The Castle

She haunted the rooms he once called home.

Photo by Tim Schmidbauer on Unsplash

Once upon a time, a boy grew up in a castle.

He liked the solitude of it — walking through rooms bigger than they had any right to be — while he lived in a world of his own making.

Loneliness was a monster, it’s true, but he loved being the master of his own fate with no siblings to trip him up.

Until the day he met a ghost.

She was beautiful — of course — and her lips were red as blood.

“Come here,” she said, beckoning.

The boy did not know any better.

He took the ghost’s hand and became haunted.