Maddie liked to fill the silence. So, when the door clicked shut behind her, the first thing she did was turn on the TV. Then, she cranked the volume to fifty, and only then did she put her simple leather purse down on the table. It was the natural chain of events for her– Maddie knew how to control her surroundings. 

It was dark outside, so she turned on the light and pulled the 70s style curtains across the window. Most of her apartment held the marks of the 70s. It was quaint and boldly patterned, and Maddie always thought that once it might have been quite brightly colored as well. It was really as simple as an apartment could get. There was the entryway, (and using the term “entryway” makes it seem much grander than reality) where a dusty beige couch took up much of the space. In front of that, there was a small coffee table where her bag now sat, and across the room, pressed against the wall, sat a simple, boxy TV on a wood cabinet she’d chosen herself. She quite enjoyed looking at that cabinet. It was such a steal, she remembered every time. 

Stuffed into the corner behind the couch was a sad plastic fern, somehow wilting and covered in dust. The living room opened up into a kitchen where the stove and the refrigerator sat to the left and the sink to the right. That’s where she headed next– the fridge, where she grabbed a carton of strawberries. At the far end of the kitchen sat a wooden table pushed up against the wall with a chair on either side. It almost resembled a sort of underground interrogation table you might see in the movies, with a flickering light hanging above it. 

But that’s not where Maddie sat. She liked to sit on the couch in front of the TV, though she wasn’t particularly interested in the news. She liked to sit there because it gave her a good view of the next room over. 

See, the other side of the living room gave way to a very short hallway, where on one side lay the bathroom and the other the bedroom. And from her spot with her feet up on the coffee table and her head reclined on the pillows of the couch, she could see just enough of the darkness that was her bedroom to imagine it was moving. 

Maddie settled in, pulling not one but two faux fur blankets across her lower body. One of them was a daring shade of magenta, the other a calm beige. They both had the crusty kind of dreadlocks that such a fluffy blanket gets after many years of food, drink, and shmutz has been rubbed into it. 

As she popped the first strawberry into her mouth and smashed it between her teeth, she made a point of not looking at the darkness in her bedroom. Instead, she stared at the TV, where red flashed across the screen and some blonde jabbered about a disaster somewhere across the Atlantic. Distantly, she heard the phrase “rising death toll,” and then tuned it out again. 

She bit down on another strawberry, eating it all in one bite and not bothering to remove the leaves. That jabbering blonde started to sound more like static than a woman. 

Maddie didn’t make it a personality point that she was “troubled” (as the counselors at her high school called it). They never could put a pin in her particular variety of crazy. 

She swallowed the pulp of the strawberry, and it got caught a bit in her throat. 

The bedroom door creaked loudly. Maddie let out a short rasp of air– more irritated than scared. She wanted to scream into her apartment for it to leave her alone, but it never listened. Also, her neighbors always come over to check on her when they hear any sort of unusual noise. We worry, they’d say, and maybe even invite her over for dinner. 

Maddie lives with this little glitch in her brain that one of her psychologists made into a little doll for her to play with one day. He was very proud of her for trying to understand that it wasn’t there to hurt her. It could be her friend! 

Except she burned it in her bedroom trash can in the seventh grade.

Her mom always said that Maddie might get the cigarette curse if she touched her lighter. 

She called it Doctor. The glitch, that is. She came across the name when she first realized that all her problems were the same little thing that reached its little arms out to paint all the corners of her life a vivid red. 

She thought that the doctors she saw were a part of it. Another one of its mirages. Her parents always said to her, “We’re going to see the Doctor!” And then she would see a person in a long white coat and a whole lot more. 

When she described them, when she realized they weren’t there, she said that they were monsters. They aren’t. They are all one little buddy that is just as scared and hurt as Maddie is. That’s what they say, they can’t see them though. 

She thinks that’s probably bull. Eventually she figured out that they can’t really hurt her. That they don’t really exist. 

