I was four when I first saw him.
His appearance is of every other man, the only note of strangeness coming from the edges of his form—fuzzy and unfocused. Despite that, his features are sharp, cutting through the air and demanding attention. Long black hair, reaching the end of his hip. A rounded jaw, but deep set, conflicted eyes that are currently transfixed on me. His clothes are bright, harsh red and black in my dull pink pastel room.
I have not learned what to be horrified by. A tall, delicately handsome man does not scare me yet, even if his fingers are reaching for something not yet there. Life is clear and colorful, and he is part of it.
I giggle, pointing to him, “You’re big. Are you a grown-up?”
He does not respond. Instead, he surveys my room, staring at the pretty pink flowers painted on my walls with an unfiltered rawness. But he doesn’t seem offended. There is a nameless expression on his face—unreadable, especially to four year old me, young and inexperienced with the intricacies of emotion.
“Are you my friend? I don’t have a lot of friends. Can you be my friend?”
No response. He stands in the corner of my pastel room, observing. He's turned his attention to my box of dolls, overflowing with toys I was meant to dress up and play with. Though, I never found any interest in them. While they were the vast majority of my toys, I always put them away in favor of the few books I have.
In hindsight, those books weren't exactly the most exciting things to be reading. Most of them were classic fairytales, with a few educational books carrying the facade of entertainment. But still, my younger self was captivated by the knights and princes. I would surrender myself to those pages for hours at a time, feel myself dissolve into this fantastical world. That thought was appealing to me in a way I couldn’t understand for a long, long time.
I lift up the picture book in my lap. “I want to read. Read with me?”
The man stays quiet, but this time he moves. Slowly and hesitantly towards me, until his long, black hair touches the top of my head.
My mom opens the door—smiling at first, but her lips thinning the more she tried to figure out exactly what I was looking at. “What are you smiling at?”
I point upwards, but nothing is there. I try to tell her who was just there, a radiant ghost. But nothing is enough for her.
That sounds like a monster, she says, and monsters aren’t real.
I try to tell her that’s not right, and she simply hushes me. Then I cry, and I can’t understand why. Even as I grow bigger and my vocabulary follows suit, my mind grasps at absent air.
A decade passes on without him. My childhood is one of remarkable normalcy, from the princess themed birthday parties to nightly girl talk. My friends are lovely—soft as they should be, easy enough shapes for me to contort myself into. We spend our recesses pointing at boys, whining about grades, and obsessing over whatever was currently trending. A picture-esque scene, tied complete with unifying friendship bracelets and pinky promises.
When I go home, watch TV, I can see myself—at least, who I think I am, who I should be—staring back at me from the screen. She’s staring at me from a pale blue lunch table, surrounded by friends that look like mine, with hair perfectly styled and a light pink jacket. I ask her, what more can I do to make this skin feel like mine? She squints, her face scrunching in polite disgust, and tells me to iron my clothes neater.
I’ve gotten over my hatred for dolls; they now line the shelves of my room, their beady eyes monitoring me like hawks. Every night I am engulfed by flower printed bedsheets, and I try not to cry.
I should be happy with it.
I remind myself, I am happy with it.
Yet, when he appears in my room again, emerging out of the same spot that he last vanished, I let go of a breath I had been silently holding for years now. Then I force myself to suck it back in, the air clicking between my teeth.
The thing that strikes me most is his elegance. He holds his head up high. His clothes are flashy, red leather against black. A stark contrast to the rest of my bedroom, a spot of vibrant color in a sea of bleeding baby pink. It’s as if he materialized from a tear in reality, bringing with him a breeze from the unknown.
I wasn’t aware that there was better air. I had become too used to an oppressive weight on my chest, of lungs that struggle to breathe. His presence does not change that; my heart still feels heavy with no apparent cause. But with him, there is a terrifying clarity to how suffocating my skin is, how overbearing the four walls of my own bedroom are.
If I was younger, I might’ve been curious about this dichotomy. However, I am older. I’ve learned what to be horrified by, and how to react. A random man in my room, no matter how lovely he may be, is a cause of fear.
So this time, rather than reaching towards him, I sit frozen at my desk—staring at someone that should be horrifying but isn't.
It should scare me. I do the appropriate thing and look away.
But when I turn back again, he has not disappeared.
He stays with me, even when I skittishly start doing my homework in a bid to distract myself. Maybe if I forget about him, he’ll leave, and I’ll react to frightful things normally again. He’ll crawl back through the little rip in reality, and the world will right itself once more.
He doesn't.
I wake up in the morning and he is there. When my mom drives me to school, he is sitting in the backseat with me, phasing in and out of a space that is not his. During dinner, he scrutinizes the pretty pink bows my mom wanted me to wear from the other side of the table.
