Chills ran down her body as the ends of her hair touched her cheek. Her eyes were closed but she could sense the looming figure overhead. Curled in a fetal position, the intense gaze from her pair of eyes seemed to linger upon her back and on top of her. Between the worlds of wakefulness and slumber she hung, but neither could give her the relief she prayed for. In the corner there lay her friend, someone not particularly significant, just one that she meets often, sleeping soundly and unaware. Her mind pleads for the friend to near the bed and dissipate the presence, but the body was too afraid to make movement or utter a sound. The detachment of mind and body drove her to despair, especially when doubt of reality had already taken root in the depths of her heart and was raging to take over.

She slept fitfully.

When morning finally came, she could not tell when she had wriggled out from the nightmare. The sun`s rays fell as long golden streams streaking across her bed and onto the wooden floor. Her eyes, weary from unpleasant dreams, slowly drifted open. It was a dream, she thought, it wasn`t real. Bright morning sunshine and a new beginning are what`s real, she thought, the ghosts of the past will fade.

Fading, ebbing, dissipating. These are states of being that terrify people. A being that is so surely there slowly thinning out into a phase where you cannot tell apart the living from the dead, that is what it is to be alive. This terror gripped her when she began to ebb away. And she began to fade when people started forgetting about her. When people started to forget her, she forgot herself.

Hello! She says often, drowning her sorrows in the mundane of life, for that is the only way she has learned how to live. And the days passed with her being courteous to people, eating hearty meals, helping friends in need, providing interesting conversation, and simply going through the motions she had slowly built up over the years.

But the figure still looms, and it is not what she sees or what she hears that terrifies her. It is what she feels on her cheek and in her heart. The figure never had long hair, but it seems when all that left of them is their spirit, the women will always have long hair and a flowing unassuming white sheet as their dress. That night the spirit approached her, drew near to her, and took a long look at the friend who still had the gift of life.

What do these dreams mean? She thought. But she knew later on, it wasn`t a real entity or evil spirit, not the apparition of her friend that jumped to her death. That`s a relief, she thought. I`m not being haunted! It is just regret. Regret, she thought, as she smiled wistfully a small smile, as she slowly pulled back the covers and arose.