A picture says a
thousand words. Write them.
Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a
metaphor, a commentary, or a critique about this picture. Write something about
this picture.
Be sure to tag #writeworld in your
block!
The psychologist cleared her
throat. “I think... you have something called... Spectrophobia.”
“Excuse me?” The girl frowned at
her. “What does that mean?”
Rather than explain, she just read
a definition out to her. “Spectrophobia: An abnormal and persistent fear of
ghosts. Sufferers of spectrophobia experience undue anxiety even though they
realize their fear is irrational.”
Irrational.
Abnormal.
Persistent.
.
.
.
She didn’t believe her. Hours spent pouring out her
experiences and her fears and they had been labelled as irrational.
~~~~~~
Somehow she made it out of the
office. The final insult was having to pay for the advice that had upset her so
badly. Her hand shook as she handed over her medical insurance card and her
credit card. Lucky she didn’t have to sign; it would have been illegible.
She didn’t make another
appointment. She decided never to return.
~~~~~~
Her apartment was very old and
kind of run down, but it was all she could afford.
She saw her on the stairs,
floating above the bannister. In the classic cartoon style she was wearing a
cover over her body that looked like a sheer tablecloth rather than a white
sheet.
“You’re not real,” she told the
spectre. “The psych said so.”
She walked past it and unlocked
her door.
The spectre passed through the
wall and hovered benignly in her bedroom as she threw down her bag on her bed.
“Do NOT follow me to the bathroom,” she told it.
“Oh, crap. I interacted with you.
I’m not supposed to do that.” She stomped off to use the toilet. While she was
in there, she did some heavy thinking.
When she came out, it was hovering
near the stove. She sighed and put the kettle on. She held up teabags from her
herbal tea assortment until it nodded its head.
“Peppermint, huh?”
Putting it in a large mug, she
poured boiling water on it when the kettle whistled.
“So, your immune system needs
boosting?” She chuckled to herself.
She placed the mug in the centre
of the table and stood back to let the apparition hover over it.
“I am told you’re not real,” she
repeated.
The spectre turned its blank face
towards her.
“But I know...” She stopped
talking. Watching the spirit, she knew if it was a figment of her imagination,
that she had got so used to it that she would prefer to live with it. “Never
mind.”
It turned back to inhaling the
steam or whatever it was doing. When it floated away, she could drink her tea.
She sat, leaning her head on one
arm as she took small sips and they studied each other.
“All right,” she said. “You
exist.”
Another sip.
“And you want or need some things
from me.” She lifted the mug.
“So... what do you want from me?
Why me?”
No response.
“I guess I can see you, eh?”
She waited.
“Can many people do that?”
A head shake.
“Cool. So we can do yes and no
questions.”
A nod.
“I like the sheer sheet thing.”
She waved a hand. “That’s pretty stylish.”
That made her think.
“Maybe it’s not me; maybe it’s
you. You seem to be a bit different. At least to the run-of-the-mill ghost. And
plus, I can’t see any others.”
She sipped her tea.
“Spectrophobia.” She snorted
derisively. “I’m not frightened of you.”
~~~~
© AM Gray 2014
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