A ghost can be a lot of things. A memory, a daydream, a secret. Grief, anger, guilt. But in my experience, most times they're just what we want to see.
SHIRLEY JACKSON /The Haunting of Hill House
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ISEULT HAS ALWAYS had a hunger—something primal and raw. It was palpable; it was suffocating. It clawed at her throat with a sickening desperation, and time after time she swallowed it whole.
She hungered to be loved, to be wanted, to be seen at all. In all of its depravity and vulnerability, the desire became punishing. It becomes something to be broken, something that chomps at the bit. It seeks to kill her, to strip her bare, to cut deep enough that it reaches bone.
If there was a name for this hunger, she couldn't name it. She couldn't think back to a time where it hadn't been there, waiting beneath the surface, begging to be known. It was a part of her—in all of its violence and gluttony—it was her. And she could never get out of it, could never cleave it from her body until it is left naked and writhing beneath her boot.
Iseult calls it her sickness, a perversion.
Amelie called it a gift. She said that the desire to be loved was a beautiful thing. And she never saw it to be violent or stifling; she saw it as it was—a pure, unadulterated hunger to be seen, to be wanted. To her, it was the wildflowers that grew at the edge of town—it could grow, could thrive, be satiated even if for a moment. There was nothing depraved about her desire—it was beautiful. Everything was so beautiful. Amelie never knew that hunger in the way that Iseult did, never knew how it sought to kill her.
But Iseult has always known what an ugly thing it is to truly be seen.
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