Cursed // Jake Kiszka

Chapter Three

He existed in reflections. Haunting me from behind glass. Touching my hair in the middle of the night, making me stir from broken sleep. Sometimes my clocks would stop at dusk, as if he were calling me to come to him. Candles blowing themselves out and the faint outline of his ghostly breath on my bathroom mirror.

I felt him with me so much more profoundly now. The days all seemed to blur into one and I was consumed with it. The first day of summer, I left the school building and knew that my time would be wrapped up in finding the answers I so desperately sought.

I could only be with him in the room where he had died. When he pulled me in to the other side. Time slipped away from me and I could be locked in this strange warp of being nowhere in particular. The crumbling ruins of the house faded away and it was almost as if my life beyond this place was the anomaly.

Jake was standing by the window when I found myself shifting into his sphere once more. The first time had been so filled with lust, a relief to be somehow reunited with a man I had never met before that I was surprised to find him a little more contemplative the second time it happened.

Unexpectedly, of course. I'd been standing by the mirror just taking in the translucent ebb and flow of his image when I'd felt myself lose consciousness.

"Jake." I whispered, reclaiming my equilibrium as he turned to look at me.

He crossed the room and scooped me into his arms, a little more lucid than I had been the first time. A little less dream-like. Everything felt more solid, he felt more solid.

"Emily." He replied, his voice breathy and smooth.

There was nothing ghostly about his kiss. His flesh was warm and soft to the touch, his lips and breath heating me up from the centre of my body. I had missed him. Not that his presence had gone unnoticed. But I had missed the feel of his body next to mine. The memory of the way he had made love to me felt like I had imagined it, but I knew that whatever magic this was it was as real as the hours I'd spent in that classroom.

"What is this place?" I asked, toying with his hair as it sat at his shoulders. "I know I have asked you before, but it feels different this time."

"I'm not really too sure." He shrugged, swaying me from side to side a little as we stood in the middle of the room. "I have always called it the other side. But it could be anywhere, I suppose."

The sun beating in through the window felt like it was burning my cheek.

"If we step outside this room, will everything be as it was when you were alive?" I asked, wondering if the rest of the house had grounds had fallen victim to this spell.

Jakes eyes fell. "I cannot leave this room."

"Have you never tried?" I probed further, distracted now by the intensity of the sunshine.

"If I step outside of this room I do not go anywhere. I always end up back here. Trapped." He explained, lacing a careful finger over my jawline to draw my gaze back towards him.

"Then how is it I feel you with me? You don't just exist here. I know you are always with me."

He raised an eyebrow. "Because my soul is anchored to you, my love. My soul will always find its way back to you. It is the curse which keeps my body here."

I shook my head. "But your body is buried in the cemetery. You have a headstone."

His mouth twitched "...Am I?"

I audibly gasped. "You're not?"

Jake pressed his palms to my hot, crimson cheeks. His soft, doe eyes peering into mine.