13120.C
6th of June, 2026 AD
I am a ghost, occupying my human body and controlling it like a puppet master.
I arrive with my youngest brother and his wife to my childhood home. I walk through the kitchen as I try to embrace my father. I pass through him and he acknowledges my presence with coldness, emotional absence once again.
I float into the living room past my mother and the loving, smiling faces of familial units from my past. They too choose not to acknowledge me. Once I make it to the dark banister within the narrow hallway that plagued my nightmares, I open the door and it shuts behind me.
I have assumed human form.
I walk up the stairs with the same timid trepidation I held as a young child, fearing the ascent as I tried to prove my bravery to the formless entity whose presence only I could ever sense.
I find shelter in my childhood bedroom, closing the sliding plastic door that was meant to give me the illusion of privacy, cheaply installed out of spite to concede a small defeat in admitting I was a person who deserved autonomy. I set the hook and eye latch screwed into the doorframe nearby to signal the room was occupied by…someone.
I retreat to the dark corner where my computer once sat, playing a strange version of ancient Egyptian chess rendered in retro 2D graphics using a Windows 95 style graphical user interface. The CRT monitor’s glow is the only thing that cuts through the blackness of night outside my window. Another illusion meant to distract me from the truth.
Suddenly the latch comes unhooked as it usually did, with one parent peering in on me to see what I was doing, yet still no acknowledgement of my presence. I remain lurking in the confines of my assigned living space like a decrepit goblin deceived into performing meaningful self-entertainment.
My brother comes in to finally acknowledge me. He asks me what game I’m playing, and I try to describe it to him. I’m winning the game, I’m starting to enjoy myself. Then he reveals to me what I was dreading to hear.
“You know you’re not supposed to be here, right?”
Spooky