The Unwelcome Visitors

I’ve lived within this residence for a significant amount of time. I’ve watched neighbors come and go and I’ve remained here after all this time as years turned into decades.

It was one such day in which I suddenly felt the most out of place and peculiar feeling.

After living for more than fifty years in this house, the feeling was foreign. A strange feeling of complete unfamiliarity.

My body felt different. It was as if it wasn’t even my body. It did not feel worn after decades of use, but light and free. The feeling was wonderful yet unnerving all at once.

I did not question the vast difference of my body nearly as much as I did the sudden difference of my home. The change was deeply confusing and even unsettling.

I did not see the decor I have always had placed on my dining room table. In its place, was another style of decor. A decor, I admit, was a bit atrocious!

Gone were all of the family memorabilia that lined the walls of my home throughout.

In their place were the photographs of a family I had never seen in my life.

And then there were the unusual and very unwelcome visitors.

I cannot begin to describe the annoyance and utter confusion of how these people just happened to intrude into my home.

It was the most unusual and curious sight. They moved about the house with a sense of normalcy as if they weren’t strangers but as if the house was theirs.

That could not be. This was my house!

I confronted them the moment I saw them.

“Who do you think you are doing in my house? My home?”

Their audacity to ignore my demands only ignited my anger even more.

A chill weaves around me suddenly and unexpectedly

I brush it aside claiming it as nothing but trickery of an overactive imagination.

That feeling of being watched, yet not a soul is there.

I know I’ve gotten their attention. I can sense it by the way they freeze abruptly in their tracks and stare off into the distance. Its as if they’re waiting for something sinister to happen. As long as I got their attention, I will continue to demand that they leave.

After failing to ignore my reasonable demands to leave, I decide to take it up a notch.

Sometimes just being polite and pleasant will not work for some. One of the unwelcome visitors passed me in the hall. I reached out and touched their shoulder firmly.

“You need to leave now and leave me in peace. This is my house! My home!”

A touch on the shoulder, I draw back chilled.

Was it my imagination again manipulating me? It felt too real.

They know I’m there. They are amusingly startled each time I make myself known. And yet they never truly acknowledge me. I can stand directly in front of someone and they walk right through me. Not past me.

Through.

Wait a minute.

Perhaps I’ve been mistaken. Maybe it was just an illusion. How could I be invisible? I feel more alive than I’ve ever felt.

Angered and desperate for their full attention, I knock a picture off the wall. The power to do so fueled by the negative energy growing inside me.

A picture hurls off the wall and onto the floor by an unseen yet powerful force

Disrupting the peaceful stillness of the house

Secured on the wall, there is no logical reason

Its unexplained occurrence terrifies me

The confusion is incomprehensible. Like nothing I’ve ever felt. The strangers in my home. My home itself not being what I know it to be. My body as if it was that of a stranger.

A disturbing almost ludicrous thought comes to me.

The feeling of being invisible, the difference of my body. Light and free. Even the most subtle pain nonexistent.

Could I be …

A spirit tipping on the verge of two dimensions - of the living and the dead?

In perfectly simple terms … a ghost?

Led by fear and deep confusion, I stand in denial. I’m among the living. I’m not dead!

At that time, someone walks through me once again. And yet still, I hold onto my denial.