Handkerchief

I was seeing shit. Out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes in front of me. Wisps like black smoke and sometimes more solid like fabric. I had taken to calling it a handkerchief. Usually just quickly in my periphery, but not always.Once or twice I had looked right at it. 

Someone else had also seen it. So I thought it must be real. I thought I couldn't be hallucinating. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe they were hallucinating with me. It happens. They were concerned they were having a breakdown, and maybe they were. Maybe I am.

It had always been in that house. Sometimes near the floor boards. Sometimes close to the ceiling. Always sudden and then swiftly gone. I didn't talk about it for a while at first, until they brought it up. Sitting in the dark outside, comparing notes. The same thing.

The handkerchief.

It stayed in that house mostly and soon they said "please don't talk about it with me anymore." So I stopped. I don't know if they ever saw it again, but for a while afterward I did. In the living room mostly, flitting away into the shadows. It wasn't frightening, but curious. Other things would happen in the house. Noises that made no sense, mostly. A lamp turning itself on and off. What sounded like walking in an empty bedroom upstairs. Another bedroom with an often overwhelming oppressiveness. 

I wanted to investigate. To learn. Ask questions and find answers, but they said "please don't talk about it with me anymore" and I left it alone. Only watched. I saw it less and less there.

I had gone through a rough period in the spring and early summer. If you've spent any significant period of time with me, you'd know that weird shit starts to happen around me in those times. And it was. It's the only correlation that I can put together consistently. I'm feeling rough, shit gets weird.

Over the last couple of weeks I had been dipping into it again. The dark. Slowly and without cause. In my living room a few days ago I was nearing the point where I get nervous about it and the next day a wisp of grey smoke out of the corner of my eye. I ignored it, but noted it, as I note damn near everything. The next day, in my kitchen, another. I started paying attention. Two days ago, at work a third. Then last night, I looked right at it.

It wasn't smoke this time. It seemed as though fabric. Black. In the crack under the bottom of my bedroom door, sticking out an inch or two. I looked right at it and just as quickly it slipped under the door as if yanked from the other side. I ran into the bedroom, vigilant watch on the floor. Nothing. I thought that maybe I had only seen a mouse, and that it wasn't black, just dark. I stuffed a shirt under the door and went through the bedroom. The baseboards. The walls. Anywhere a mouse could have slipped into. I went through the clothing on my floor. The laundry basket, under my bed. My book shelf. My closet. Everywhere. I found no mouse. I found no holes or cracks. No exits.

I had looked right at it.

It was with me now, and I had looked right at it.

It makes me nervous. A medication I had been on had caused distinct auditory hallucinations and I had stopped using it. I wondered if the new medication was doing the same thing. I wondered if it could be stress. Could depression make me hallucinate? I had been sleeping okay that week, so I didn't think it was that. But two things I didn't want to entertain were; I'm losing my shit, or what I saw was real.

I was seeing shit. Barely leaving the dark apartment. Burnt out from work and the world in general. From just living. Depressed, anxious, and increasingly paranoid and I was seeing shit. 

I'm going to catch it and make it pay some fucking rent.