I saw a picture of me on the news today, urging anyone with information on my whereabouts to call in. It breaks my heart knowing that they’ll never find me.

I’m hiding like a pest. It’s cold in this hotel. I doubt there’s any other guests staying here, not at a place like this. There’s a horror following me. A parasite that devours anyone close to me. It bleeds them dry, until some sickness takes a hold of them. It will kill everyone around me. 

I don’t know how long it’s been here with me. I remember how sick my family used to get during my childhood. Was that its doing? My best friend in elementary school, dead from pneumonia. It was because of me, right? My father is the family I grew up with who is still alive, barely. But his body will fail, he’s not going to get any better, not with me. No one around me gets better. And now he’s frantically trying to find me, running around the city. He puts up posters, he’s called everyone he knows. But eventually he’ll stop looking. I hope he gets to read this one day, but not today, not while I’m still here. 

I don’t know what it is, the thing that’s afflicting me. I’ve seen it. Maybe I’ve always seen it. Maybe I’ve locked eyes with it as a barely conscious baby. Maybe I convinced myself that what I was seeing was imaginary, looking at me from across the playground. It’s a ghost, my ghost.

I truly knew it when I was just a teenager. I was trapped in my room in sleepless nights and it was there, blocking the door. I’d pretend to be asleep, stealing glances at it standing there. Just a dark silhouette, watching me. Eventually the sun would come up and I wouldn’t see it anymore, but it was still there. I shined a flashlight at it one night, I saw pale green skin and a bloated, unwashed body. I was too scared to scream. I just curled in bed and let it watch me. I cried all night and left for school when the sun came up. I must’ve looked strung out as a kid. But, I guess it’s understandable when your brother’s dying.

It’s gotten angrier recently. I’ve been so lonely. I don’t know what it wants, I don’t know what I can do to stop it. I can’t talk to anyone about it. They see me with pity, they think I’m broken, they think that my ghost is self-inflicted, they go on and on about their coping mechanisms and their dissociations and their feelings of control and it’s not true! I know this is real, I see him looking at me every night, and it’s getting angrier! They can’t understand that my ghost has caused so much sorrow. Them sitting there with their medical diplomas and inviting offices, they refuse to believe me.

A few months ago I tried to fight my loneliness. I’ve been a recluse for a year now. I just isolate myself away from everyone. I can’t work, I can’t get my own home. I didn’t interact with my dad anymore. He’s gone through so much, lost his wife, two kids, and me. I was trying to save him. He’s starting to get sick by now, I know it. I started talking with some people online. They were friends, we played video games together and they lived far, far away from me.

 My ghost is getting restless. A few nights ago I opened my eyes from bed to see it standing right over me. It was looking down at me, its head was right above mine as it started to ooze its pain. I looked at its face and saw dark empty holes where a person should be. 

It started screaming at me, it was so loud it was coming from everywhere. It was so loud, I had to get away from it, I jumped out of bed and ran out of my room. I still heard its screams coming from across the house as I stormed out the front door. As I walked away I looked back to see it glaring at me from my window still screaming at me. I heard its wailing as I stumbled around the neighborhood in the dark, every pebble stabbed my bare feet, I was freezing in my pajamas. When I came back home at sunrise it was still in my room. Glaring at me. With those hateful eyes. I saw it in full light, a discolored hairless body, bloated and deformed, with a shriveled head. It had massive, empty, hateful eyes with a mouth that it couldn’t keep closed. It stopped screaming. It’s mad at me, at my isolation. There’s no one I can go to to stop this, there is no one that would believe me. If you believe me, you’re insane. But I’m not insane, because my ghost is real. It’s watching me write this, across the hotel room. Its face lit up from the street lights outside the window, its eyes filled with anger.

That day one of my online friends got sick, really sick. They were in the hospital, the doctors recommended thinking about end of life care. I know my ghost did it, that night it looked satisfied. I can’t do it anymore. I left the house and I haven’t been back since. I used the money I could find to get on a bus to the other side of the city. I’ve been here at this hotel ever since. In the morning I’m taking a bus to a town 4 hours away. There I am going to walk into the wilderness I will never walk away from. I know I am going to die out there, I don’t know which one of us will kill me. It’s what I deserve for all the pain I’ve caused.

17, that’s the number of people close to me who have gotten sick and passed away. My mother, my 2 siblings, my grandmother, 5 friends, 2 classmates, 2 teachers, a coworker from my summer job, a pediatrician, a therapist and one online friend. I hope one day they can forgive me. And that ghost, who stole my opportunity for a life, I hope it will die with me.