To understand this story, you must first understand that my reality has never been the same as yours. My mind did not break and then heal this way. I was raised by witches. We believed in magic. I grew this way from the start, like a tree that creeps down the hill before bending up towards the sky.

Yesterday I asked my mom, “When you told me I could see fairies when I was a kid, did you know I had been staring into a candle’s flame?”

My mother laughed. “What?”

“The flickering light was a retina burn, not a fairy.”

She smiled. “Well, obviously if I had known that you’d been staring at a light, I would’ve explained it better. What were you doing, staring into a flame like that?”

“Scrying,” I said. “Like you taught me.”

“Really? Did you see anything?” she asked.

“Fairies apparently.”

We laughed.

I’d like to think that if they knew how ill my mind was, that they would have explained a lot of things differently. But they didn’t understand mental illness. They understood their faith, and that was all.

Is there a word for the opposite of “aphantasia”? The images in my mind are strong enough to pull me under reality’s surface. They shift in ways I can’t control. I can only tread water for so long before I’m gone again. Sometimes, I love it. Sometimes, I drown.

In this way, I was born for hedgewalking. When I was little, we’d sit surrounded by pillows and blankets hand in hand with our eyes closed. They trained us with guided meditation. In our minds, we walked down a winding trail in the woods until we came to a clearing where we met our guardian spirit. Mine took the form of my deceased pet rabbit.

When we were ready, we projected our souls outside ourselves so that we could travel freely. My mother showed us her “warehouse.” She had us picture a large bronze building with several round doors. Each was labeled, but I couldn’t make out the text. It shifted as though I was dreaming. The words only became solid when she spoke them. The first simply read “The Village.” Through the door, a tether of light extended into the darkness. When we held on, we were brought to a clearing full of cabins surrounded by dense forests.

I had no such warehouse. I was a plasma ball, tethers of light connecting to anyone and everything. I never needed to meditate to have visions. They happened at random, kept me awake, hit me mid-sentence, midstride, eyes open. I had too many eyes, and I could never close them.

I was in my freshman year of college. My hair was bright red, stark against my black clothing. My sister teased me for being “edgy,” but I embraced it. Back then, being different wasn’t something I was ashamed of. I almost felt superior. What do you mean you can’t see other worlds? What do you mean you can’t fold your mind into a little pretzel until it crackles and shines like a glowstick? I was a witch, and I was proud.

At first, I saw him from afar. He was a smudge of pastel in the distance. I drew closer from behind, and instantly I felt I knew him. He had wavy lilac hair that was black at the roots. His clothes were floral, pink and turquoise, like if Claire’s sold clothing that fit adult men, sugarcoated, cloying. He walked with a slight limp. His knuckles were scuffed and bruised and there were dots of red on his cuffs. Someone must have attacked him, I thought. And whoever they were, they lost. The strange combination of spun sugar and blood intrigued me. I thought I might make him a character one day. When I searched for a name for him, I knew it started with a “V.” Eventually I heard it in my mind: “Vance.”

A few days later, the energy of a rainstorm left my mind crackling. Images flashed through me with the lightning. Eventually, they all solidified. Like so many times before, I was in two places at once. My physical body rode in the back of a car watching the raindrops race down the window. My soul found itself in a bedroom with a large window looking down at a glittering cityscape. Vance sat on the edge of his bed, staring at me with his eyes wide.

“Hello,” he said. “Are you a ghost?”

“Not quite,” I said. “Are you Vance?”

“Maybe… Can I have your name?” he asked.

“No, but you may hear it.” I told him my name.

“Beautiful,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”

My face felt warm, even back on my own world. I told myself not to be charmed so quickly, but it was too late. I was fond of him before I even met him.

“That means a lot coming from someone so… well, stunning,” I said. I took a step closer and took his hand, studying the scabs on his knuckles. I marveled at how realistic they were. “Are you real?” I asked.

Vance hesitated. “Do you want me to be?”

I laughed. “What does that matter?”

“It matters to me.”

I thought for a moment. I wanted to know the truth, but I also didn’t want to disappoint him.

