“I may look like a demon and talk like one. But if I truly were, would you still try to understand me?”

That was the first thing it said to me. A demon, or so it claimed. I couldn’t be sure, and even now the memory unsettles me more for what I don’t know than for what I do.

I began writing this only so I wouldn’t forget. The more I reread these words, the less certain I become. Was it real? A dream? A trick of my mind? And yet, every detail presses on me with a weight too sharp to be imagined.

She came every night. Always at my window, always waiting. I never dared to shut her out completely. I told myself the cracked window was for fresh air. I told myself that sleeping on the third floor meant I was safe. But in truth, I was curious.

She never forced her way inside. She only leaned close, speaking in a voice that should have repulsed me, but instead pulled me nearer. And the more I listened, the less monstrous she seemed.

Perhaps that was the worst part of it all: the quiet fear that what I was learning wasn’t about her, but about me.