LEONOR
TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO
Living in New Orleans, I should be used to ghosts.
They’re everywhere; they’re in everything.
Every crack of broken cement, every crumbling brick and rotting plank of wood.
The spirits whisper in your ear as they watch your every move, they run icy fingers down your spine to make sure they will never be forgotten.
The ghosts who haunt every inch of this city, who roam between life and death, they are everywhere.
And they can’t be stopped.
Cemeteries might house the dead, but they can’t contain whatever it is they leave behind.
Broken spirits and shattered souls, bleeding hearts left to wither. Those things leave a mark—a stain on the mortal realm, and with it comes a haunting so tragic it will surely leave those involved wandering aimlessly for the rest of time.
Unless you join them.
A crack of lightning outside my window has me flinching, and I’m curling into a tiny little ball in the middle of my livingroom floor. My knees are tight to my chest, my trembling hands gripping them until my knuckles turn white.
The room is spinning, the lightning flashing like a strobe well after it stops, ricocheting off the ghosts who hauntme,the ones begging me to return to them once again.
Each corner glows, illuminated by the fires of my own personal hell, the demons and devils snickering amongst their tools of torture while the spirits call to me.
The spiritssingto me.
Sweet promises, gentle pleas.
They hold out their frozen hands, opening cold arms to me, their soothing words ringing in my ears.
But it’s all lies.
They can’t save me, they never could.
I wouldn’t be here if they could have saved me.
I’d be at peace; I’d be with the music.
Another blast of lightning pierces the sky, my entire apartment lighting up, and putting my demons on full display.
I just want it to stop. I want all of it to go away.
I wanthimto go away.
He’s all I see when I close my eyes, he’s all I can smell, all I canfeel.
His hands on my body, his breath in my face.
My stomach rolls at the thought, at the memory trying to break free from the vault where it’s locked away.
Where it needs to stay.
They said I might never get those memories back, that I might never remember that night clearly. Not the show, not my… I probably won’t remember anything after what happened, but they were wrong.
I remember enough.
