Sometimes she fixates on words, on ideas or concepts or definitions. She thinks about them, considers and debates them in her mind. She analyzes their meaning, weighs their merits and tries to decide if they really do deserve their own word, their own place in whatever language she's considering at the time.

Her mind keeps circling around the word 'haunted', thoughts drifting to and fro but always returning to that particular word tonight.

Haunted: 1. inhabited or frequented by ghosts 2. preoccupied, as with an emotion, memory, or idea; obsessed

The definitions wrap around her head, teasing her mind with other concepts surrounding them, memory and identity and obsession all coming to the forefront of her thoughts at one point or another.

Yet she keeps coming back to being haunted, to being stalked by her own thoughts, by her own ghosts that rise up in her mind and tug her deep into the own dark halls of her head.

She has a lot to be haunted by, memories upon memories of things that could wrap around her and pull her under the water of her thoughts. She keeps swimming though, staying at the surface and letting her mind never fall to deep.

It's safer that way, easier to pull herself out again when the thoughts are getting too weighted. She can pull away, try and not let obsession take over and instead float above it all and cast her thoughts aside.

But she knows she is haunted, that's undeniable. She knows that ghosts live in her head as much as they do everyone else she knows at this point.

All of them are haunted houses, filled with ghosts and memories and terrors that promise to emerge of investigated by the right person. And if that right person happens to be each other, then all the better. They've all seen what hauntings can do, the havoc that ghosts can cause. They are all prepared.

And even though she's not sure she wants anyone in her house, in her head and in her memories, she knows she can take it. Knows she's ready for it, despite trepidation, despite fear.

That's all a part of the haunting, isn't it? The fear of the house itself, of what's to be discovered within. Yet she will open up, carefully allow people to enter and see what they will see. She is dusty, covered in cobwebs and broken glass but there are candles to light the way and a space or two where the ghosts have already been chased out.

And maybe there will be more after a while, maybe the people she trusts will bring life to her house just as she might bring life to theirs. Maybe they will not all be haunted but filled with life, with the thriving memories of better times, rather than the darkness of the past that slowly erodes all of them.

Maybe one day, there will be families living within their houses. Maybe there will be light.

This is stunning, and gorgeous, and far more profound than I had intended when I threw that prompt at you. But that is the wonderful thing about prompts, isn't it, that they stir all of us differently? And when we get lucky, VERY lucky, they produce gems like this one, darkly polished and beautiful.

Thank you.

Oh yay! I'm pleased you enjoyed it. It's the first bit of writing I've done all week and it kind of helped me unstick my brain form the place it was in.