The Stalker
Innocence is bullshit.
I say things like this to piss others off, but also because it’s somewhat true. This is why I get in trouble. This is why I can’t be left alone. How I believe scares most people and really affects them more than me. This brings me to the first moment I encountered my lurking willow. That’s what I called my stalker.
Playing outside is for children after all. I called my stalker, my lurking willow because of the way they appeared to me. Through my eyes I saw them. A child’s vision is a magnificent thing. They were this tall covered figure with rather large arms and legs. You might have been afraid when your eyes first met theirs, but I smiled. Maybe that’s why they stayed with me for so long?
I felt this strange but beautiful connection, this...bond of flesh and mind. I was only ten when I first met my lurking willow, and its presence became so commonplace, so real. No one ever saw them but me. Some might have even called them my imaginary friend. Maybe, I don’t know for sure? But they did stick with me until the very end.
Throughout my childhood, my academics, my adulthood, my life and my death. Maybe a guardian angel? Perhaps, but I was never very religious. Believers would argue another reason they stayed. They have an answer for everything, don't they? To teach me a valuable lesson that I could never comprehend. I think to myself, how wonderful, how evil, how brilliant. Don’t catch me talking about such blasphemies around my mother though.
She would slap me so hard it would end up questioning her own faith. Father on the other hand, did not care one lick. He laughed about it with his drunken friends. Something that wouldn’t bother me until later in my life. One thing I knew for certain, was my lurking willow was only meant for me. That’s why it was so easy for me to accept my stalker in the end. They were always there for me.
They showed me everything I never wanted to know about myself. What could one do? They even showed me things about my family, friends, anyone who ever came into contact with me. A world of pure and utter fear was realized from a being that I could never quite understand. But, with my very last breath, I knew why I was being followed. I finally knew. And just like that, after my last breath...I forgot.