Haunted

I'm not sure when she turned up, exactly. At first she was easy to ignore. Thin and sad-looking. Washed out. Colourless.

People say things like, all children are everyone's business, and it takes a village... But so few people really mean that. Most of the time, they don't want anything disrupting their day today life, and they don't want to confront someone else to disrupt theirs, either.

It took a long time for me to notice her. By the time I did, she'd been hanging around for a while. Who even knows how long. Ages.

Honestly? She was kind of creepy. Always there. Hanging around. Staring. Getting closer and closer.

I gritted my teeth and kept my eyes averted, but it got harder to ignore not just her, but also how uncomfortable she was making me feel.

I had a feeling she wasn't real. Not really real. Not really.

She didn't age, you see. That's a dead giveaway right there, isn't it? It makes her presence more unsettling. Less human.

Sometimes, thankfully not very often, other people would spot her. I'd catch them looking from her to me and back again. This was a relief at first. I thought maybe I was the only one who could see her, which would have been even more unnerving. This way, at least I knew I wasn't crazy.

I was unnerved though. For a while. But let me tell you, it's wild what can become ordinary. No matter how creepy she looked, how suddenly she appeared... After a time, I sort of got used to her. I didn't like her, but it seemed I had no choice but to tolerate her.

I wondered what other people expected me to do about this child. I could feel judgement radiating off them in waves. I wanted to grab them by the collar and scream. Not my fault! Not my responsibility!

Or else chase the weirdo kid away. She was persistent.

As much as I tried not to give her the attention, it was impossible to miss how pale she was getting, now hollow her eyes looked.

She was a sneaky little shit. Something would happen, I'd make a mistake, or have a row with my latest boyfriend... and there she was, like the opposite of a good luck charm. Fading into the foreground. With this look in her eye like she'd been expecting me to mess up all along.

I didn't like anything about her. The big staring eyes, the way she was always there... Her hair, her clothes, her whining, the tears that stood in her eyes. It makes me sound awful, doesn't it?

But, here's the thing: you try it. You get haunted by a creepy kid that won't go away. It drives you crazy, but not necessarily in an interesting way. You just want it to stop. You get bored of it.

Day after day, week after week, month after month... She got greyer and flatter. More Listless. She looked like she'd been hollowed out.

Eventually, after I'd tried everything to get rid of her, get used to her, and just pretend she was never there... I tried something else. Scared, but more nervous about what people might think, I tried it when there was no one else around.

I tried to be nice to her.

I tried to see her with fresh eyes, as if she was any other innocent child. I tried to like her. It was tough going, so I just tried to kid myself she wasn't so bad. I tried telling her that. I looked right at her, and I told her, "You're not so bad, you know. You're okay. Really."

Her wide, black eyes say Liar.

The accusations buzz about us both like mosquitos. Annoying. Stupid. Ugly. Awkward.

I make myself look right at her, and Itry to drown them out. They whine with my voice and hers.

"You're not." I say. "You're not any of those things." She doesn't believe me. I don't believe me. "I'm not. I'm not."

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