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This is the prologue of my labor of love that I have been plugging away at over the course of a few years now. Please do give constructive critique!

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Have you ever wondered what it was like to be able to see things that happened in the past, or to hear whispers from people that others might not be able to see? I never used to want to believe in this kind of stuff, but I always could experience it. I can tell you that it is not for the faint of heart or the weak. Sure, it may sound awesome when you put it into retrospect… But it is also pretty taboo shit with a lot of people. One does not speak of seeing and hearing things, you know?

For me, it is not a gift. It is something I always hated, to tell you the truth. Being five years old and talking to dead people is either seen as you having an active imagination, or you being loco. There is nothing good about dreaming of people dying, let alone watching as kids are getting murdered. There is nothing glamorous about the dead approaching you and you not realizing you are speaking to someone other people cannot see. I would never wish this curse upon anybody, not even my worst enemy.

My mother was pretty much one of those people who thought I had a vivid imagination. She’d be the one to tuck me in whenever I cried out in my sleep from one of those horrid dreams, or she’d say, “That’s nice, dear,” whenever I talked about the old man who often visited me. She never bought into the hocus pocus mumbo jumbo.

Peter was nice for a long time. He would sit with me in my bedroom and be a good friend to me. I would play with one of my dolls or have a stupid little tea party, and he always felt obliged to sit with me and pretend that he was drinking tea with me or encouraged me with my silly play. I never really thought about the fact that he didn’t pick anything up. I thought it was neat to watch him just pantomime his tea sipping. He even taught me the value of raising my pinky whilst sipping at air. I got such a huge kick out of his daily visits.

He looked like someone who was alive, and in the flesh. I did think it was kind of strange the way that he dressed. He always had on dusty looking overalls and a stained up, rumpled looking wife-beater. He never changed his clothes. As for his face, I guess the best way to get someone to wrap their minds around it is if I drew it for them… But for the purposes of me telling my story, I will have to put it into words, no?

His face was old, but it was strangely smooth for someone who was probably in his seventies when he died. He had these piercing blue eyes: they were like staring at a placid lake on a warm, summer day, where you cannot tell where the sky ends. His mouth always had this perpetual smirk on it, curling one side up just slightly higher than the other, and when he smiled, his teeth would flash, yellowed and buckled. He had a crooked nose, and these bushy eyebrows that reminded me of caterpillars. His ears were what gave his age away the most, as they were large with the droopiest looking lobes I had ever seen.


My mom got worried by the time I was ten. I still talked to this man, and she would walk by my door and peek in at me. She was always shaking her head, a frown pulling at her lips, and then she was always going to my dad and telling him, “That girl is still talking to her imaginary friend. Go talk to her, Freddie. She needs to let go of this silly notion.”

Dad would always reply with, “Let her be, honey, she is just a kid…” and that would be that for awhile.

Peter was there even when I just wanted to be alone. I suppose that was mostly during my preteen years and I had a social life to worry about. Well, I wished I did. The kids I wanted to hang out with thought I was off my rocker if I started talking to what they thought of as thin air, and I was still not recognizing the difference between someone dead and someone alive. This made me pretty lonely. I wanted to be around girls my age, to talk about boys with and to do homework with. I usually ended up getting shoved into a locker or some kind of prank played on me, especially if I insisted that these spirits were real.

Needless to say, I was pretty angry with Peter. After all, he was making my mom feel the same way those kids were, wasn’t he? And because of this, he started withdrawing himself a bit from me, and whenever I did talk to him, the topic would always turn weird and I would look at him funny. He didn’t push at first, but then I got older.

I was probably about fifteen when the old man actually showed his true colors. He hated it when I grew up. I was supposed to stay young for him, he had told me once. He never told me he was dead or anything. I don’t think he even knew it, himself… But nobody ever saw him except for me and I thought that was strange. Obviously, I wasn’t normal. I was still talking to this guy at an age where I should have been obsessing about boys and shopping.

This, Peter, guy… He started getting angrier and angrier as I got older. He said that I was starting to look ugly and boys would probably hate me anyway. I was hurt by this and kind of stopped talking to him for awhile until he got more and more aggressive. The day that I learned what he really was, was the day I learned what –I- really was.

I remember sitting there, just trying to get my homework done. He came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. It didn’t feel like a normal touch, it felt like I had been touched by cobwebs. I can remember the chill that went up my spine. This was the first time he ever touched me. When I looked up at him, I could see this expression on his face that scared the crap out of me, and all of a sudden he just vanished in front of me and I felt this pain in my head.

