Naugatuck Valley Community College
It Is Real Robert Andreotta* It only comes in the night, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. I never saw it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real either. Everyone tells me it does, but it doesn’t. My mom told me it wasn’t real first. She looked in the closet and said it wasn’t there. She checked under the bed and said it wasn’t there either. Then she kissed me on the head like that was that, and said good night, and that she loved me, and turned off the lights, and left, and she closed the door behind her. She closed the door behind her, and she turned off the lights. She didn’t see it under the bed, so it must not be real. Does she really think ghosts hide under the bed? They lived in the house longer than she ever did, she doesn’t think they have better hiding spots by now? This one hides in the windows. I don’t know how he does it, but he does. I never see him; it wouldn’t be a good hiding place if I saw him, but I hear him. Every night after my mom comes in and looks in the closet, and looks under the bed, and kisses me on the head, and says good night, and turns off the lights, and closes the door behind her, he comes out. He sounds like a sweaty fat guy that’s smushed between two pieces of glass so tight that he can’t move his arms, so he has to slither his way out. He slips for a second or two, then the sweat dries up and he squeaks, then he gets to another sweaty part and slips again, then he dries up again and he squeaks again. There’s a big thud when he finally falls out. It shakes my whole room and I can’t believe that no one else can hear him, but no one else can, and they say that means he isn’t real. But it doesn’t. He grunts too. It sounds like that one time my brother got hit in the belly with a basketball and it puffed out all his air and he had to sit down. One time he grunted and farted too, and I laughed. But he got mad, and I stopped laughing real quick. “Shut the fuck up you little shit.” That’s when I found out he was a mean ghost. I didn’t laugh anymore after that, even when he farted again. No one cared until I told them he touched me. Then they cared a lot. I had to go see a doctor then and she asked me a bunch of weird questions about my mom, and my brother, and my uncle, but she didn’t ask me about the ghost even once. Then I asked her if she was a real doctor and she said yes and asked me why. I told her that my daddy said real doctors wear white 19