Except it does. It does exist, and it likes to crawl over her face at night when she should be sleeping and slip in between the corners of her gritted teeth. It gets in through the chewed sides of her cheeks. It gets into her blood. Then, she knows she’s done for. She lies in her bed, and she can move but she doesn’t. She feels it in her heart, her liver, and her lungs and her eyes. She feels the way it moves, in her eyes. It moves across her field of vision. It likes to pretend it lives in the room with her, but she knows it is all beneath the thin coat of tears. (She knows. She knows.)

It likes to play with the shadows. It’ll pretend it is standing in the hall, or under the bed. 

The TV flashes red and white and then another reporter starts pointing at a map. He might be talking about the weather– or maybe a border dispute? She isn’t watching anymore. 

The shadow, the shadow that fits neatly in between the bedroom door and the closed closet. She likes to have it in her field of vision because then she knows where it will come from. 

And it does, but it has decided to pick at her ears today. 

It breathes. And it keeps breathing. 

And she thinks, oh god. 

This is a low blow, now isn’t it, even for it. 

The breath has a sort of heavy rasp to it. It is a little bit too slow for a pant, but too intense for a regular breath. 

It was the sort of breath he had when he ran, or cried. Or when she kissed him. 

Then there was the sound that always followed, the kshhhhh of his inhaler. 

Her eyes focused back on the TV. 

She couldn’t follow the handsome reporter’s striking blue eyes. She locked on to these features, but they blurred. They seemed stupid, they are, they are. 

He had brown eyes and a long, sad face, and he wore yellow T-shirts and shorts (shorts!) to the party. He was sober and woefully so, and he was at least a bit incompetent too because he had his nice auburn hair tucked up in this dreadful beanie with blue and green stripes on it. 

And this reporter, he has blue eyes and a short, stout face. He is wearing a suit. His hair is slicked in a wave and he has an oily grin. Oilier than his hair, somehow. 

“Do you remember what you said to me?” And she hears it much better than the man on the TV. That’s always worrying, that’s a problem. When it becomes more real than reality. 

She gets up sharply from the couch and spills a strawberry on the floor. She doesn’t bother to pick it up. Instead, she walks briskly through the (very) short hallway, walking at an angle so she can always see that shadowy doorway. It is better when it has a place to hide. 

She pops open the mirrored cabinet and out of the corner of her eye selects a nearly empty bottle of pills. These are the pills for emergencies only. 

She takes three and swallows them with water from the sink. 

She can still hear his breathing. 

(Its breathing.)

She goes back to the couch. 

She eats the strawberry that fell on the floor and stares at the reporter, who has once again shifted into an attractive young blond. 

She knew she was going to like him as soon as she heard his voice– the sick rasp to it. The tremble at the edges. She liked the way he thought the world of her. She liked the way he was wrong. 

She is looking at the doorway again. She is looking at the doorway again. 

She looks away. To the kitchen sink. Thinks idly about the dishes in the sink. (There aren’t many. She should do them tomorrow.) Looks back at the TV. 

At some point she left a strawberry on the table, so she pops it into her mouth.

“Can I have a strawberry?” 

She startles, and that’s weird, because it’s not like that’s a new thing. It talks, so does she, so did he. Similarities are slippery like that. 

Don’t think about him. 

It wants a strawberry. 

He likes strawberries. 

“No,” she says, and her voice isn’t as loud as she wants it to be except she wants to scream it, and then the neighbors would be concerned. She shouldn’t have responded anyway. 

He is almost silent, if it weren’t for that infernal breathing. 

She speaks again. 

“God, will you stop that?” 

The TV flashes a scene of some natural disaster– houses crumpled like paper airplanes. 

He looked at her from the bar and said the most awkward hello. She said hello back. 

Someone told her that she has to think through it to get away from it. She really does usually ignore that advice, but today, because not thinking about it seems like a lost cause. 

“You never liked to drink.” 

So she’s having a conversation with it now. This is a new low. (Not really.) 

“And you liked to watch movies, but thought that the books were boring.” 

“I hated that, because I loved books. Movies are fine. I would watch them with you.” 

Do you remember? Do you remember? I used to watch them with you. 

“What happened?” 

We were friends. 