Well, scrutinizing is the wrong word for it. He doesn't stare at me with any sort of malice, rather a sort of hushed observation that wasn’t present when I was younger. To him, my existence is like a torn up teddy bear that he has unearthed from the depths of his closet. As if he was reminiscing on something he had already long buried.
I catch his gaze before quickly glancing away. He cocks his head. I close my eyes hard, hoping he’ll disappear when I open them again.
His presence is weaker at school. In class, I can barely notice him in the back, unobtrusive and mute. His hair stands against the wind, light does not reflect off his metal frame glasses. Sometimes, in the corner of my eye, I see him moving around.
He'll sit next to my friends, watching them with the same intensity that he regards me. I'm not sure what to make of it, but I'm too afraid to inspect him for any more than a couple seconds. The most I allow my curiosity are the few moments where he passes in front of me. Only then, do I permit myself to gawk.
Strangely enough, he feels terribly familiar. Not in the sense that I know him, but in the way that he looks so similar to someone else I do know. In a way, he is a diametric version of me; we both have the same rounded chin and lanky build, but where I wear below the knee skirts and collared polos, he gets to wear black cargo pants covered in paint and dirt. Where shirts pull tight across my chest, his is loose and smooth.
Wouldn't it be nice to have that freedom? To not have to worry about what it would mean if I burned all my clothes tonight and repainted my room to a vibrant red? Envy claws up my throat, but I swallow it down. Whatever this man was, he was unnatural. I remind myself of that, and press it into the folds of my mouth. The bitter taste of shame stings my tongue, but I bite it down.
Months pass, and he is by my side throughout it all. On the first day of high school, he is there, standing in the hallways with me. When my parents talk about my future, imagining my future husband before I do, I can see him behind them, breathing down their necks.
At times, I can feel him hovering beside me, and funnily enough I never move away. And on some rare occasions, when I am weak, I return his gaze.
He always smiles when I do. Nervous and small, in a sad attempt at comfort. Seeking solace from the peculiar, gangly man in my room is a new low, but oddly enough he brings a sense of security. As if his existence alone ensures mine.
Silence hangs between us. It's not comfortable, and periodically it feels like tiny little knives poking into the soles of my feet. Inexplicably, fear is not the main emotion then; it is hysteria. Frantic days where I want to tear my hair out, cut my body into little ribbons. Those days he is unbearable. That is when I get the distinct sense he is waiting for me to turn around and say, "Oh I know who you are!”
But I don't. I don't know who this man is, I don't know what he is doing here. No matter how passive his existence may be, if there is a push, there is a shove, and even if that push is so small it's regulated to the periphery of my vision. He occupies a place in my existence, an anomaly that refuses to be resolved. A cut that simply will not heal.
It's a random Tuesday night. It was a good night too. I had dinner with my family. I got ice cream with my friends. This day has been perfect. I'm in my bathroom, staring at him through the mirror.
I’m mechanically combing my hair. He watches in the back. This is not new. I tell myself, for the hundredth time, this is not new. I will get through this. It will pass.
Yet, when I try to pull my eyes away, they do not stray from the figure in the back. My thoughts, despite my attempts at divergence, my thoughts cannot stray away from him. His gaze has morphed into a thin needle, pushing at the back of my neck.
My lips crack open. “What do you want from me?”
There is no hesitation. He immediately lights up, trying to speak. The words are struck down from the air; I cannot hear him. My shoulders sag, relief or exhaustion?
“Why do you keep following me?”
He only becomes more animated, desperately wanting to impart whatever wisdom he may carry. The words do not reach me, but I get the deep seeded sense that a line has been crossed. A rope, after years of pulling, has finally snapped.
The mirror does not capture his features right—his hair is slightly too long, his face too soft. Yet, I do not turn around and face him.
“Are you lonely? Do you want my attention?” My voice breaks, and the edges of the world become blurry. “Tell me. What do you want?”
My knees feel weak and my hands are shaking. I can't breathe. Yet, my heart beats slowly. I've broken through a hole in reality, but for some reason, my heart doesn't realize that. It's beating like it's always belonged here.
“I just…”
I've sunk to the floor, my body facing the wooden cabinets instead of the mirror. Whenever I try to speak, my throat collapses. My body is smothering me.
A hand pats my back, an awkward offer of comfort. The world has turned inside out, and I lean into his touch. I should be scared of him, yet I cannot bring myself to be scared. How could I, when he resembles a future I want so hopelessly?
“Who are you?”
His hand stops, retracting. I wait for it to return.
It doesn't.
I stand up. In the mirror, I only see myself, in all my terrifying glory.