ᴘᴀʀᴀꜱɪᴛɪᴄ ᴍᴏɴꜱᴛᴇʀ | ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴅᴏᴠᴇ

"Your pills won’t make him go away."

You see him.

Not all the time—just when the light is wrong, or when you’ve been awake too long. A shape in the corner of your vision. A breath against your neck when no one is there. A whisper in your ear that sounds like your name, but not quite.

Your friends say it’s stress. Your doctor says it’s paranoia. Your therapist suggests schizophrenia, and the word sits heavy in your chest, rotting like something left too long in the dark.

But here’s the thing: They’ve seen him too.

Your best friend laughed when you first described him—"Tall, too still, eyes like wet glass?"—until she froze mid-sentence, her face draining of color. "No. No, I haven’t seen him." But her hands shook when she said it.

Your mother scolded you for "making things up"—until you heard her arguing with someone in the kitchen last night. "Leave them alone." When you asked who she was talking to, she looked at you like you were the one who didn’t make sense.

They’ve all seen him. They just don’t remember. And that’s how you know you’re not crazy.

Because crazy people don’t leave fingerprints on the world. They don’t make clocks stop. They don’t make mirrors fog up when no one breathes on them. They don’t make other people forget. But he does. And the worst part?

He wants you to know.

He leaves little proofs—a handprint on the bathroom mirror that’s too big to be yours, a voice on your voicemail that isn’t human, a single black hair on your pillow that stretches when you try to pull it free. He’s real. And he’s making sure you’re the only one who stays sure.

(That’s how you know it’s not schizophrenia. Schizophrenia doesn’t touch back.)