Stop

Stop. No, don’t look. It just encourages them.

You know who I’m talking about. Them. More specifically, her. Keep those eyes focused here, don’t look. Don’t even glance. Use your peripherals, because I know you see her. Just at the very edge of your vision?

Glance to the left side of the monitor, but don’t glance beyond it. There, your peripherals should have picked up a bit more.

You saw her in the corner, didn’t you? You saw her black hair billowing across her pale face, the loose nightgown she wears over her emaciated frame. She’s been there for a while, just waiting. That’s how they spend their time. The spirits of the damned. The ones unfit for heaven, yet avoiding hell. The ones who walk the Earth with their sins on their shoulders. They live in constant, insurmountable, indescribable pain. The story goes that when St. Peter takes pity on a soul who has committed a grave sin, like murder, rape, torture, cannibalism, or worse, he punishes that soul and sends them back to our plane, to exist among the living until they’ve successfully repented for their sins. But first, he rips out their eyes, so that they can covet nought. Then he tears their jawbone from their skull, so that they cannot speak evils.

No, don’t look. She has moved closer, but that is only her curiosity. She can’t actually see you, not as you could see her. She sees in outlines, in blurs and motions. Her empty sockets let her see a person’s soul, yet it is useless to her. She lives not on the person, but on the body. Her spirit hungers for communion of the flesh, but she is eternally denied. Only the Savior can be a proper conduit of communion, to satisfy her cravings. She has tried, though. She has tried often in the past.

She certainly has taken an interest in you, hasn’t she? You see, she feeds on the living. She, like many before her, found humans to alleviate her ailments. She starves for communion, but humans like yourself can work as a…placebo, of sorts. She’ll try to get you to turn, to see into the voids which take residence over where her eyes used to be. She’ll pull you in, hypnotizing you with the dark, hollow sockets. She’ll close in even more, excitedly exhaling on your supple skin. She'll jab her rotted teeth into your slender neck and lap the blood with her flopping tongue. I’ll scrape in with my fangs and scoop out your flesh like ice cream. I'll yelp with glee at the warmth of your innards as I slash into your fatty abdomen. I’ll pull the bones from their sinew and suck the marrow out like a candied filling. I’ll jab my bony fingers into your eyes and take them for my own. I’ll rip your jawbone from your skull and use it as my own. I’ll become whole again, with your help.

But it'll only work– –if you look.