Morphine Ghost

I used to think the strange feeling came from exhaustion. You know the one—when you reach the bottom of a page and realize you have absorbed nothing because someone else seems to have been looking through your eyes. I blamed stress. Lack of sleep. The headaches.

It is different now. There are moments when I can feel another reader moving through these pages with me. Not beside me. Not behind me. Through me. We arrive at the same sentence together, linger over the same words, hesitate at the same punctuation. Sometimes I stop reading altogether just to prove the sensation is imaginary.

It never stops with me. Whoever it is continues. That should be impossible. Did you hear that?

I covered several paragraphs with my hand this morning before reading them. I wanted to reveal the text one line at a time, to deny whatever accompanies me the chance to look ahead. It didn't matter. I still knew where my attention was expected to linger. The words felt anticipated, as though they had already been considered from another point of view.

Later I found fingerprints on the monitor. Not mine. Too long. Too narrow. I cleaned the glass. They returned while I watched.

The unsettling part isn't that someone may be watching me read. It is that they appear to become more interested whenever someone else visits the site. The feeling weakens when I am alone. It becomes almost unbearable when the visitor counter rises. Sometimes I can identify the exact moment another person opens one of these pages. Something shifts. A quiet awareness passes through the room like a draft beneath a closed door.

Perhaps they are not reading with me. Perhaps they are reading through whoever arrives.

If you have reached this sentence, then one of us is no longer alone. I only hope it is you.