At the age of 5 years old, I remember hiding under my bed waiting for my friends to come find me because we were playing hide and seek that day. I glanced to my right and I saw a little boy lying next to me, he hushed me and smiled. I wanted to scream but I stopped myself, my friends came into my room and found me; what surprised me was that they never saw the little boy standing next to me. We never talked to each other but he knew my personal space, he would stand at least a metre away from me, staring at me intently. He would just simply stare at me and follow me everywhere I went. I sometimes got freaked out when I woke up and he was just sitting there staring at me.

It still continues…until this day, I’m turning 18 and his 18 too.  For some reason, he was always the same age as me. I didn’t know what he was and I never spoke to him because of that. We were simply strangers that have a strange connection; I remember I was bullied when I told people about what happened to me. My parents couldn’t look me in the eye because they thought I had become a monster. I hated feeling alone and depressed because I lost all my loved ones due to this craziness but he was always there. Standing there beside me, sometimes I would cry and he would cry with me. I felt like if I spoke to him, he would fade away or I would feel that I was actually turning crazy. I can’t stop myself with these imaginations but it seemed so real, so believable; as if every step I made was the future taking me deeper down. I don’t know but if I talked to him, I would feel we broke our connection. A connection that was silent for 18 years, even if we didn’t talk…I felt like our spirits and mind knew what the other one was thinking.  This all stopped when I saw him crying and running towards the forest. I looked at him from my cell, and yes….I was placed in a mental asylum. I didn’t deserve to be here that’s what I thought but the other times I mentally tell myself, I do deserve to be here.

I escaped the cell and ran after him, there I saw him looking at a dead body. A girl’s body, a young kid that looked around 5 years old. I took a step closer and looked at the body. Immediately tears streamed down my eyes when I realise who the girl was. It was me. I sometimes wander what was my past really? And all these memories I thought I have, of a birthday party…I wonder if they were really real? Then he spoke. After 18 years…he said…

“Emily, listen to your brother…Why…Why….did you die?..EMILY!!!!”

Tears streamed down my eyes, all those times when I thought he was a stranger, he was my brother. He wasn’t my imagination but my brother….my sibling. My spirit still lingers within the forest, and one question that gets to me so badly. ‘How did I die?’