The Hanged Man
an excerpt

I am not crazy. I feel the need to write that down and repeat it to myself another hundred times if only to convince myself. Nina Lim is not crazy.

I was just thinking of grabbing the camera and taking a mirror picture because the candle light threw off some very interesting shadows. But before I could do that, I saw something behind me.

If it was a robber, I'm probably screwed, but when I first noticed it, I didn't know what it was. I mean, would you believe your eyes if you thought you saw a shirt-less man behind you, hanging by his neck on a noose from your ceiling? No? Me neither! That's why I didn't know how to react for a few seconds. I just watched him swing gently as his body turned from a side view to show a bit of his back. I recalled some kind of mark, maybe a tattoo in the middle of his back and I'm trying hard to remember what it looked like now.

Downstairs, the grandfather clock struck midnight. I barely notice it usually but it sounded thunderous when there is no electricity and my computer wasn't playing something on foobar2000. I reacted by dropping both the apple and the hairbrush, and whirling around. Good thing I didn't knock a candle over.

There was no half naked man hanging on a noose behind me. The only thing I saw was my own shadow.