Seeing Signs: An Odd Occurrence

There are times when I see signs. And not the ones for streets - though they do crop up there. I’m talking about the figurative ones. The subtle happenings around me which seem to signify something. What that is, I don’t know.

Incident 1: Was This A Ghost?

May 4th, 2024. It was 10:00 PM at night and cloudy. I was getting ready for bed, so I closed the drapes on my windows and turned off the lights. God forbid I go to sleep right away. I never do.

Sometimes I lie awake because of hyperactivity. No, not the ADHD kind. Just the neutral type that makes your brain refuse to rest. Other times, it’s stress. The anxiety of what will happen the next day.

Will I get my work project done? Am I going to finish my errands on time? Can I tolerate the people that hurt me the most whom I must encounter? Only rarely is it excitement that keeps me up at night. But hey, at least I do go to sleep eventually. Maybe in half an hour, maybe an hour.

The worst thing that forces me out of sleep, though, is guilt. The “what could have beens” and potential wounds I’ve left on others. Have they healed completely, or are there still scars? Could I have even prevented this or that? I may never know.

That’s what kept me up the night of May 4th. I had dealt with a string of broken relationships the past few months. Work wasn’t a huge issue. It was the weekend, after all. But regret sure was.

At that moment, I saw a faint shadow. I turned over from the side of my bed. I then heard a voice. When I got a closer look, I was stunned. It looked like the ghost of Riley* - a former friend of mine.

Now, I don’t really believe in ghosts. At least most ghost sightings have more mundane explanations, from the wind to carbon monoxide to poor mental health. There definitely wasn’t any CO1 in my room, though.

I think it was the loneliness factor which made me hallucinate that night plus the guilt. I hadn’t contacted Riley in months. To say we drifted apart would be an understatement. We weren’t best friends. But when things got tough, Riley was my closest ally. Nonetheless, I eventually became too much to handle for her.

“What’s wrong with you?” scolded the shadow.

Riley, I’m sorry, I mentally responded. There were roommates in another room, so I didn’t want to bother them.

“Sorry doesn’t quite cut it,” she stated.

My heart started to race.

Why am I even seeing you? I thought to myself. We live thousands of miles away from each other! Also, how are you a ghost? There’s nothing about you dying anywhere!

“How could you lie to me?” she cried. “I had to find the truth about him myself! And since I left the department, I had no one to turn to!”

The wind grew stronger. I didn’t bother to fight back; she was right. If I had been just a little smarter, a little more upfront, and less reckless, she wouldn’t have left me. If only I didn’t let a powerful man take charge of a twisted narrative. But it was far too late now.

Or was it?

Incident 2: Underused Tagline

I became determined to search for Riley - in legal ways, of course. I wasn’t going to try to find her dox info. But I needed to know if she was okay. And maybe try to set things right, if that was even possible at this point. I had a lot of explaining to do.

I checked all of her public profiles. Twitter, YouTube, TikTok. Nothing in the past few weeks. I then checked her Discord profile. Worryingly, all of the profile pictures were completely blanked out.

I talked to an old acquaintance that knew her - Aubrey. But they didn’t know her that well, and thus had no clue where she was now. There was only one other person I could contact. Or so I thought.

As I dug through sets of old messages to find out who might have known Riley’s whereabouts, one profile picture caught my eye. I clicked on it, and a GIF with a text quote was revealed.

Don’t you dare, it said. Don’t you dare.

My thoughts began to spiral. This wasn’t just anyone’s profile picture. It was the profile picture of the very man that manipulated Riley. Those same three words were used against me by him to break my heart. I never did anything about it. He’s done this crap and gotten away so many times. Who would believe me?

But that picture made me regret it. And worse. What if this was a sign? A warning not to mess with Riley? On the other hand, “don’t you dare” was a fairly common phrase. It could have been targeted at anyone - if it was even targeted at someone.

At this point, I decided to back off. There was no way I could get back into contact with Riley at this point, as neither of us shared social circles. Sure enough, I later discovered that she did rather horrid things to a teenage boy.

…

I’m generally skeptical of the supposed supernatural. But to this day, I wonder if I should have listened to my gut when I felt circumstances calling out to me. Objectively, I know there are likely mundane explanations for these.

Still, the fact that I could even read into them…

*The following story is fictional.

..

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