text: Thanks for taking the time to read. This is a rough draft and I likely won't be returning to it to finish but I got it down in about 40 minutes and wanted some feedback on tone and pacing. I am really just starting to write. Divorce sucks. I always told myself that it would be easier to just not get married than go through another. Three was one too many for a kid and it never got easier. I must have spent my entire adult life figuring out who I was outside of that pain. I was really blessed to not go through the usual trappings of separation. No court dates, no arguments over time, no vindictive pursuit of support. It was probably the amicability of our arrangement that stung the most. Why couldn’t we just make it work? I always know the answer is me but it’s still a question that makes me ache. &#x200B; Divorce sucks, but it didn’t stop me from having a kid and a breakup anyway. Salem, the most perfectly lovable child, became my world. Time eased my fears and I inevitably ended up dating again about a year after the breakup. It didn’t take long to start up my new life and even move in with my new partner Andrea. Our space was modest but cozy, a single wide two-bedroom trailer just big enough to run through on little toddler legs. Only getting Salem on the weekends Friday to Monday meant that the house was awfully quiet during the week. Looking down the hallway at her door during the week never feels good, a constant reminder my family isn’t together. I heard somewhere that the more pain and guilt you carry the more likely you are to experience a haunting. &#x200B; “Could you help Salem get in the habit of shutting off her light when she leaves?” Andrea mentioned one night after taking Salem to Mom. “I swear I did so myself, I will definitely be more mindful of it” I told her. The next night I came home a bit late, Andrea still working. “I know I shut it off yesterday, did you go back in?” I texted Andrea. “Nope, haven’t been down there today” she told me confidently. Oh well, I thought to myself and just walked down and shut it off. I dozed off for a half hour or so after a glass of rye only waking to an odd sound. Was that Legos? Distinctly so. Someone or something was absolutely playing with Lego blocks, and I felt my stomach drop immediately. Fuck I locked one of the cats in the bedroom. I ran down the hallway and opened the door ready to hear some protest from one of our fur friends only to find an empty room and nothing out of place barring the light being on again. I went around and took inventory of the cats and confirmed they were all accounted for before closing the door and shutting off the light once more. This time making sure to take a mental note of me deliberately shutting off the light and closing the door. “I always knew I was a little crazy,” I joked to my giant tabby who started following me around in hopes of some attention Later that night while Andi was making her way into the house, I came out to greet her “Hey cutie how was work?”. She let out a heavy sigh “Another one of those days, just glad to be home. I didn’t know we were getting Salem or I would have stopped for dinner!”. Salem? “What do you mean?” Now I asked a bit weary and feeling fear creep inside me. “I can hear her in there playing with her Legos right now and her light is on you should have said something to me!”. I slowly walked toward the back hall keeping my steps quiet to hear what Andi was hearing. Approaching the door it became clear as day, those were Legos being put together. Beginning to shake I start to reach for the door but pause and called out with a tremoring voice “Salem?”. The sound of blocks being assembled suddenly stopped “Uh oh dada is here". Now trembling with Andrea standing behind me looking confused, I slowly opened the door. Silence and a stillness that haunts me even now settled in the room for what felt like an eternity. I had to find something out of place, some reason for what I was hearing. A voice rattled through the house shaking both of us and the windows around us “I WANT THE LIGHT LEFT ON”.