crossing the blurred line

Let’s go in, she says.  It’s almost the witching hour.  The house is waiting for us.  Come.


and behind her the craggy mansion looms, a black mass threatening to overtake both you and her and what if it fell on you; it’d swallow you whole and she would cease to exist

she reaches her hand out and the clouds drift aimlessly over the moon, a full moon it was, but it doesn’t matter because you can still see her, white face white teeth white bony bony fingers that are curling towards you, beckoning


Get up!  A laugh like maniacal church bells comes hurtling out of her mouth.  It might rain again.  Get up.


and the wind is beginning to pick up and it’s only September but already there are dead leaves for the breeze to skitter about.  scraping and skittering and her skirt is billowing out toward you and the material rustles like the huge oak trees arcing above you that are swaying in sinuous anger and

the grass is still soaked from the deluge earlier and your jeans are absorbing the moisture and you’re uncomfortable, slightly chilled and your bones feel damp, but you can’t get up and go inside the hulking dark mansion because what if she doesn’t follow you inside


Please.  The laughter has ended and now she clearly arabesques on the precipice of impatience.  I can hear the clock ticking all the way out here.  I won’t be able to wait much longer.


and her hair is preternaturally black, inkier than the night and the craggy house behind you.  a full-fledged gale has replaced the scraping skittering wind and envelopes the two of you in its roaring fury and strands of darkness whip across her face like angered tentacles

and at last you stand on shaky legs and tentatively you step, step towards the skeletal arms, ablaze in the most unhealthily brilliant shade of white you’ve ever seen, and


She screeches with hysterical laughter, a sound that rends your ears and your existence and clearly the skies, for suddenly rain begins to pour down on you and you are knocked supine on your back with its force.  You look up to her, reaching pleading questioning, but she has pulled her hood over her heart-stopping face and she is nothing but a pillar of swirling, churning dark dark dark  and you scream—


and she has evanesced, dissipated, faded away and there is nothing left of her but you on your back feeling shredded open and flooded by the tempest and you want to scream again but you can’t bring yourself to because doing so would remind you too much of her.  and the storm stops as quickly as it started and you feel the drip drip drip of water pooling off the oak leaves and onto your prostrated limp figure

and now you are free from the miasma that was her but for some reason you wish she was still there because

you couldn’t tell if she was fiction or real but whatever she was she had been yours for a time but now all you have left of her are trampled blades of grass and an endless loop of hysterical pealing laughter on and on and on in your ears