Asterisk*

Museums and Macabre*

*In the terrors of the night

Temptress of the broken,

Barter with fear.

Art like a name,

Changes in the wind,

A tornado forms,

Broken in duress.

But not before destruction.

Apollo

Ghosts are a more powerful force than everyone gives them credit for. Unlike vampires and werewolves, the fraction of people who actually believe in ghosts is much larger. I am not ashamed to say I am one of those people. They're just so fascinating. The thought that spirits can just roam the Earth, leaving humans to be their receptors is quite cool. It's also a bit sad, fueling never ending wispy metaphors and spooky season movies. However, the thing that I love the most is just the story behind each ghost. There's a whole life there left to explore. People stuck here instead of the other dimension they're supposed to be in, wallowing invisibly. A cloak of despair surrounds them, making the famous white mist that everyone associates with ghosts.

Demons are an even more interesting topic. I'm not talking about horror movie demons; six foot tall black masses that spend their free time terrorizing children. Rather, I'm talking about the black mist that manifests itself as a red haired little girl, roaming the three a.m. time like they owned the world. The way in which they use comfort against you, play mind games, bring things in only to push them out. Full blown possession and the fear when they're lurking around the corner, all tied in for a never ending screech of horror. Never using their true form, but only fueling to the discrimination against redheads. Using basic human emotion against us. They grow off of the darkness. Every move feeds them, every sound frees them. A belting scream is just the beginning, bloodshot eyes mark the end. The ability to just enter into someone else's body and completely corrupt every fiber of their being, turning it into their own, and letting go to let them deal with the consequences. Showing them a glimpse of death every time. That's the real demon. A straight up monster that's developed in the forges of evil.

Though all this horror, there's only one being that can have some sort of human control, and that is the poltergeist. They can be completely harmless if a human allows them to be, just a presence there to throw cups off the walls and make the cuckoo clock chime a bit too early. Yet, a human could simply allow them to be imagined as a demon, the fear that a stray cup hitting someone's head could lead them to their death. The class clown of the supernatural, the failure of the real world.

It's funny how when ghosts can't pass on to the other dimension they're supposed to be in, they end up stuck in Earth. Instead of hell, this is their punishment. There's people that they know can never see them, yet all they want to do is say something, do something. There's a never ending urge of longingness, one that just can't be felt in any other way. They're stuck to witness the people they love go on with their lives, their forgotten memory living sorely inside of a picture frame. A snapshot of life. That's it. They're stuck in this hell we call home with none of the perks. Simply put, that's worse than hanging out with Satan and Hades down in the city of dead souls.

Sometimes I wonder if past versions of myself are just floating around like ghosts, creeping around me to make sure I don't make the same stupid mistakes again. I'm curious to know what they're thinking, if they think I've completely gone to shit or managed to turn my life around. I'm not the same person I was, and that's a good thing. I don't want to be. If I kept going down the path I was crawling towards, I would have been lying in a field of nothingness, just a bittersweet feeling in the air that refuses to go away. I'd hate looking at myself and what I had turned into. I'd miss something I couldn't even think of. Don't get me wrong, I didn't shed my skin like a snake and turn into someone completely new. Rather, I cleaned the dirt off of myself, polishing like one would do the silverware.