Humans are fragile. Though there is only one way a human can die, there are infinite possibilities of how you can be lead up to death. You can be suffocated, decapitated, dismembered . . . .

I died by blunt-force trauma, but before I died, I was being skinned alive, kind of like in Silence of the Lambs. I wasn’t drugged. My murderer was careful with me, keeping me for years before I finally died. Every six months, he would skin one part of my body. My hands were first. Then my arms. Then my feet, and so on.

The day before he was going to skin my head, I crushed my own skull. The pieces of my skull splintered into my brain, puncturing it, and I finally died from blunt-force trauma.

The police never found my remains; he burned them. No one knew I was dead, and no one was looking for me. I had run away when I was eleven, and had lived on the streets of New York City for a good two years. Then, he found me and took me in for seven years.

After I died, I found out he had been obsessed with me before I ran away. He had followed me to the city. He had even built me a shrine, complete with my photos and pieces of my hair from the hairdresser’s.

I’ve been stuck on Earth for a year, now. Last night, though, I decided it was worth it. I’m willing to go to Hell, but I’m taking my murderer with me.

I had been watching him for a few months, now. His name was Morning, which I found ironic. Morning, like Morning star. The Morning star is a nickname for the devil.

I had observed that Morning had gotten over me quickly. I was a tad insulted, at first. I mean, we spent seven years together, and I don’t even get a funeral? That’s screwed up.

Morning had targeted another girl, Odette Wilson. She was a student at my old school, but she was never nice to me. She looked different, not that she was a freshman in college. I would have been a freshman in college, too.

I doubt Odette remembered me, since I looked like so many other girls. I never stood out, and I had a name that wasn’t memorable. Odette was always popular, and she was always cold. Apparently, she had grown out of her mean streak.

Morning and I followed her to her dorm. She was easy to spot--she was the only girl with bright red hair and wearing hot pink sweats. I floated behind Morning silently in my incorporeal form. He was going to take Odette tonight, unless I killed him first.

I had thought about the many ways I could kill him. Perhaps I would be kind, making the kill quick and moderately painless. But I knew I wouldn’t be nice in the kill, if that was even possible. Everything that I was, all the kindness, had withered away long ago. Now, I’m just a shell.

So I would kill Morning in such a way that he would beg for mercy, as I did. I wanted to revel in the sweet rewards of revenge, and if that reward is eternal damnation, so be it.

Morning sighed, thumbing on the strap of his camera. I glared at the camera, the same one that had exploited me many times. Morning used to dress me up as soon as my skin grew back and we’d do a photo shoot. I waved a finger at the strap, yanking the strap a bit tighter on his neck.

I found that my morbid thoughts simmered down when I used a bit of telekinesis on Morning, to make him suffer before he dies. I want him to know that I’m watching, I’m always watching.

I’m a poltergeist, but not like in the movie Poltergeist. That movie was horrific.

It wasn’t long before Morning snapped a few shots of Odette and went back to his creepy house. I sat in the front seat of his beautiful Porsche, while Morning sang along to some Metallica song.

I glanced over at him, studying his profile. He was undeniably handsome, which is what had attracted me in the first place. He looked young, almost eighteen. His real age was most likely 27, though. Either way, he’s a creeper and a pedophile.

I commanded myself to stop looking, to stop remembering, and forced my gaze on the car mirrors. My translucent reflection stared back at me. I had discovered a few months ago that poltergeists had reflections, and had my own fun with my family before I came to haunt Morning.

My at-home life before I ran away wasn’t that wonderful, hence why I ran. My mother had Multiple Personality Disorder, switching from loving mother “Rachel” to a hateful hag, “Rashel”. My father wasn’t really around, since he worked abroad, but he wasn’t nice when he was home. He always criticized me and my siblings.

The last straw happened the day I ran away, when “Rashel” beat my two-year-old brother to death. Then, “Rachel” blamed my father, so he was exiled via poison. I didn’t cry at his funeral; I was already broken. I ran away the night of his funeral, when “Rachel” finally showed up. I knew I couldn’t hurt “Rashel”, but “Rachel” loved me. And I hated her.

