Ghost 19

by Simone St. James

“It seems so real when I sit here,” I said. “But I don’t know, do I? It could be a play, all of it. When I think of going out there, I think that maybe none of it is real, except me. And then I think that perhaps all of it is real, except me, and that’s much worse. Do you ever wonder that?”

I was starting to think that this tearstained monster—this woman of rages, of sobs, of hysterical laughter—was the real me, and that the woman I’d been for my first twenty-nine years was the fake, the imitation.

It was only when that thing started trying to kill me that I realized: When I came to 19 Howard Avenue, I had turned myself into nothing at all.