Going short tonight. And creepy.

The ghostly activity initially scared Julie. Her first space on her own, the quietude of the first few nights sent her mind to distraction: did I lock the front door? Did I close the front door? Did I turn off the lights in the living room? Quickly, though, she realized the front door would always be locked, an open window would be closed and locked when she returned to the room, and lights began going dark as she walked across the space.

She smiled and shrugged recounting the activities to her friends over drinks at Emily’s bachelorette party in Vegas. “My ghost is looking out for me,” she said. Thinking about the hotel room she would return to at the end of the night, she added, “It feels comforting.”

Two days later she walked into her apartment with a broad smile on her face. The air in the apartment felt tense, charged. She passed it off as jet lag and dropped her bags on the floor and started the shower. She stepped into the steamy bathroom and noticed something written on the steamed-up mirror. It read: “You shouldn’t have left.”

Her heartbeat sped up at the implied threat. She ran from the bathroom in her robe, grabbed her keys and moved for the door – whatever had changed, she would deal with it in daylight.

As she reached for the doorknob, the deadbolt clicked in place. She tried the lock but it wouldn’t budge.

The lights turned off all at once.

In the darkness, Julie held her breath. The kitchen light flickered on unnaturally. She watched as the magnetic poetry words moved on their own, the cloud of words spreading into a frame around a single sentence.

“You won’t leave again.”

The lights went dark again.