Pictures and thoughts that weren’t mine slammed into me like a sledgehammer. I remember crying out and putting my hands over my ears and screaming over and over. I never saw my mom come into the room and freak out when she saw what was happening. As soon as she slapped me in the face to try and calm me down, it was like he was thrown out of me, and my mom’s face swam in front of me. And then I grabbed my trash can and puked my guts out. I had never known what fear truly was before he jumped. It was the scariest experience I had ever known, and I was grateful for that stinging slap.

“Honey, what is wrong with you?” she asked me, I could tell she was frightened, but she still tried to brush my hair back as soon as the puking stopped. She pulled the can away from me and tried to stay calm as she passed it to my dad, who was standing in the doorway looking at me with this weird look in his eyes. He just took the thing and walked away to dump out the mess into the dumpster, I guess, while mom tried to hug me and comfort me.

It took me forever, it felt like, to start crying and try to tell her what happened. “M-mom, I am a freak. Peter isn’t real, is he?”

“Oh, honey, him again? I thought you gave up imaginary friends a long time ago.” She was annoyed, by that point, and I felt betrayed. Mom pulled away and gave me an angry look, her face blotched with red and her lips compressing into a grim line. I was somewhat taken aback. How could she go from comforting to confrontational in an instant?

“But m-mom…” I stuttered, but before I could explain further the goings on of one, Mr. Specter, she cut me off.

“When are you going to stop with this nonsense? Grow up, girl! You have a lot on your plate and your mind is a million places right now. Peter isn’t here and never has been. I should have told you a long time ago to stop with such stupidity!” She stormed away in disgust, as if I were a leper, only stopping before the door to turn and look at me. Mom had never been stern, but she was at that moment, the last person I should have been looking at to get support from. That gaze she had looked uncertain, but her expression was molten

As if to make things worse, Peter appeared behind her and leered at me. I made the mistake of telling her that he was behind her, and when she looked, he smirked and did this weird dance, more to mock me than her. She couldn’t see him, after all. The feeling of sadness filled the pit of my stomach, and I felt myself shrinking against the chair at my work table. “Just finish your homework. I don’t want to hear another word out of you.” It was then that I felt more alone than I ever have.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, not letting myself cry in front of her. And then she left me alone with that asshole, specter.

I wasn’t normal. My relationship with my mom became strained because of him, and my dad, even though he came back with the empty garbage can and tried to reassure me, he didn’t seem to want to be near me anymore. I became an outcast that day, from my own parents. It hurt, but how in the hell could they know what was real when they simply thought I had mental problems?

“Guess your momma thinks you are crazy now, huh?” he asked, snorting in laughter. “She can’t see me.” He mocked me cruelly, hovering closer to me. I smelled the faint scent of cigar smoke, though he clearly didn’t have one on his person, and neither mom, nor dad, partook of that nasty habit.

I didn’t even look at him, and listlessly tried to do my math. I couldn’t concentrate… Not with him staring at me and making a joke of the situation, his cruel eyes boring into me as if I would answer him. I wouldn’t, though, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, nor would I acknowledge his presence anymore.

He had done something to me when he touched me, because now I could hear his thoughts about me and how he liked me better as a little girl. The thoughts were rather frightening, even, because he turned out to be the worst kind of predator a little girl could have. I had seen images of little girls being tortured by this man, he’d done unspeakable things to them, and he also killed them. And then I saw his death, and that frightened me the most.

The thoughts were so putrid and dark that it is difficult to describe them all. I saw girls younger than I was at that time, how he’d liked to chain them like animals in the basement of this very house. I could feel their fear; taste the coppery taste of blood in my mouth whenever he battered these poor girls about the face if they so much as whimpered. He was a ruthless man, and he would lean in to whisper that if they hadn’t tempted him, that if they had been good girls, they would not be getting what he gave to them.

It was disgusting.

My homework never got finished that night, I just couldn’t concentrate. The thoughts beat against my skull and caused a dull throb. I put my pencil down and stuffed all of my homework into my bag, still trying to pretend he wasn’t there. I lay in my bed and turned my back to him, and I could hear him walking around. Neither he, nor the thoughts he provoked, would go away. Another wave of nausea lapped at my stomach as the thoughts grew louder in my head.

I covered my ears with my hands as if that would stop me from thinking about him, but it didn’t. “You’re dead…” I cried, “Go away, please, leave me alone!” And just like that, he got up and left my room.

I held my breath as the silence enveloped me, dared not roll over to look for fear I merely imagined his departure from my bedroom. The minutes ticked by slowly, seeming more like hours in the passing quiet. I could scarcely believe that it only took a simple demand for my tormentor to leave me alone.

Part of me knew that it was only a temporary reprieve, because I could still feel him. I knew he wasn’t completely gone; he had just put himself elsewhere. The problem, though, was that I wanted him to leave and never come back. The havoc he was wrecking on my life was oppressive and horrible, to say the least.

I lay like that for awhile, holding still and clutching my pillow against me while hot tears trickled down my cheeks.