I left behind three sisters and a brother: Ji, Lucy, Roxanne and Jamie. I loved them all, but I figured my brother could take care of my sisters. In all honesty, I hadn’t thought about them when I ran away. I had been selfish, but I needed to get out of that house.

Some say my family was cursed; every woman on my mother’s side had killed all but one of their children and their husbands, only to end up killing themselves. I would have been next. By leaving, I probably left Lucy at my mother’s mercy. Lucy would have been after me, then Roxy, Ji and Jamie.

I shook my ghostly head, snapping out of my past and into the future. Morning had already gotten out of his car and waltzed up the stairs of his Victorian-style home. The house looked like it was haunted and it had been fixed up to look nicer. Just because it looks better doesn’t mean it’s not haunted.

Morning jogged down to the basement, my torture chamber. I wanted to shove him down the stairs.

At least my shrine was still up, leaning on the damp concrete wall. The single window shed light on the shrine, filled with my photos and memorabilia. My freeze-dried skin was now stuffed, almost making a statue of my full, naked body. The seams had been sewed neatly with a black thread and sickle-shaped needle, but some stuffing and dried blood puffed out near my torso. Even my chest was stuffed, and trust me, when he skinned my chest, I cried for two weeks straight. No one has experienced the true pain of being skinned as I have.

Even my face skin was there, lying idly on the side. Even my lip skin. The holes for my eyes were empty, thank goodness, but the eyes were surrounded by my dark lashes. Morning ripped them off. Morning had only skinned half of my face, which was also painful. He never got a chance to skin the other half of my head, but he had skinned everything else. Everything else. Enough said.

Beside my skin was a wig of my hair, which I had grown and cut several years ago for Morning to make that.

I looked slightly to the left, next to my old jail cell, and saw that Morning was also taking a shrine of Odette. He took the new pictures and placed them on the huge piece of oak-tag. Then, he went over to my jail cell--which was a literal jail cell, bars and all--and started to pick at my name. After Morning had first skinned me, my left hand, I had written my name on the wall in blood. Eve Cavanaugh was scrawled in big, loopy cursive.

Eve means rebirth, which is ironic now that I think about it. In a way, I was reborn after I died.

Morning got a bucket of white paint, since he unsuccessfully scraped off my name, and painted over my name. Now I was even more ticked off, if that was possible. I spun around to Odette’s shrine and thrust out my hand. All of her photos fell to the ground, almost 200 of them in total.

Morning spun around and cursed, walking over and picking up the photos. A small smile crept up my face, no matter how much I had tried to suppress it.

“Karma’s stinks, doesn’t it?” I said, even though I knew Morning couldn’t hear me. He had a vacant look in his eyes, like he was thinking about something painful. A memory, perhaps? I relished in the thought. Anything that caused Morning pain was splendid.

I remembered the first time I saw Morning, when I had run away. We were both crossing the street when a bus almost ran me over. He had pulled me back; I had thought he saved me. He probably would have left me alone, too, if I had just walked away. Morning was charismatic, though, and I was pulled in by his charm. It was as if he had a spell over me the first few times we met. Until, of course, he kidnapped me and locked me in his dank cellar.

I sat on my old bed, across from an old, broken mirror. I had broken it when I punched it out of anger, sending pieces splintering into my newly-skinned knuckles. I could still see my reflection, though.

Morning had stolen everything from me, even my looks. My once long, inky hair was cut unevenly and hung in my face, while my green eyes looked dead, bloodshot with dark circles underneath. My skin was now a ghastly grayish color, but my face was sallow with a yellow tint. I died looking ugly, so now I get to be hideous for all eternity. Yay me.

I looked like the girl from The Ring, yet another scary movie. Morning made me watch a ton of horror movies with him when I was sixteen. The Ring, Silence of the Lambs, Carrie and Poltergeist were some of the many we watched together. The worst part was that, now, I can relate to all of them. At least some poltergeists were telekinetic, like me.

My relationship with Morning was, as you can imagine, terrible. I hated him, but he never got impatient with me. He never loved me, not in a girlfriend-boyfriend way. He claimed he wanted to “protect me”, because he had heard of my mother.

At least he never tried to touch me inappropriately. He just skinned me alive and caused me to kill myself.