“I’d like for you to be real,” I said.

“I’d like for you to be real, too.”

He sounded almost wistful, as though he was certain I was nothing but his own imagination.

“I am. I’m here,” I said.

I visited him almost daily after that. He was surprisingly sweet. I wasn’t sure what to expect from someone who first came to me with blood on his shirt. Now it’s easy to see. Of course he was sweet; I wanted him to be sweet. But at the time, I was simply taken with him. It wasn’t long before we started dating.

He couldn’t be fully visible on our world. Our realm has far less energy, my parents explained. Magic that’s possible elsewhere would take impossible amounts of effort here. “Push hard enough, though, and you can still make little changes,” they’d say. That’s why, for most of my life, I believed I could control the wind. If I stared hard enough, I could see him walking alongside me as I made my way to class. I could feel when he’d stop by and kiss me on the forehead. I could still feel the ghost of his hand in mine.

I first introduced him to my friends through roleplaying games. They met him as a mutant in our improvised X-Men campaign.

“He sickens me,” said my dungeon master.

I laughed. I loved bothering him almost as much as I loved playing.

“Why?” I asked.

“He’s so fake. All that pastel and sweetness to cover up that nasty violent streak. I bet he listens to screamo in secret.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a little metal. But you’re wrong. He wears what he wears because he likes it,” I said.

“You can’t trust anyone who likes pastels.”

I didn’t trust anyone who made such broad sweeping statements, but I decided to keep that to myself.

For yule, I was given a light purple ring made of polished agate. I placed it on my ring finger and thought of him. I wore it for months and only removed it to clean it. That way, he was always with me. I felt his presence the way some people feel lost loved ones. He was my angel, my lovely ghost, my fae prince. Whatever he was, he was mine.

One day, in psychology class, I ran my thumb over the ring and felt a slight imperfection. I looked down and saw nothing, but by touch I could detect it. Maybe it wasn’t clean, I thought. I scratched at it, but nothing changed. I raised my hand to ask to leave only to remember that I was an adult now, I didn’t have to ask, so I left.

In the bathroom, I slipped the ring off my finger, dabbed it with soap, and rinsed it under cool water. I rubbed it gently, staring as the water caught the light. I carefully felt for the scratch. I found none. Instead, it shattered, pieces clattering down into the dirty public sink. My stomach dropped. I fished the larger pieces out, telling myself I would glue it back together, but the rest of the ring had practically become glitter. My chest felt tight.

“Don’t panic,” I said under my breath, “It’s just a ring. It doesn’t mean anything.”

I held the wet shards over the garbage and hesitated.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” I repeated.

I threw them away, then stared. When I finally looked away, it was only to scrub my hands until they were raw.

What I didn’t know then is that gemstone rings are notoriously brittle. It takes the slightest impact to create an imperfection, and once it’s there, it’s only a matter of time before it shatters.

That evening, I caught Vance as he entered his apartment. He hung up his jacket, hung his keys, and pulled me in for a kiss. I held onto him a moment longer than normal.

“Is everything alright?” he asked.

“It’s nothing really. I just got worried about you earlier is all.”

He squeezed harder. “It’s alright. I’m alright.”

He pulled away and opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. He said my name and stared.

I stepped back. “What?”

“Oh god. Your face.”

I reached up to my cheek, and the flesh came away in my hand. I saw myself from the outside as I fell to my knees. One eye rolled back as the lids peeled away. In both worlds, I felt I was about to be sick. In Vance’s world, I vomited uncontrollably. Small white things moved in the slick: maggots, I realized. When I came back to myself, my hand was clamped over my mouth. I nearly fell out of my desk chair.

“Are you alright?” asked my roommate.

I didn’t answer. She said my name, nudging me.

“I need some water,” I said before leaving the room.

My skin was clammy. The inside of my mouth felt warm and dry. I peeked into his world while walking to the water fountain. I expected to see my own corpse falling to pieces on his carpet. Instead, Vance just looked confused.

“Where’d you go?” he asked.