She slept for a few hours, there up against him. Her sleep was probably most peaceful with him holding her as such, and it made her feel secure and cared for. At some point, she woke up and rolled to face him, her eyes still kind of swollen from the tears she'd shed, and she would peer at his face while he slept, if he had not opened his eyes by that point. And if he had, her eyes met his. Xavia didn't smile, she just kind of looked at him calmly. Her hand moved to touch an out of place hair that fell over his forehead, and she kind of moved it back into place. A thousand words were spoken with that one single action.

Her head moved forward and she brushed her lips over his ever so softly, left and right, and then settled in a tender expression against his own. Damn it, but she was starting to have deeper feelings than she thought. But she wasn't going to let him know that yet, things were just so... new and this was different from what she had before, no less intense but... She could totally be running right at that moment. So why did she stay? Why him? Well... Why not?

She thought about his words from earlier, how he said he wouldn't bail on her because of the babies... How many guys would say something like that, whether they knew their intentions toward a woman or not? How many men would wrap their arms around a woman who needed a good cry and holding when they've only known someone for a short time, and mean it? She knew he'd meant it, whether he would just be a close friend or whether he would remain her lover. It was so confusing, this whole thing. Yet she did not run.

With a shudder, she kind of tightened herself against him and bury her face against his neck, if only just to stay close to him while she could. For right now, he presented her a safe haven, and she reveled in it.

"His wife." she murmured as she got pampered. She needed a foot massage, and was getting one, her dainty feet in the hands of a professional. Okay, so they were not that dainty right then and there, swollen as they were from pregnancy stuff. Yeah, with as fast as the belly was growing, her feet just couldn't keep up with it, and her boobs were just... God, she kinda hated it, not because they looked bad but they were so freakin tender. She couldn't very well have the professional help her with that, now could she?

Soon, she dozed off for a moment, her head falling back against the pillow.

Xavia, not used to the fried food, spent the next few hours getting pretty sick... But with her room up on the third floor meant that she wasn't going to disturb anyone. She ended up laying down and spending time just... deep in thought. She'd know in a few days who's baby she was carrying and that kinda hung over her like a lead balloon. So she eventually lay down, having told her mom just to wait to make the noodles to go with her cabbage. She really felt ill. Hell, it worried her mom.

She sent a text to Artair Hawke ... Glad I don't need to kiss frogs right now... Then she sent a picture she took of a frog in a jar that she put a paper crown on just to be a smart ass... This one reminds me of someone... Hmmm... And it was meant as a joke.

At some point, wanting to comfort her momma, Delilah climbed into bed with her and she took a snuggle selfie... She dozed off without realizing she hit the airplane button and sent that to him as well.

It was the warmth of her kiddo, combined with the strain of the day that caused her to fall asleep. She phone was dropped on her pillow, and mother and daughter lay there curled up with one another.

She took several moments to compose herself, taking in his words and only able to nod for a time. Xavia felt like she had just cried a river, but he was right that she had needed it. And now she was exhausted in the emotional, mental, and physical senses. She finished cleaning up the tears as they eventually ebbed. Nothing was said for a long time after that, perhaps several minutes, if not more, but it wasn't an awkward silence, it was just a calming one. When she did speak, it was to say, "Will you just... let me lay here for a while wit' you? Just hold me..."

He didn't need to say all kinds of the right words, he had acted in the right way by simply hugging her. Assuming he said yes to what she asked for, which was, by no means, asking for something more just yet... She lay on her side and curled up with her head resting on his chest, should he lay with her. This was her way of telling him that it was his strength she needed, that she trusted him to keep her safe, and all kinds of things.

At some point, so as not to ruin the dress she wore, she got out of it and was left in a tank and some shorts. He would see she was starting to show now, which made it all too real for her, along with the picture she had shown him. And rather than hate those two little babies, she didn't. She never once said she was going to get rid of them in one way or another, and she wouldn't even have to say that she was still going to keep them and love them regardless of the fact that their father was a piece of crap. She let her hand rest on that little bit of a bump in a way that was protective at the thought of the father trying to take them from her or something. God, the future scared her. No, she couldn't face the man again.

For now, she would keep leaning into Artair, the one who she was starting to feel closer to despite how she tried not to. And she would rest, her eyes drifting closed as she took in the warmth of him without so much as hinting at getting more.

"Well, I just put grades out for last class. Ugh, t'at was brutal. T'eir final was to dissect frogs, and t'e smell... My god, t'e smell." She wrinkled her nose and then perked up when the waitress brought food and then left. Xavia grabbed for the burger first, not wanting second degree burns from grabbing hot onion rings or fries. Yum yum.

"Mmm, veggie burger. Smells so good." She took a big bite and sighed in pleasure at the flavor. So good.