When I picture my dad, it's of him sitting on an old beaten down lay-z-boy, every single night after work. He'd get wasted in front of the tube and then cuss out the blonde woman on the channel 5 News. And if I were unlucky enough to be thirsty, he would turn his anger towards me. Tell me to not be like my mother, not a whore, or a bitch, an unfaithful slut. It's a bad impression to leave on your daughter.

Even if he was right.

My mother and he were high school sweethearts. They had been together since sixteen. Got married after college. Started a successful business, and then got pregnant with me. It seemed like happily ever after for our family, until the day that I was born.

And it only got worse, everyday that I got older.

My dad was 6'3, fair skinned, with green eyes and blond hair. His old pictures showed a handsome smiling man, a man I hardly knew. My mom was pale but hauntingly beautiful with piercing blue eyes and blonde hair that I can still smell if I try hard enough.

I have black hair, and my skin is tanned even ' all over. And my eyes are so brown, they almost look black.

Right away people around them started whispering.

"It looks nothing like the father."

"Maybe it's from the mother's side?"

It got so bad that when I was about 4 or 5 years old, they were practically shouting it. I vividly remember my grandparents showing up one day when my mom was out, and they got into a row with my dad. "Leave her," they said. "Leave both of them." I remember sitting right there on the living room floor. "She's not yours," they told him. "Just look at her."

I don't remember what Dad said, but by the end, he was shouting and pushing them roughly out the door. I had never seen him so angry before, not even when he and my mom argued, and they argued a lot.

It was mostly about me, and about her not taking the pills the doctor were prescribing. See, my mom had her own battles to fight, my dad won't talk about it, so I never really found out what it was, but she would have these intense blackouts where she would become increasingly violent. It was almost as if she was a different person, throwing things around, scratching at the kitchen cabinets until her nails bent and blood ran down her hands. Hallucinations, they were the worst. It would start with her talking gibberish. And then always, always end with that woman, "That god damn woman staring at us through the windows. Wearing all black. Haven't you see her? She's trying to terrorize me."

No one ever saw the woman she was talking about.

We moved about a half dozen times, because my dad thought it would help.

It didn't.

When I was about 9 years old, my mom committed suicide.

I was the one who found her.

She hung herself in the bathroom, from the 10 foot ceilings she loved so much.

I remember going to my room and packing my stuff in a suitcase, waiting for the police to arrive. The officer was very nice to me, she and the others brought my mom down and laid her gently on the floor. The officer even consoled me, until my dad came home. But even the officer's face fell when she saw him. It was as if she suddenly knew what the suitcase was for, and tears welled up in her eyes as she tried to be professional.

While they talked, I went to my bedroom. The orange suitcase was still on my bed when my dad finally walked in. I could tell by his eyes that he had been crying, his nose was pink whenever he did, usually after an argument with my mom. Something that my nose never did when I cried, I know, I've stared into the mirror enough times hating myself.

He took one look at the suitcase, then at me, before rushing over to come pick me up. It was then that I knew that I was allowed to cry.

Things changed after that.

The business went under, and my dad got a part time job at the power plant. That didn't last. Nor any other job for that matter. Which is why we ended moving again. And again, and again. It was a wonder how I got through high school at all. During one semester, I changed districts 4 times!

But I was a good student.

Enough for my English teacher to help me send out applications to colleges in my senior year.

I got accepted into a great university, on a full scholarship, for an essay I wrote in a local contest. It was about the bedside manner of medical staff and its effect on a patient and their family's mental health.

It was 6 hours away.

By the time I came home, I had mostly convinced myself that I was going to go. Until I saw him sleeping in that old rotten recliner. A half empty beer still in his hand, and a stench on his shirt that never washed away, and realized that I couldn't do it.

He never left me, so I couldn't leave him.

Instead, I took on a part time job waitressing at a local diner. And went to the community college nearby. The professors there were great, some had retired and had come back to teach at less accredited schools. It was also here, where I met my first boyfriend. He was tall, a bit shy, and had ash brown hair with green eyes.

And I spent way too many hours wondering what our babies would look like.

Hopefully, nothing like me.

