I was at my ex’s place the first time I saw it.
It? Them? Her? I don’t know how to classify the thing, just that I opened the bathroom door and came face to face with … something. It looked exactly like me and somehow not at the same time, like if I ran myself through hair and makeup of a B-list horror flick. It stood with its head lolling onto its shoulders, like the weight of it was too much for it to maintain on its own. It wore only a tank top and shorts (not unlike myself, in the moment), and I could see clearly defined bruises leading up to its thighs and peppered across its collarbones. Its hair was stringy on its head, and behind bruised eyes there was a look. I don’t really know how to describe it; something in the liminal space between human and … not.
The thing smiled at me. I screamed.
I screamed and screamed until Jack, my ex, came running in, his fire red curls bouncing as he rounded the corner, and he stopped himself with too warm hands on my waist. “What?” he asked, breathy. It was clear I had woken him. “What is it?”
I didn’t know how he didn’t see the thing. I pointed at it, and then more firmly when I looked over my shoulder and saw his face downturned in a frown, his eyebrows furrowing together. “I don’t see anything, Will,” he said.
I turned back to the thing, still there, still smiling at me through stained teeth. Its soulless eyes glittered as it weakly held a shaking finger up to chapped lips decorated with white flecks of peeling skin. “Shh,” it mouthed.
Fuck, I thought. Jack can’t see it.
“You good?” Jack asked, like a challenge. Like if I said no, there’d be another fight. I dug my nails into the heel of my hand until I felt small crescent moons form, bruises on my own skin still pulsatingly new.
“Yeah,” I lied. Jack smiled, kissed my cheek as he walked right by the thing as if it didn’t exist. I had passed his test, but the thing frowned like it was expecting a different outcome. I followed Jack into the bathroom, and we brushed our teeth side-by-side as the thing frowned at me from the mirror.
By the time I got back from work, it was gone, and I didn’t see it again.
A few months and a mental breakdown later, my friend Alex was helping me move out of Jack’s apartment. It was weird, moving out. I had once considered this place my home, but no longer. Not with the court order finally, finally forcing Jack out of my life. Alex propped open a window, and with the fresh spring air and the fading bruises on my skin, I felt like I could breathe for the first time in months.
“This place was a real shithole, huh?” Alex asked. He ran his pointer finger along the windowsill, picking up dust as he did. He held up the pad of his finger to show me, and I barely needed to look at his face to know he was just as happy I was moving out of here as I was.
“Hard to focus on dusting when-.” It was stupid not to want to say it out loud. Alex had sat right behind me for the entire trial, and I had spent more than a few nights sobbing on his shoulder, much to the feigned chagrin of his new husband. “Well anyway,” I continued. “I’ll be glad to be out of here.”
“And Luke is absolutely thrilled to have a roommate.” I laughed at that. Behind his faux-disdain, I knew Luke loved me like a little sister, but I could understand how it would be annoying to have your husband’s best friend intrude on newly marital bliss.
“Just for now,” I assured Alex. He kissed my head and walked past me to go into the kitchen, to gather the pots and pans Jack had never even touched in our years of living together. I was, by nature, a very gentle person, but I still threw a let him starve into the universe as I opened the closet to gather my clothes.
The thing stared back at me among my coats.
It looked different, this time. It had the same pale skin and stringy hair, but this time it wore a suit jacket, one sleeve torn off, and tights that were more run than fabric. As before, it didn’t say anything, but its lips parted to reveal the same stained teeth as it smiled.
Perhaps I should have workshopped a better reaction to seeing it this time, but something primal took over my senses and I was screaming before I had a chance to think better of it.
Alex responded much more immediately than Jack did; I heard the clatter of a pan as he dropped it to the ground to run in. “What’s wrong?” Alex asked. He was no bigger than me and likely scrawnier, but he pressed forward into the closet, haphazardly parted the clothes as he frantically looked for the source of my terror, and as the thing raised a shaking finger to its lips I realized, holy shit, Alex couldn’t see it either.
