Haunted.

Trigger warning :This story contains suicide, sexual assault, gore.

Anger drapes the room in uncomfortable silence. Resentment and spite have become the trimmings that decorate the dinner table. Both my parents sit on opposite ends, as far apart as the space would allow. Their silence conveys more honesty, more meaning than any of their words spoken aloud ever had.

I try to diffuse the tension. A funny story, some made up joy from my day.

Silence, save for the scrape of cutlery. Disapproval hangs heavy in the air.

I could shout and scream and they would not hear me.

I am a ghost.

In my room I rage, full poltergeist. I wail and throw things. I break things. It is what I'm good at. Breaking things. Dreams, promises, relationships...all shatter like glass. I am especially fond of shattering mirrors. Of seeing my fractured reflection, the outside finally fitting the inside. I keep a shard of broken glass hidden away. A talisman. A testimony.

I am a ghost.

At school I haunt hallways, classrooms, bathrooms...moving through unseen and unfelt.

Especially unfelt.

At the spring formal, I cling to the wall like condensation, winter frost amidst the bright flowers. I watch the bodies on the floor as they dance, swaying, moving closer and closer together. I can feel the heat of of the room, the fiery cauldron of warm weather, teenaged hormones, hot bodies burning with lust and longing and envy.

But not me.

I am numb. Empty. A frigid wind.

I am a ghost.

I try to feel something. I try to remember a time when that was me dancing. When I was beautiful. Warm. Welcoming. Alive.

Seen.

But was I ever seen?

Memories are painful things. They come like a black ocean, rushing through the fractured hull of a broken ship.

A girl on the dance floor. A girl who is me and not me. A memory. A different kind of ghost. Her dance is graceful, elegant, effortless. It doesn't reflect her inner turmoil, her uncertainty and anxiety.

She is a child of two worlds, walking in both but belonging in neither.

Born to Caribbean parents who migrated "so that she could have a better life," a sacrifice they wear like a badge of honor, lauded over her if she dares to be less than perfect: 99% on an exam, why not 100? 3rd place in track and field, "you'll do better next time".

She is smart and athletic and creative. It allows her to flow through various cliques, like water through porous soil, eventually settling underneath, all alone.

On lonely days (which are most days) she zoom calls her grandmother and tells her about her day, her tests, her races. The old woman beams with pride. Behind her, through an open window, there are blue skies and green plants, banana trees bathed in warm sunlight. Outside her own window, there is only gray.

"Yuh doing so well, doux-doux." The old woman says.

The girl smiles.

"But nuff 'bout me, granny. How yuh going? Yuh looking younger every time I see you."

They talk and she slips back into the dialect of her birth land, the broken English words sweet like Sorrel on her tongue. It taste like home, like comfort, like warmth.

Her parents speak dialect on occasion, in the privacy of their home, though they disapprove of her speaking it back. Their relationship with their heritage is as conflicted as their relationship with her: pride and shame, mixing into something ill defined and inexpressible.

"We want you to fit in at your new school."

The excuse they use as to why she should speak a certain way. She scoffs at that. They wish her to 'fit in' but yet they push her to excel, to stand out, to be set apart. Their endless prohibitions make her a social pariah: no dating, no parties, no 'hanging out' on school nights. No short skirts. No crop tops. No makeup. No freedom.

"Why does the prettiest girl in school never go to any dances?" Sam had asked.

Sam was a footballer on the school team. A quarterback? Maybe. She wasn't in to football. At least not that kind. She never understood why they called it football...most of the time they held the ball in their hands while running and crashing into each other. Real football involved kicking. The use of actual feet.

But what did it matter? The cutest boy in school thought that she was pretty. Wanted to spend time with her. They would go running in the early morning before school and after. Time spent training was acceptable to her parents (so long as her grades were good).

After a time they did less running and more making out in the park, sequestered behind bushes, away from prying eyes. At school they'd exchanged glances across the cafeteria, meaningful looks in the hallways, hidden notes in class. Secret rendezvous in the library or beneath the bleachers followed.

