• Trust and care are strangers to me. A ghost of the shell I was once now defines itself as wasted time, time that'd been better spent with a definite knowing rather than the ever-changing variable of personality. The shadowy, hooded figure I've seen in my nightmares haunts me even in waking hours, a specter of truth and promise shattered long ago, the incarnation of fear and agony, hatred and wrath. Yet familiarity sweeps over me as the figure's cool blue eyes stare into my very being...

    This is not who you were before, his thoughts intertwine with mine, your heart carries the plague of love.

    Isolation and abandonment have been my only companions on this journey, arrogance and pride my failsafe. Paranoia takes its hold of me, producing a thick line of separation from me and my kind. A shrilling pitch of sadistic laughter fills my mind, as if the wraith himself gloats over my despair.

    It is not misery I have sought to grant you, he burrows within me again, it is a new power, a gift of insight.

    Sanity has been my only saving grace, yet the abdication of such seems nothing short a fatal attraction. A dereliction of hope is quite possibly a necessity, the crystal blue skies of delight now swirling with a black mist of deception. A rain of crimson falls from the quilt of darkness, casting shadows of falsehoods and pretense, swaying to the rhythm of malice over my once comely aspirations.

    Life is but a misinterpreted sequence of collected ambition, for even the dead can dream, his words pierce me like daggers, and even the shadows can dance.

    The winds of change have shifted and reversed and the tides of wrath swell. The purging rains have ceased and the flames of hatred burn. The last glimmers of peace fade out as the night of terror falls. And the wraith stands the tempest as he skulks in silence, grinning, cackling, waiting...