Everything was going better than expected. I was on track to transfer to a four year college that was nearby this time, though it only offered a half scholarship, but couple that with some loans, a grant, and FAFSA. I was ready to go.

My boyfriend was incredibly supportive, and it even seemed as if my dad was coming around. He showered more regularly, worked more consistently, and even started drinking less.

This was my ticket I thought.

That was until the day I was in my room, writing in my notebook, when I looked up at the mirror and saw a woman dressed in all black staring at me through the window.

And when I turned around, she was gone.

For days it haunted me. Guilt, that perhaps my mother was seeing something. Fear, that it was now affecting me. Anger, that it was possibly hereditary. Of all the things that I could have gotten, this was it?

The woman in black began to consume my living days. I stopped sleeping regularly, and barely ate. Everywhere I went, and wanted to go, would be spent constantly looking over my shoulder. Checking my bags. Carrying pepper spray. And I knew it was all coming to an end when I was on a date with my boyfriend and I locked the doors on our way into a restaurant.

I looked into his eyes. as he sat across from me, and I knew that whatever my mom did to my dad. I couldn't do to him. That I had to help myself, before I was ready to be in a relationship. That I loved him enough, to not destroy his life as well. So I said goodbye to a person I loved.

My psychiatrist recommended some pills. Blue ones, white ones, a purple one. I took them by the handful, hoping that they would work. And every time that I think they were starting to help, I would catch a glimpse of something in my corner cornea. A shadow, or a figure. A woman in black.

It got so bad that even my dad started to notice something was wrong with me. He never said anything though, and I was never going to tell him even if he asked, but I could tell it by his eyes, as if he recognized something inside of me that has haunted him.

I guess that was why I had to leave.

I couldn't put him through that again.

I found the cheapest apartment I could find, dropped out of school, and kept mostly to myself. Working only when I had to, researching online, day after day, night into the night, looking for answers.

I found a whole lot of nothing.

Still I tried, even keeping a camera on hand at all times, so that I can capture it. Just to say that I wasn't going crazy. I was so consumed at this point that I even kept certain tabs open on my browser, black ones, just so I could look behind me. Because I knew that if I had on my webcam, she wouldn't appear.

It was on one of those nights when I was hunched over my computer, when I was switching between articles and black screens, that I finally saw her reflection. I could feel my heart beating in my chest as I switched back and forth, her image blinking in and out, back and forth, as I slowly reached for my camera.

I whirled around quickly and snapped a photo of her standing outside my window.

The only problem was the flash. At least, that was what the police officer said when I took it in as proof that I was being followed.

"It's just your reflection," he said. "Cameras do that." He looked at me, "Are you on drugs?"

It's hard to explain that I was, but they were prescriptions, not that it ever mattered once they found out.

So I went home, no further than the months before, and looked at that photo every single day, for weeks. It nearly drove me insane. Sure the flash caused the window to reflect me in it, but just behind the smudges, there was clearly another figure there. I know she was there. I know it.

Weeks go by without a sighting.

I grew more and more desperate, and angry. Angry that I missed my chance to prove that I wasn't crazy. That my mother wasn't either. I suppose that is what drove me to buy a gun. I was determined to not let my next chance slip away.

It didn't.

The next time I saw her behind me, I shot her.

I could hear someone above me screaming, yelling for the police. But I didn't care. With my smoking gun I opened the sliding glass and held the woman down at gunpoint. There was blood everywhere, and I could feel the hot tears rolling down my face as I knew my nightmare was coming to an end.

"Who are you," I cried. "Why have you been stalking me? Following me? Why did you kill my mother?"

The woman gasped, she was struggling to breathe, I could feel her dying under my weight.

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"I am your mother."

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When the police came, I was held on accounts of the investigation. The paramedics arrived and called a time of death, zipping up the body as I was escorted to the station. Then a six week investigation took place, it involved the police recovering items from the woman's apartment. There they found pictures of me spanning back from when I was a baby. Among them was a diary documenting how she wanted me to have a better chance at life, and all the times she watched me from afar, in the shadows; dances, graduation, my first kiss. And among her things they also found an urn, where a newborn was stuffed inside next to an old baby tag, its blonde hair still growing.

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