Sneaking out was the natural progression. She should have felt guilt and shame. But she didn't. She felt alive in a way she never had. Connected. Seen. Felt.

Definitely felt.

She remembers the night when everything changed. A party she had gone to. Remembers trying to escape a crowded living room. The high of alcohol had worn off, leaving a headache in its wake. She had just needed a place to lie down, just for a few moments.

The room was empty and dark. She was sleepy. So sleepy that she barely remembered Sam coming in to check on her. Barely remembers him lying next to her, then on top of her, his lips covering her own, hands searching beneath her dress. She thinks she said no but she couldn't be sure. She thinks she tried to push his hands away, push him away. But she isn't sure. What she remembers is pain and blood and a thought that love shouldn't hurt like this.

In the weeks following, Sam no longer meets her eyes in the cafeteria and the hallways. The notes stop coming. She ran alone on the rare occasion that she chose to run.

In the months that pass she stopped training, stopped competing all together. Her grades plummet but she doesn't care. She has bigger problems. Her parents are first angry, then worried. They can't figure out what is wrong with her. And there is no way she could tell them, could explain the missed period, the nausea, the double lines on the pharmacy pregnancy test.

She buys a bus ticket and visits her cousin Addie. Addie knows what to do. She gives her some pills to use. She has no idea where Addie got them from, but she is desperate. The pain that follows is excruciating, the amount of bleeding terrifying. She was caught between fearing she would die and wishing for it. Eventually, it is over.

But life does not return to normal for her. She sleeps too much in the day, making up for her lack of sleep at night. In her dream she sees a small child, walking on a lonely road, calling to her, wanting her to follow. It is always dark in those dreams, with only anemic moonlight shining on a dirt road to light the way. Always in the dream she loses sight of the child. She can't see anything in front of her or behind. She looks down, looking for tracks and finds them, tiny feet in the mud,that appear to be facing the wrong way. Did she somehow get turned around? No, she would have known. She was sure she would have known.

A memory tugs at her, a story from her childhood, told by her grandmother at twilight. Dread fills her as she recalls the old woman's story about the creatures that look like small children, save for feet that are twisted the wrong way. Douen. Souls of children who died unbaptized, forced to wander the earth. If parents were not careful, they would lure their own children away from their homes, getting them lost in the forest forever.

Laughter fills the air, high and child-like.

"Mama," a voice says from behind her. The sound chills her to the bone.

She turns slowly and sees the creature, a small boy, naked save for a large, straw hat, heels facing forward and toes pointing back. He tips his head up and smiles at her, revealing incisors that look too sharp. His lips are stained dark red. Blood dribbles from his chin. In his hand he holds something fleshy, a dark, purple hued mass, with a piece bitten off.

He chews slowly and she feels the bile rise in her throat at the realization of what his meal is- a human placenta.

He takes another bite and she suddenly feels a searing pain in her abdomen. She looks down and sees the blood seeping through her night gown. She screams until she wakes and even then she does not stop screaming.

Her parents try various things: doctors, medication, prayers, talismans to guard against the evil eye and evil spirits but nothing helps. She becomes more withdrawn. They debate pulling her out of school but they don't, hoping that routine would help. It doesn't. Instead, she walks though her life like a shadow, a ghost. The strain becomes too much for her parents. Their marriage begins to fracture. Or maybe it was fracturing long before and this was just the proverbial straw.

The memories become too much.

I run from the dance, a gale rushing out.

Back in my room, I find the piece of glass I kept hidden. I wrap my hands around it and head for the bathroom. With the door locked, I turn on the water and fill the tub. I get in fully clothed, clutching the jagged shard. I am a ghost. It was time the outside matched the inside.

Anger drapes the room in silence.

I am a ghost.

Restless. Doomed to haunt the same memory over and over. To be haunted by the pain of life.

I am a ghost.