Leave Me Alone

I thought it was just a plea. A simple, desperate whisper to the world: “Leave me alone.” I had been running for weeks, hiding from faces I once trusted, shadows that had grown longer than my own. I thought isolation would bring relief, that solitude would mend the fractures in my mind. But that night, I realized the words had a life of their own, and the life they demanded wasn’t mine to give.

It started with the knocks. Faint at first, polite, hesitant—tapping at my window as if asking permission. I ignored them, telling myself it was the wind or some animal. But the knocks didn’t stop. They grew louder, more insistent, echoing through the small apartment like a heartbeat I couldn’t control. And then came the whispers—soft, almost comforting at first, until I realized they weren’t outside. They were inside.

Leave me alone… the voice echoed from the corner of my room.

I spun around, my heart hammering against my chest like a trapped bird. The room was empty. I laughed, shakily, telling myself it was exhaustion, paranoia. But the reflection in the mirror didn’t lie. Not really. My reflection smiled when I didn’t. My reflection moved when I stood still.

I tried to reason with it. “It’s just my mind playing tricks,” I whispered to myself, though my voice sounded hollow even to me. But every night, the knocks, the whispers, the presence grew stronger. I stopped sleeping. I stopped eating properly. I moved from apartment to apartment, from town to town, thinking distance could save me. But nothing could outrun it. No matter where I went, the voice found me, slipping through the cracks of every empty room, every quiet street. Leave me alone.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I had begged for solitude, craved silence. Yet, what I hadn’t realized was that some things are not satisfied with mere words. They need more. They hunger. And some shadows… are patient.

The breaking point came one night at what I thought was home. I returned to my apartment, exhausted, hoping for the brief illusion of safety. It was silent. Too silent. The kind of silence that presses against your chest, heavy and suffocating. Then the lights flickered. I froze, feeling the air around me grow colder, heavier. And then I saw it in the kitchen, waiting. My shadow. Detached, stretching, and moving as if it had finally grown tired of obeying.

It spoke. In my own voice. Leave me alone.

I understood then. The me who had begged for solitude, who had cursed the world for intruding, was still here. Only… not quite me anymore. Something had learned, had listened, and now it demanded its own space in the world.

I ran. I thought speed might save me. But the thing that looked like me moved faster, slipping through walls, corners, doors, every space I thought was safe. Everywhere I went, it followed. It wore my face, my voice, learned my secrets, my fears, my patterns. The me I had always known was being hunted by a version of myself I could no longer recognize.

I tried shouting, screaming at it to leave, to stop, but the air only carried its own echo. It mimicked my anger, my desperation, my terror. And then it started speaking in my thoughts, guiding me, taunting me, rewriting my memories. Leave me alone, it said, each repetition twisting into a command, a promise, a threat.

I hid, I barricaded, I locked every door, every window. I even tried moving into remote towns, motels that had no faces, no history. But it followed, as if it was stitched to the very essence of me. Every night it grew bolder, standing where I least expected, appearing in mirrors, photographs, even reflections on screens.

Eventually, I stopped trying to fight it. I stopped trying to escape. I learned to whisper into the darkness, hoping it wouldn’t hear, hoping it would tire. But deep down, I knew better. Some words are curses, and some shadows… never forgive.

Now I live in the margins of my own life. I walk through streets, pretending to be one version of me while another waits, lurking, patient, ready. I see it in reflections, in puddles, in glass windows. It smiles, mocking me, teaching me that silence is not freedom and solitude is not safety.

And sometimes, late at night, when the wind rattles the windows just right, I hear it clearly. Leave me alone.

Except this time, it’s not me saying it.

I used to think I could vanish, that running or pleading could save me. I was wrong. The darkness I invited into my life, the solitude I so desperately sought, has become its own entity—shaped from my fears, my regrets, my very self. And it waits. Always.

Now I whisper back, not as a warning, but as a fragile pact with inevitability: I will leave you alone… if you leave me alive.

But deep down, I know the truth. Some shadows never leave. Some voices never stop. And some pleas… are answered in ways you never expect.