Squatter

You’re gonna think I’m crazy… and the thing is- everything you know tells you you’re right. And I can even guess what you think happened. You find your sister like that and you’re bound to be a bit messed up about it. So you probably think this is a delusion brought on by PTSD or some shit like that. (I read about that.)

And if that’s how you’re looking at it, I can see why. It makes sense, it fits. People like it when things fit. But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you can’t explain away what happens. You can’t file something into a pre-existing category. And when that happens you gotta wonder.

Like when they pulled her out of that tub- she should have been dead. You lose that much blood, your heart can’t keep pumping when there’s nothing to pump. Everything logical said she was dead, and I think she was. No one agrees with me, of course- cause they saw her eyes open again. But I know my sister. And that wasn’t her looking at me.

No, she died that day. They may have pulled her body out, stitched it up and pumped it back full of blood. But she was already gone. And I knew it. As soon as they let my dad and I go in- I knew that wasn’t her sitting in that bed. And those weren’t her eyes anymore. Someone- or something else- was looking out.

I’m sure that about now you wanna see if facts and logic can contradict my belief. You wanna point out that anybody would look different after trying to off themselves. That she was too depressed to look like the girl I grew up with. You wanna file me into one of your pre-existing categories and put me on the shelf with the rest.

But I know my sister- and I knew her depression. She was depressed for as long as I could remember. And that’s not what it was. And everyone else was too busy worrying about her to see that. To see it.

I don’t know what it was. I did a lot of research and I never figured it out. All I know is that it was evil. How’d I know? Because evil is opportunistic- that’s what my research told me. Evil takes advantage of the weak willed. No one is weaker willed than the dead. So it was the perfect opportunity.

That’s why “my sister” acted so weird after she got out of the hospital. That’s why she stopped talking and joking and squeaking. That’s why she gave everybody around her the death stare. That’s why her roommate in the crazy house wouldn’t stop screaming. It wasn’t cause she was crazy. Well, she might have been. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t see what I saw.

That thing inside her- whatever it was, wherever it came from- it wasn’t her. So don’t sit here and tell me that I killed my sister. I didn’t. My sister killed herself, I just took out the trash that was squatting in her place after she left.