I used to believe in ghosts. In the blurred outlines of luminescent specters, the flutter of candles in a still room, the foretelling of tarot cards. But now when the wind whistles through my window frames, I hear only the gentle hum of nature. I do not hold a bated breath and jolt under my hammering heart. With my belief gone, life is bleak. Easy, but persistently dull. Days are spent with schoolwork, nights with sleep. No more do I lie restlessly awake, spying ghosts in piles of clothes. Instead, I doze easily, strangled by innocuous sleep. Yet tremors wrack my hands and pain courses through my head. My vision grows blurry and my eyes flutter shut under the weight of every morning’s dose. For when I told my parents of the phantoms that followed me, children sheathed in white sheets, they took me to a professional. My daily sightings were a mysterious adventure. They were supernatural. Now, they are an illness. A fault of my mind. So every morning, with a glass of water and my mother’s stern look, I swallow a pill. And I forget the ghosts, the magic, the unexplainable. I wonder, still, if they were a dream, now warded off by my doctor’s prescription. And I wonder if those strange creatures still float at my side, intangible as thought yet still real.
A piece of flash fiction. Cover by April Alayne
