The Thing That Follows Me Around

There is a thing that follows me around. Everywhere I go, whatever I do, I always feel it’s presence behind me. I see it in the mirrors, the reflections on windows. I see it every time I look behind. It has a tall, slim human-like form, with a face looking weirdly familiar, but terrifying to look at. Its skin is dark as the night and eyes white as snow. Its pair of cold hands are connected to abnormally long fingers, nails long and sharp clinging on to my back. It doesn’t have a mouth, yet it whispers right into my ear. ”Wrong... Foul... Bad... Rotten.” I can hear its quiet, sickening voice echoing in my head. It rarely stops, but when it does it feels like heaven. It’s feels freeing, like everything might get better. But like always, it doesn’t last. The thing will always lean its head back towards mine and continue whispering those same words over and over.

I go by my everyday life with it following me. Its nails touching my back, it follows me when I work, when I travel, when I’m at home. The thing doesn’t seem to care or do anything to anyone else except me. Sometimes it even wants to hurt me. It digs its sharp nails into my back, making me gasp for air and tremble from the sudden pain. I can cry, I can yell, but I can’t stop its nails sharp as needles digging deeper and deeper into my skin. It usually hurts for a while, before it carefully backs down, getting into the same position as always. Sure, the sudden pain might stop, but the scars will hurt for hours, even days. But the worst is, after every rough day, at night it stands by my bed staring straight at me, whispering until I fall asleep. And the next day, it repeats all over again, and the next day, and the next day.

Of course it wasn’t like this when I was born. Even though at the moment it feels like the thing has been there always, it really hasn’t. It came to me when I was younger. At first, it didn’t let me see itself. It was invisible, but it was there. I felt its presence, ears full of whispers, sharp pains in my back. I felt it but I didn’t see it. I was terrified, I thought I was going mad, I thought the house was possessed. I was just a kid and I already was cursed with this terrible thing, but I didn’t know what it was yet.

When I was a teenager, the thing decided to finally show itself to me. I still remember that day; I was horrified half to death. I was screaming, and tried to get it off of me with anything I could. The whole day I was freaking out, but the creature stayed like it was, nails touching my back, whispering right behind me. Even though I couldn’t believe my eyes, it was kind of relieving to see it was something. It was real, it wasn’t that I was going mad, it was a real thing all along. I was confused and scared, but all I knew was that I didn’t want it and there had to be a way to get it off somehow. I tried to show my parents and my friends about the thing behind me, but none of them could see it. I was in shock, tried to explain the situation happening. Some believed in the thing, some didn’t. ”How can you have something like that and never showed any signs of it clearly?” some said to me. The signs were always there, the pain, the anxiety about the echoing whispers, but I just didn’t know what it was. I didn’t see the creature before.

As days turned into months and months turned into years, I desperately tried to get rid of the thing. I tried to run from it, but it never left behind me, its fingers growing longer and longer. I tried to scream at it and trying to force it off of me, but it didn’t budge nor didn’t hear me, its nails turning sharper and sharper. I tried to ignore it, just pretending like the thing wasn’t there, but it just kept growing bigger and bigger. I was getting desperate and miserable so I thought there was only one thing left to do. I needed to end myself to get rid of this creature. But as you might have guessed, it didn’t work out as I thought it would. The thing stayed there, right behind me, like it has been for years. That’s when I realized I couldn’t get rid of it; it’s a part of me now.

From that day, I’ve been trying to learn to live my life as normally as I possibly can. I wake up and eat breakfast, I go to work, I come back home, shower and go to bed, the thing following my every step. The whispers ring in my ears, but I’ve been trying to cope with them with music, friends or my favorite shows. The digging in my back is unstoppable, but I think I just have to manage with them being a part of my life for now. Learning to accept the thing has been hard, but I need to do it to move on with my life. It pains me how most of the people can’t see it moving behind and staring at me, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I know I’m not the only one with this ”thing”. I’ve seen some people in the same situation, children, elderly, adults, anyone. They’re walking in crowds full of people, no one else seeing these things but us. Usually, we just let our eyes meet for a couple of seconds and then moving on with our own lives. I always keep walking, no one else knowing about that thing that follows me around.

Author’s Note
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. This is my first story in many, many years and the first one I’ve ever published! I’m sorry that the writing is a little clunky and the story's short, but I’m still learning and trying out different things.

I really wanted to publish this, since the subject matter is important to me. To make things clear, this story is about trauma. It’s about childhood abuse that forms a trauma that clings onto you even when you’re old. This story is based on my experiences dealing with it.