text: The Lady I Live With &#x200B; The lady I live with knows me. I don’t know her, but she knows me. Sometimes when I’m on my computer I see her in the corner of my room, crouched and balled up like a starving child. Her eyes watch me sometimes too. They feel empty like an abandoned house, but something watches me behind it’s windows. A green galaxy surrounds her voided pupils with the outskirts of a thick brown ring keeping it from escaping. Usually when I’m cooking I see her resting on my electric oven as if it were a warm bed, but sometimes she would stand exactly one foot behind me and watch as I cook my usual eggs and toast, occasionally doing one of those crying sniffles that happen loudly and quickly as the toast pops out. Her nose isn’t what I would really call a nose though. It’s more skeletal since it’s so thin and pointy, like a horn.. She likes to play pranks on me almost every month. I would be sleeping in bed or listening to music when she’d start laughing. Not laughing as from joy, but an “I’m giving up” crying kind of laugh where it howls coarser and longer than usual. After a few seconds of laughing I’d feel blood, then pain. I could find one of my fingernails missing, or cuts and scratches on the bottoms of my arms or all over my chest. It’s more annoying than painful. My blanket and shirt are usually light colored, like white or yellow. So whenever she pranks me I have to buy a new shirt without the brown stain of blood. I notice she’s kind of mean. After school and work she’d berate me in the voices of friends and co-works. I don’t know how she knows how they sound or even how they are, but it’s mean. It’s always at times when I’m at peace too. I like taking in the noises of the roads outside my house and the constant chattering of the neighbors above me. They always have something interesting to talk about or do. At some points they turn into music singing and vocalizing beautiful symphonies. With the repetitive scream or thud, it helps me relax and sleep. Until their performance is once again ruined by the lady. I know she likes to see me cry. Whether from a movie or from pain, I see her standing with her hands locked behind her back as she smiles open mouthed. I see her wrinkles from her cheeks so scrunched up they looked as if they were going to snap. Her eyes would be squished and widened as her smiles grew ever so bigger, until I stopped crying. Her face plateaus as her emotion and joy are shot out like a bullet. She irritates me. She dresses up like me every day, even down to the hair and height. I always ask her to stop, but she never does. When I walk out the shower I see she has my exact clothing for the day. A baby blue t-shirt with a black and white sunset embroidered on the chest. White shorts speckled with tiny light pink roses. Lastly she has my wet straight black hair running over her forehead and blurring a smidge of her eyes. She’s nothing, but a hurtful copycat. Or more accurately, a second me. It’s like having your reflection become a real object. I hate her. No one knows about her, no one has seen her. She knows me, but I don’t know her. Even though she’s a replica of me, she is dead. There’s no life in her emotions or movements, even though they're mine. She has no name, and I won’t give her one. Human is not what she is. It’s like watching a robot imitate human life. Wake up, eat, work, observe, and see herself without her eyes. Behind me.