NEW: The living ghost.

 

It started with a dark shadow. Nothing particularly unsettling about that, except that the shadow was darker, thicker, and often seemed to move with a fluidity that was all its own. A trick of the eye is an easy dismissive, but I, being who I was, knew otherwise.

I watched intently as it entered the room, a shadow crossing slowly - from the door, across the ceiling, to a point in front of me - stable and waiting. It was silent, but with menace, fuelled by an anger that had so obviously been contained for generations. It was an anger that unfolded in front of me, reached out and held me in an embrace that I could do nothing but accept, to welcome.

And then, as the embrace took control, the dark shadow's anger seeped into my being. Its anger became my anger; its pain became my pain. A scream came up from my innermost self, and I let it out with a venom that I never knew was there, could be there. I screamed in a primal wail at the injustice of it all, at the slights and wounds, at the mocking and humiliation, at the fingers that had dug into my eyes, at the fist rammed down my throat, at the rhythm that had repeated over, and over, and over.

I knew then that I had been aware of it, of all of it, always. And it dawned on me that this was no ghost, this was no spectre from beyond the veil. This was real, this was me. This was my anger, my frustration, my screams of pain - my living ghost.