I stared into the mirror. Tiredness ached in my muscles. There were dark circles under my eyes, a sign that I had tossed and turned for another night. It wasn’t anything new. I yawned before I pulled my attention back to my reflection. Sighing, I reached for my foundation to hide the signs of another sleepless night. It had become a way of life for me for so long I couldn’t remember a time when I had slept peacefully. It felt like a lifetime ago.

When my eyes lifted to the mirror again, my green eyes began to turn a crimson red. I frowned. The color deepened until tears of thick blood began to slid from my eyes. My frown deepened. The tears slid down my cheeks and dripped from my chin.

“Really Damien?” I muttered, feeling annoyed as I shifted my gaze in the mirror to see a guy leaning against my bathroom doorway before I looked at my reflection again. The blood was gone.

He was dressed in dark jeans and a black shirt. I don’t think I had ever seen him in any other color besides black or dark blue. The darkness he wore on the outside matched the darkness inside. His brown hair hung across his forehead. His soulless eyes held mine. To some he would be gorgeous but to me his cruelty was the only thing that stood out to me, reminding me of all he had done to me through the years.

“Ah come on Tessa. Do you know how difficult it is to do first thing in the morning?” he lifted an eyebrow at me. His eyes twinkled and my annoyance skyrocketed. “It doesn’t just happen like that.” He snapped his fingers. His tone was easy and playful but I knew better. It was one of the tools he used to try and disarm me. But it didn’t work anymore, I saw through all of it.

I counted to ten in my mind, trying to reel my temper in so I didn’t do anything stupid. That’s what he wanted. He wanted me to be so tired I would do something uncharacteristic that would push me over the edge.

I turned to confront him. “Why bother? You’re just wasting your energy.”

He shrugged. “I still remember the first time you freaked out and your grandmother came to check up on you. She thought you were crazy babbling on about blood when there wasn’t anything.” He reminisced about the memory. “But you figured it out too quickly. Just think if you hadn’t you would have been admitted to a mental hospital and we wouldn’t still be playing this game so many years later.”

He made it sound like a prank but there was nothing harmless about him. Maybe that’s why he was so good looking so for a second it would lower your defences before you became the subject of his cruelness that were intended to push you beyond the reality of your own world.

He had been able to mess with my mind so much easier than he could now. He had played every trick and I knew every single one of them. Experience had helped me deal with him better than I had when he had first appeared to me.

I could never let my guard down, never. No matter the moments when he seemed to care because I knew better. He was driven only by his mission to return me to death. Even in the my moments of weakness I had to stay strong and not allow him to sway me.

“You’re going to have to come up with something new.” I rolled my eyes as I pushed past him. His touch zipped through me like static electricity, I was used to it but I braced against the emotion his touch created in me. They were heavy emotions.

He was a head taller than me but his physical body did not intimidate me, it was his mind that truly scared me. He was limited to only being able to screw with me with me mentally. If he had been able to physical hurt me we wouldn’t still be playing this games years later. It would have been over before it had even started.

That was the thing about him, he was always around. He haunted every moment since he had first showed up when I was ten.

“I’m more of a wear you down type of guy,” he argued as he followed me back into my bedroom.

The walls were still bare. My bed and a small side table were the only pieces of furniture in my room. There will still a couple of boxes I still had to unpack.

I began to make my bed, pulling the comforter up and trying to sooth the top before I fluffed my pillow and set it down on the bed.

“What make me so tired, I don’t know what day I’m in?” I glared at him over my shoulder. If I showed any weakness he would exploit it to his advantage. There was never a time I could lower my guard.

I knew better than to give him any attention. The more I gave him the more he annoyed me. It was best if I ignored him like he didn’t exist.

But the problem he did. He wasn’t like the ghosts I saw. The ghosts I could walk right though.

Damien was a physical presence in my world. Maybe it would be easier to ignore him if he wasn’t really here with me. But I was the only who could see him or touch him. It was something I tried my hardest to limit. When he touched me I could feel only pain and anguish. It always took me a while to try and pull myself back emotionally.

Once my grandmother had walked straight through him much to his disgust. It was one of the few times that had made me smile. I didn’t do much of that anymore.

“Tessa, I’m only here to make you realize that you don’t belong here anymore. This is not your rightful place.”

I closed my eyes, I had heard that speech so many times I could finish it for him but I held my tongue. The best way to handle him in these moments was to ignore him, which would invariably make him angrier. Angry Damien, was easier to deal with the one who was clear and calculated. When he wasn’t allowing his emotions to reign, he was his strongest. Those were the times I had to brace myself and try my hardest not to allow him to talk me into doing something I would forever regret.

“You don’t belong here,” I said, knowing I was only encouraging him but I couldn’t help myself.

I always held the hope that he would one day realize I wasn’t going to return with him and he would leave me to try and pick up the pieces of the my life.

Even seven years on, my life was a mess. I let out an emotional breath, trying to rid myself of the array of emotions that assaulted me when I thought back to how I had died and what brought Damien into my life when I had come back to life.

I tried my best not to let myself think about that day or what I had lost because it made my heart heavier and in turn, made Damien’s argument sound more appealing than dealing with the loss.

“I belong here as much as you do.” I caught him staring at me but I refused to give him my attention. We had been going around in this same circle for so long I knew where it led and I didn’t have the energy for it.

I was starting over again, in a new town. It was something that happened regularly when people found out what happened. The rumors, stares and question became too much and it was easier to move to a new place where no one knew anything.

I was thankful Damien couldn’t communicate with anyone else other than me or I would have run out of places where people didn’t know my story. The circumstance of how I had died and came back after being pronounced dead. It wasn’t only the miracle of how I was still alive that was the topic of gossip but the circumstances that had led to my death.

Even now just thinking about it brought me out in a cold sweat and I struggled to take a breath. It was the most debilitating memory I had. Only fragments of what happened remained in my memory and I was thankful I couldn’t remember more. The parts I could remember were bad enough, I didn’t think I could cope with remembering everything.