“No. Stop it. Stop it! STOP IT!!” I screamed as she scraped at my door again last night with her hands made of shattered glass. She’s relentless, every night she comes to wreck havoc on my small cottage home. I’m sorry I will have to explain, many years ago my mother and father died, you see they were Jewish and the Nazis got them. I survived because they locked me away in our basement so nothing could get in, not even I could get out I had little food and over time was growing very weak and strikingly dirty. I finally escaped after breaking mirrors and glass objects I could find, taking the shards and clawing, hacking at the door of the basement I was relentless. I had cuts and shards of glass that were broken of sticking out of my skin pouring my blood onto the floor drop by drop. My veins screaming at me to help myself, but there was nothing I could do.

When I escaped the life threatening clutches of my own home I ran away, to breath, to live and I would most definitely return. I had no where else to go. In my attempt to live freely, with hope in my heart that times had changed since the years I had spent locked away. Though I was so very wrong, the village of which I had spent the first few years of my life was in flames. Bright red and orange flames danced around triumphantly destroying every thing that meant dear to me. Seeing as when I was three, I couldn’t cope with the first sound I had heard in years. Screams. Blood curdling, ear shattering screams of the innocent people that were trapped there.

So now I’m 15 years young and live alone in a cottage in the woods, seems very stereotypical as it is in the fairytales. Though rest assure my life is not a fairytale. She came again last night with her scratchy voice as if it was a talking toy with dyeing batteries, and her hands made of shattered glass her hair flame red and her eyes, she has the eyes of my mother, the last person I saw before my twelve year imprisonment. I hated her, every thing about her, her hands remind me of my time in the basement, her hair of the flames of my village, her voice of all the dolls I would cower from as a child, and her eyes because they reminded me of the love for my mother. She did not deserve such beautiful eyes, love is such a sweet sorrow, but is love worth the pain of loss, fear of separation and the lies that are never going to leave. I find that im asking myself that question more and more now.

Though I’m young I have never shed a tear because of the loss or the pain I have felt, yes though the beginning is hard but over time its just numb, and I’m starting to believe that I’m safer that way. I can never be safe especially with her running loose upon the woods leaving me confined in the solitude of my home that’s only filled with the bad memories of my past. I have always hoped to confront the, well I call her a phantom, my phantom of hate. I was scared so I needed a strategy on how to be rid of such a curse on my home. I always find myself dreaming of destroying things that remind me of her. So today I’m going to destroy the basement: her hands. “Crack, smack, chop” went the ax I heaved back and forth up and down until the basement was nothing but scattered reminisce of wood, dirt and the remaining blood stained shards of glass on the floor, I winced looking at them, then turned towards them and brought the ax down on them full throttle. “CRACK!”

I waited for her to come around and when she did I heard her attempting to scratch my door at the bottom but instead of having a sharp, spine rippling sound it had a soft, nail scraping sound. It was almost calming to know my plan was working. I grabbed a stick from the floor I typically would use to defend my self incase she ever came inside, though she never did, and wrote a list on the ground, her hair, her hands, her voice and her eyes. I checked off hands and got to work planning my next offence and I came to wonder what she would be like after I had ridden her of my past clinging to the present. I slowly opened the cottage door and peered out to find the sun halfway in the sky and few scattered clouds and I was off, to my village. This will be my first time back in years.

I assumed I would need to put out a flame from the wreckage, luckily for me when the wind blew hard it would strike up small fires. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw it, my village in pieces and images of the night it crumbled before me flooding into my head. I was deciding to turn back when as I took my leave I felt something hot on my calf, a burning sensation. I looked down to find a flame burning me. I quickly reached down and patted my leg to stop it from getting entirely consumed by fire. Then I got down on my hands and knees and with full thriving anger in my heart I spit on the flame silencing it. I limped back to my cottage with more passion to do something that I have felt in a long time. I opened the door and turned my attention to my list and crossed off hair.

That night I peered out the window and her hair was red, not flame red, ginger red. I believed that to be another personal win in my book. I decided to target her voice, this one I knew to be easy because I never got rid of any of those dolls I just cast it aside and chose not to cower in fear anymore, so far that’s one of the easiest decisions I’ve had to make in my time here. I slowly crept my way to the closet resigning at the end of the hall. I made quick work of this and grabbed the ax from earlier; I let the ax drop on the neck of a doll with a hysterical smile. Now for the last of the things to get rid of. This was the one I hated most. In truth I hope to make reconciliation with her I won’t lie saying these past few years weren’t lonely. I believe the way to destroy her eyes would be to dispose of the picture I drew of her I made when I was five. I walked into my room where I slept on some blankets on the floor and reached under the bottom blanket to reveal a hand drawn picture of a women with the most stunning green eyes that sparkled like freshly cut emeralds.

At that moment I had a decision to make to destroy my last real picture of my mother and be rid my self of a phantom or keep it and have a phantom haunt me with the constant reminder of the loss of my mother. So out of confusion I ran outside screaming “NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS!” and ripped the picture in half letting it blow away with the wind. Standing there she appeared in front of me, my mothers green eyes dyeing away from her gray eyes and she smiled. In the first time for a long time I smiled too and we just knew then that we were no longer two lost souls.