An hour had passed while I was reminiscing, and Morning had gone to abduct Odette. I would wait until he came back, so at least there would be a witness to his murder. I wanted a witness to my revenge. Then, of course, I would free Odette. If Morning came back as a ghost? I would beat him until he crawled to Purgatory on his knees.

Suddenly, I heard Morning come in with a limp Odette. He had used chloroform on her, which I didn’t anticipate. I didn’t want to wait any longer, though.

As Odette slowly gained consciousness, Morning slammed the jail closed. Odette rose and looked directly at me.

“Who are you?” She asked in a mix of awe and fear.

“Morning. Welcome to our new home,” Morning said, obviously thinking Odette was talking to him. She was talking to me. Well, I didn’t anticipate should would be a medium, either.

“I am Evangeline Cavanaugh,” I said, raising my chin. “I’m the ghost of the last girl Morning kidnapped. Don’t worry, I’ll set you free.”

“The last girl?” Odette gulped. Morning glanced back at my skin.

“She was nothing. Don’t worry about her,” Morning said. “But you and I? We’re going to have fun.”

“He can’t see me,” I added for Odette’s benefit. I floated beside Morning, still contemplating how to kill him. I had narrowed my choices down to two: I could stab him or dismember him. “You might want to look away.”

Odette obeyed me and turned to face the wall in her cell. I felt a wind swirl around me as I became corporal, a new trick I had learned. Morning gaped at me, his face a mask of horror.

“Not so smug now, are you?” I hissed. I grabbed his arm, my nails digging into his flesh.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Morning said. “I burned your remains myself . . .”

“Shut up!” I screeched, punching him in the nose. Blood gushed from it like a river, spilling onto the floor. I decided if there was any perfect moment for killing, it was now. I channeled all of my strength into one last punch, sending my fist right through Morning’s body. It looked like a horror movie; my arm went straight through his gut. Morning made a gurgling sound before I pulled my arm out and he dropped to the ground.

I looked at my bloody arm; some of Morning’s blood had splattered on me. Morning lay limp in a pool of his blood on the ground, face down.

“What did you do?” Odette spun around and let out a bloodcurdling scream. “Why didn’t you just subdue him?”

“Revenge,” I said quietly. I shouldn’t have had to justify myself to her. I pointed to the mannequin of my skin. “That is my real skin. He skinned me every few months, so I could live in pain. My skin would re-heal and he would just skin me again, like I was an animal.”

“Revenge won’t solve anything,” Odette replied. She walked over to Morning’s grotesque corpse and felt for a pulse, even though we both knew he was dead. She looked up at me, startled. “I think he just twitched.”

“That’s impossible. He couldn’t have come back to his old body, even if he turned into a ghost,” I said. “Unless . . . Oh my God, he’s a revenant. We have to get out of here!”

“A what?” Odette asked, concerned.

“A revenant is someone who can reanimate after they die, like a zombie, except they have working bodies and can function without a necromancer. We have a half an hour to scram before he reawakens fully.”

“If he reawakens, he can kill us? Even if you’re dead, already?”

“Revenants can destroy poltergeists, too,” I said. I tugged on Odette’s sleeve and we ran as far as we could. The worst part was, though, if I hadn’t killed Morning, he wouldn’t have come back to life. If I had let him die of old age, he wouldn’t have become a revenant, because now, he will never die.

Light seeped through the small, broken window in Morning’s basement. He slowly got up, looking at his newly-healed wound. The blood on his shirt had dried a brown-red color, and smelled absolutely putrid.

Morning gathered firewood and matches from outside. When the flames grew big enough, he threw Eve’s skin in, along with hers and Odette’s shrines. They were both ungrateful girls, who would pay sooner or later. As soon as the flames engulfed the photos, Morning lit a cigarette. He would give the girls a day’s head start before he came after them.

Morning was now a killing machine, and he would destroy everything and everyone in his path until he found Eve Cavanaugh.

Before walking back inside, he looks at what was left of Eve’s skin. Only a head and two empty eye sockets stared back at him, like black voids. Morning watched until the fire finally burned the skin, making the leather-like material curl and disintegrate until nothing was left of Eve Cavanaugh.