“Did you see that?”

“See what?”

I breathed deeply. It was fine. Everything was fine.

Still, it didn’t feel fine. I started to doubt whether the Vance I was seeing was the real Vance. What if I had conjured up his confused face just to offer false reassurance? What if I really had become a pile of gore on his floor?

On the phone that night, my mom told me that I had been hexed. It was alright now, though. She had found the coin used to cast it in Vance’s room and disenchanted it. It shouldn’t happen again.

On the way to class the next day, I walked alone. The images had fragmented into multiple realities. Which one was real? And then there was another terrifying thought. What if none of it was real? What does that say about me?

In class, my teacher drew a line down the center of the chalkboard. Before she could start writing things on either side, the line took on a new light. The lights above became stark. The temperature began to climb. The line became a slice down Vance’s bare torso. I watched myself pull back the flaps and wrench open his ribcage. In the classroom, I gasped and covered my mouth. A few of my classmates offered awkward glances. I got up and hurried out of the room. I was hurting him. Oh gods, I was killing him.

I tried to stop. Nothing changed. The hands continued to move, performing their vivisection without so much as a pause. I could not banish the image. I could hardly see what was really in front of me.

I left class early that day.

In my dorm room, he came to me. I could feel his hands grip my shoulders.

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” He asked.

“Stay away from me. I don’t want to hurt you,” I said aloud to an empty room.

“You’re not hurting me. I’m just confused. I can’t help unless you explain what’s going on.”

But I didn’t know what was going on. All I knew was that I was seeing double, triple, viscera, confusion, and the cold dorm room floor.

“It’s happening again!”

That’s when I remembered. Last time, the hex had been cast using a coin. Maybe there was more than one. Maybe there was one in my room. I told Vance to search for the coin in his room while I tore my own apart. I threw my blankets to the ground, lifted my mattress, emptied my wardrobe. My roommate walked into the room and stared.

“Um.”

“Have you seen a coin?” I tried and failed to mask the fear in my voice.

“No.”

She stepped around my mess and settled down on her bed. With one last uncomfortable glance cast my way, she put her earbuds in and opened her laptop. I realized with horror that it was probably in her things, not mine. I imagined trying to explain and realized how unhinged I would have sounded. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. The shadows under my eyes had darkened. My hair and clothes were disheveled. I was surrounded by mounds of clothes and blankets tossed aside at random. My hands were curled into claws. That’s when I realized, maybe I was unhinged.

As I shoved everything back into place, I was overcome with exhaustion. I lay down on my bare mattress, sheets in hand.

“Maybe it’s an acrimony,” I thought. “But I have imbued iron in my wardrobe. They couldn’t come here. No. Maybe I’m dangerous. My violent imagination is taking over.”

I couldn’t believe that. It was simply too horrific for me to accept. Instead, I didn’t know what to believe. Still, the images didn’t stop. I buried my face in my bunched up blanket and held my breath to keep from sobbing.

He visited me several times after that, begging me to come back. Each time, I would witness another horror at the same time. As soon as I crossed the hedge, I began to bleed.

If this were fiction, I’d write that the hero got treatment for their mental illness and ran back to Vance with open arms. I’d write that they spent many years together despite being worlds apart, and they were happy. But in coming to terms with my mental illness, I had to cut my faith out of me before it festered further. If I cannot accept the very worst of my visions as reality, that means I must question the others as well. If none of my visions were real, that means that Vance was nothing but an illusion. Every conversation we had, every moment we shared, every phantom touch, it was all a waking dream. It doesn’t matter how real it felt. My imagination is more powerful than any other aspect of my mind. I can’t pick and choose what I want to be real.

Still, part of me wonders whether he’s still out there. If he is, I shattered his heart, and he will never understand why.

Kieran Malovear is a queer, neurodivergent author following their passion despite severe mental illness. They received a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Missouri State University where they were a Student Editor of Moon City Press. They have since graduated with a Master of Arts in English from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. They love writing, audiobooks, tabletop roleplaying games, and the psychiatric medication that allows them to think straight.