Ghosts

Ghosts.

When someone utters that word, what do you think of?

Costumed children running around with sheets over their heads?

A cartoonish figure, waving its arms around and shouting ‘Boo!’ at everything that moves?

A silly spirit, doing every sort of mischief upon the living?

The ghosts of campfire tales: tortured beings who haunt dark places, moaning of great sadness or a life unlived?

Or perhaps your thoughts turn towards the more serious implications of the word.

“Ghost” could refer to a lingering memory, one which refuses to cease its haunt on your consciousness.

A memory of a great sin committed, past trauma, a loved one’s untimely death, a wishful daydream, or even a poignant thought of better days.

Julia Westing’s mind is full of such ghosts – sitting there among the cobwebs, dream-catchers, and dust bunnies of her subconcious. 

Most of the time, she lets them drift alone. She drowns herself in the sights, sounds, and sensous pleasures of the tangible world, paying little thought to the incorporeal. She shoves her ghosts down into the furthest reaches of her mind, where they cannot trouble her.

But at night, when she lies in bed, there is no company but her own mind, and the ghosts emerge again.

She closes her eyes in defeat and lets the spirits overtake her as she slips into a nightmare.

The first one to appear is a snippet of a childhood memory. This ghost has her mother’s face, furrowed in pain, blood trickling from her temple. A child’s scream tears through the stillness: “No! Mommy!”

Immediately, the father’s ghost follows; anger in his eye, his fists clenched. And then, Julia’s own seven-year-old self, her eyes wide with fear.

With an effort, Julia shakes off the horrific apparition.

In reply, gentle music wafts through the atmosphere. Years have passed, and Julia’s fifteen-year-old self sits at a piano, her fingers darting over the keys with grace. Her song rises into the air – a powerful melody, bursting with talent and emotion. As her audience bursts into applause, a handsome young man sweeps her up in a passionate embrace.

Then, suddenly, the ghost of a musical daydream is gone, replaced with discordant truth. The audience is gone, the beautiful melody is gone; she sits sobbing on a piano bench as the young man berates her.

Her father returns, even more awful than before. This time, he is murderous, a knife clenched in one fist, a gun in the other.  The ghost roars an unintelligible drunken slur.

People are not the only ghosts. Words leave their scars as well:

“Ugly”

“Freak”

“Stupid”

“Fat”

“Slut”

“Unlovable”

More faces: the jeering expressions of teenage girls surround her, spitting all these names and more.

Now, she sits in an ethereal bathroom stall, a pair of scissors clutched in her trembling hand, descending upon her wrist with destructive passion. Blue-green blood drips to the floor as she carves every inadequacy into her skin.

With startling clarity, the ghosts of self-harm drift across Julia’s vision: razors, knives, an obsession with starvation. Magazines with picture-perfect models on the covers.

The facebook logo looms as her online wall fills with hate.

The shadowy figure of her own self in the mirror: a twisted ghost of has-beens. The ghost fingers her sagging limbs; her prominent ribs. She claws at the mirror until it breaks, and scratches at her face with bloodstained hands.

 Another daydream: Julia stands in the midst of a crowd of admirers. She’s perfect, beautiful; angelic. Every girl wants to be her. Every boy wants to have her.

The cold truth: she sits alone in a hallway. She’s ugly. Nobody loves her.

Another boy steps into the picture: a boy with big hands, eyes like emeralds and a voice like a thousand waves crashing at once.

She clings to him, seeking refuge in the fire of his passion.

But fire burns bright and then dies: leaving painful burns of memory and regret. As soon as he sees her skinny arms and sickly ribs, the boy leaves. She’s too much, he says. He can’t handle this, he says.

Julia forms her own conclusion: she is worthless.

Worthless.

That word becomes her sole identity.

That and invisible.

The ghost of her 21st birthday unwillingly emerges: sitting alone at a bar, trying to drink the pain away.

Her 22nd birthday passes the same way, except this time, instead of forgetting the pain, she is whisked off the hospital with liver failure.

Ghosts of doctors and nurses around her bedside, asking if she has any family or friends they need to alert of her condition.

The ghost of a bitter smile lingers on her lips as she rasps a “no.”

Julia Westings bolts upright in bed, shaking away the nightmare ghosts of loneliness and despair. Panting heavily, she glances at the digital clock by her bedside.

2:25 a.m.

She lies back down and forces herself to stay awake; forces her mind to think pleasanter thoughts.

She thinks of the man; not a boy, but a man; who walked into her life that rainy Thursday afternoon.

Thinks of how frightened she was to reveal her sickly stomach and scars on her wrists.

Thinks of how, when he found out, he didn’t scream. He didn’t walk away, disappear, vanish into mist.

Michael stayed with her, taking her hand and leading her straight to a therapist’s office. He walked with her every step of the way, until she stopped starving herself. She stopped drinking. She stopped cutting herself and throwing up what she ate.

When he kisses, he kisses gently, tenderly, allowing her to take the lead; giving her complete control. After living a victimized life, Julia needs control.

He is helping heal her.

But the scars, the memories, the ghosts will remain. The past is set in stone; there is nothing either of them can do to change it.

The only thing that they can do is face the future hand-in-hand.

With that thought in mind, the ghosts are banished again to the furthest reaches of her subconscious.

Julia picks up her cell phone and dials Michael’s number.