“Why did you do all of this? I never- I never did it, y’know. I never really did look through your things. I never stalked you. I mean- I know you weren’t… right. And I wasn’t. Am not. But we- I liked you. As a friend. And… I thought you… did too.” Her voice was getting louder. In the back of her head, she knew it was too loud. The walls are thin, she scolded herself. 

They used to hang out a lot. 

He would text her every weekend. 

Hey!!!! Wanna come over tonight? I have ice cream

with chocolaaaaaate? also what time 

Ten minutes? and of course!?

ill be right over!!!

And then-

“You changed and, well, I thought you had gotten better! I thought you were– I don’t know. Loosening up? I never thought it was… I mean it never affected me like that. I didn’t think it could cause…” 

“Until you didn’t…” 

He started texting her more often. 

Stop. 

???

Please. Stop. I can’t do this. You have to stop. 

uhhhhhhhhh idk what you mean??? 

Shut up. You know. You’re sick, you know thta. Youre dishgusting. 

what is wrong with you? 

i really dont understand. 

“I just can’t understand. I am crazy. I see stuff- stuff that isn’t there. What’s crazier than that?

“But- you. You really thought I was…” 

She eats another strawberry and talks through the gurgling red. 

“I mean you called the police on me! Sent them to my home! I almost got arrested, oh jesus if I’d gotten arrested and had one more mark on my record, oh brother I woulda been done for! I would have lost it!” 

Under the myrtle tree, which you so cleverly chose for its romanticism. You asked me to be your Valentine, and I said well sure all right Prince Charming come and sweep me away. 

“It was nothing like that. We didn’t have a great romance. We weren’t meant for each other. I… I really see that now.” She lets out a great chuckle. 

We kissed just once in their whole entire relationship. Under that birch tree the day past Valentine’s. Then you went MIA for four days and came back an alkie. 

“What happened that week? When you were gone, after Valentine’s Day?” 

She goes for another strawberry but finds the carton empty. She tosses it on the coffee table. 

“I wish I had asked when I had the chance.”

“Ask.” His voice is barely more than a hiss. Quieter than the TV static. Quieter than the refrigerator’s hum. 

“No, don’t do this to me,” she scoffs, her hands pulling at the fur of her blanket. 

“Ask, Maggie.” He always knew how to say her name. 

“You don’t know the answer, Doctor, because you aren’t real.You aren’t real.” 

And then he steps out of the shadow. 

And smiles. 

And he looks tired and disheveled and he has his shirt half tucked into his pants. His stupid shirt that screams in bold white letters: Sleep. Eat. Game. Repeat. 

Where does this fall into that pattern?

“Maggie,” he says with hollow, hollow eyes. 

“No!” She starts with a yell, but the end trickles upward into a scream. It wavers and breaks at the edges too. Not too good for dispelling ghosts. 

You’re not dead, though, Marcus. Marcus? 

He starts to walk. Slowly, one step at a time, and Maggie realizes that she is much more comfortable behind the couch. She takes her blankets with her too- never taking her eyes off of Doctor. 

“Maggie, really. It’s too late,” he says with that same sick smile. 

What what why please stop please please and maybe she mouths it too because he answers, he answers. 

“I know, Maggie I know about the notes and the letters and the cameras. I know about the burner phone. I know about the window. Maggie, you could have just asked to come in!” 

Please I never, I never. 

“Marcus, I would never. I would never. I know what your privacy means to you. I understand!” Why couldn’t she remember that she was arguing with herself? Why couldn’t she remember to keep her voice down?

And she saw that his hands were shaking as they reached forward and she saw that his eyes were bloodshot. He was moving around the coffee table now. He was close enough that she could smell his sharp alcohol breath. 

She backs away from the couch and presses her back to the wall. Her eyes stay on his, but she tries to breathe. She knows he is not there. She knows it is just it again. 

She knows she knows she knows. 

It seems like he makes his way around the coffee tables too quickly. He is already halfway around the couch. He is still breathing hard and rasping like the good ol days, the good ol days before those rasps tasted like beer. 

He can’t hurt her. He can’t even touch her, really. 

She knows she knows she knows. 

He is in front of the door. 

A peculiar thought enters her mind. 

The neighbors are out for dinner.