—WE COULD CALL IT EVEN, YOU COULD CALL ME BARELY BREATHING

 

 

 

                                                 Ghost Face

 

 

There’s a ghost face in front of you, a torn patch of sheet, two gouged-out eyes, its smirk a rip in the fabric. You’re just a kid, having turned seven last month, so what do you know?

You do know you’re terrified. When you scream, there’s no sound, just flushed air that comes out, making the ghost face billow and undulate, which is even more frightening.

Then ghost face turns into your uncle Ray, who you found in the garage, on his knees, sucking on your older brother’s zipper.

Then uncle Ray turns into your dad who shape-shifted into a jackknife one Christmas, loopy as a Slinky, before flinging himself into a tree.

It’s one horror scene after another and your bed is quivering and you hope it’s because of your nerves and not that something horrible is causing the commotion.

And then ghost face is back, only it’s your face screwed into a look of revulsion, probably the same expression you’re wearing now, so it’s a set of terrified twins in your room after midnight.

You reach into that deep, hollow pit of you that’s supposed to contain courage, even a thimble of it, and instead what you retrieve are the words your mother said before she left for the last time, her face awash with tears, a tic working overtime on her right eyelid as if a ladybug was stuck underneath it.

You say, “It’s okay, it’ll be all right,” and you try to believe it, even though you don’t really, but it somehow works because the ghost face, which is your face, is clipped free from whatever’s holding it in place, falling like a leaf to the floor where it dissolves and is gone.

Gone for good, you say to yourself. Gone for good, you say and say and say.