Everything that had happened these past few months - hell, the past few years - came back to me, and I broke down into loud sobs. Once Alex realized there was nothing for him to find, he sighed and turned to me. “Oh, Will,” he said as he scooped me into a hug, one of his hands rubbing gently at the nape of my neck. “It’s okay,” he soothed as he kissed the top of my head.
I managed to calm down after a few long minutes of loud sobbing and Alex’s gentle reassurances. He pulled back to look at me, and wiped a tear with the pad of his thumb. “Let’s pack up the rest of your stuff and get out of here.”
We quickly put my things, sparse as they may be, into boxes which we loaded into the bed of Luke’s truck. I turned in my key with the landlord and, as Alex pulled the truck out of the complex and onto the highway, I thought maybe I could finally put the whole thing behind me.
Unfortunately, life was not so simple.
A couple of weeks into moving in with Alex and Luke, and my life seemed to be on an upswing. I got a job offer from a clinic closer to my new apartment that I took in a heartbeat, and I loved it. Even on particularly sad or difficult days, I still came home knowing I had made a difference in people’s lives. Alex and Luke were writers, so most days when I came home from work, I found them laying on the floor with papers billowing out around them, or hunched over two separate laptops, sharing a Google Doc between them. We went out dancing, we had quiet dinners at home, and Luke was even beginning to warm up to me.
One July evening, uncharacteristically cold, I felt something like anxiety settle into my chest. It wasn’t a new feeling, I knew as a therapist that dancing and home cooked dinners doesn’t instantly heal trauma, but something made me look over my shoulder as I buzzed myself into my building.
I let myself into the apartment where, unsurprisingly, Alex and Luke were laying on the floor, hunched together over one laptop. The door closing announced my presence and both Alex and Luke jumped, like they weren’t expecting me to be home.
“Is this what you guys do all day?” I teased as I hung my coat on the coat rack in the foyer. “Just wait for me to come home?”
Luke stood and rolled out his neck with a loud crack! “With bated breath,” he answered. He brushed past me into the kitchen, and frowned as he opened a cabinet and found it barren. None of us had been grocery shopping - me, busy with work, and Alex and Luke, immersed into their novel - and now we were facing the consequences.
“Chinese?” Alex suggested from the floor.
Suddenly, outside the door: footsteps, rapidly approaching. Footsteps near the door weren’t uncommon (we lived in an apartment building, after all, and our apartment was at the top of the stairs), but something about these footsteps gave all three of us pause.
Alex stood slowly as Luke and I gingerly backed away from the door. I hoped desperately that the moment would pass, that we could laugh about our paranoia and order Chinese food and everything would be fine, but then there was pounding at the door.
“Willow?” Fuck, it was Jack’s voice. I felt my blood run cold as I exchanged a loaded look with Alex. Luke’s chest puffed up (the stereotypically masc one in the group, he was probably our best bet against Jack), but I grabbed his wrist and shook my head. I had no idea what Jack was capable of.
“Will, please, I’m sorry,” Jack said beyond the door. None of us dared breathe. “Will, come on.” More knocking. “Let me in, I just wanna talk.”
When none of us moved, the pounding grew louder. “Will?” Jack asked, all pleading gone from his voice as he got angry. “Will, let me in.” The door hinges creaked menacingly, and my heart rate picked up. Fuck, I knew we shouldn’t have moved into such an old building.
More pounding. “Will, I know you’re in there!” Jack shouted. The door hinges continued to creak as the horrible sound of his pounding persisted. “Let me the fuck in there, you bitch, or I’ll fucking kill you!”
Suddenly, I felt arms around my shoulders, the weight of someone behind me. I turned, expecting it to be Alex, but I came face to face, scant inches away from, the thing. It didn’t smile this time, but its eyes were wide, and for the first time, it opened its horrible lips to speak in a thick, raspy voice.
“Run.”