia that I communed with Kirot, our exchanges a symphony of secrets and blinding emotions. Sophia’s voice guided me through rituals that left me trembling and bloodied, her words soothing against the fear that gripped me. The world around me grew dim as the spiritual realm Sophia had opened the door to seemed to swing open the rest of the way by itself.
I began to feel the weight of another presence in the room…a presence that seemed to seep into the inner workings of my mind. I began to receive messages from Kirot, scorching my mind as if from nowhere but everywhere, messages that echoed with a haunting hangover lasting days. She spoke of my fears, my desires, and the darkest corners of my soul that I had been too afraid to confront.
This went on for three months and six days, our love a triangle as we spiritually intertwined on a deeper level than I knew was available to someone like me. Then Sophia stopped responding to my messages. Panic clawed at my chest as I typed message after message, each keystroke punctuated by a growing sense of dread. I stared at the screen, my heart racing, my mind spinning with a thousand possibilities. What had happened to Sophia? How would I survive even a day without her? I twisted and turned around in this makeshift house, suddenly aware of how small my world had become…Sophia was my connection to Kirot, and they were the only things in my life I had left.
As the days stretched on, the emptiness of Sophia’s absence gnawed at me. I felt as if the air had been taken from my life and each breath would be pain until she was back. When her name popped up on my phone, I was so relieved I cried out- until I opened it up. The words danced before my eyes, weaving a tale of tragedy and loss. The message wasn’t from Sophia at all. It claimed that Sophia had crossed over to the realm of the dead, leaving behind a world of pain and suffering- that she had found solace in the ethereal plane, and she wanted me to join her. The message was signed from Kirot.
Terror gripped me and I could not move, could not breathe, could not think, or feel, or believe. My Sophia…my beautiful Sophia. Promises of release and understanding were seductive, but they were shrouded in darkness as I realised that I had been spiralling down a path that I could no longer control. The line between reality and this dark, twisted world had become so thin it had stopped existing. I looked around my dilapidated house, where I had resided alone and without company, and knew…she was what I needed. I’d do whatever had to be done.
Kirot explained how it worked; the items to be gathered, which herbs to burn and which to crush, what to say, and how to get the right vein for a blood sacrifice. It was not an easy journey, but one I had to take. I knelt in the middle of my circle, sage and lavender burning while the bowl of still warm blood was raised above my head, and I chanted the words. I chanted again. I waited as long as my arms would hold and I chanted again, louder. The bowl clanged to the floor as my arms gave out, the blood pooling below me as if trying to re-enter the wounds in my wrists. It didn’t work.
In the midst of my turmoil came familiar sirens and flashing blue lights; I remained sobbing when the police took me in their car, wrapping up my injuries, until my mum ripped me from the hospital bed and into her desperate grasp. Once I finally had the ability to move my body, I realised I did not want to. I fell into my mothers shoulder with all my weight, and cried with the aggression of someone who had suppressed it all for far too long.
Within a few weeks, I began to see the truth that had been obscured by the web of delusions. The stories of Sophia and Kirot slowly came undone- the web I had spun was a twisted reflection of my own pain, a manifestation of my desperate need for validation and belonging. Returning to the ‘home’ I was building to find a dilapidated wreck that barely had four walls, and no matter how hard I looked, there was no evidence of a single message, phone call, or even a person called Sophia in my phone. There was no SIM card in this phone at all, other than the one that was there when I stole it.
I still don’t understand what happened in that time. As time passed, the memory of Sophia and Kirot faded like a nightmare upon waking. Looking back, I often wonder if Sophia and Kirot were manifestations of my own inner demons; a twisted coping mechanism that had spun out of control. Or perhaps they were a cautionary tale, a reminder of the dangers of seeking validation and connection in the wrong places. No matter the reason- after all my searching, I am finally free.