4 Birth Months Who Have Definitely Seen Something
Ask a room full of people whether they believe in ghosts, and watch who suddenly gets interested in folding a napkin. Someone has a story. Someone has spent years insisting it was probably a coat. If these four birth months were swapping ghost stories, one would need coaxing, one would bring a witness, one would already have left the house, and one would rather keep the experience private.
February
February, you’d be the person who leaves one detail out of an otherwise ordinary story. You describe the terrible wallpaper in the vacation rental, the shower that never got hot, the excellent bakery downstairs. Then a friend asks why you slept on the couch when you had a whole bedroom to yourself.
Well. There was someone standing beside the dresser.
You’re perfectly willing to consider the coat explanation. You considered it that night, too, right up until you remembered putting your coat in the hall. What bothers you now is how quickly a conversation becomes a debate you never volunteered to have. You wanted to describe something strange; suddenly you’re defending your eyesight to a person who regularly loses their glasses on their own head. So now you tell people the couch was more comfortable. It saves time.
June
June gets the encounter with a witness, which should make everything simpler. Instead, you and your friend have spent six years disagreeing about what happened in that elevator. You both saw someone waiting when the doors opened. You both stepped aside to let them in. But when you turned around, no one was there.
Your friend remembers a red sweater. You remember a blue shirt. This has somehow become the main argument, as though agreeing on an outfit would settle the larger issue. At parties, you tell it together, interrupting each other until everyone is laughing. Then someone asks whether you’re making it up, and you both go quiet. For all your bickering, you’ve never needed to convince each other that something happened. Even now, you wait for the next elevator if the first one opens empty.
October
In a horror movie, October, you’re the person the audience begs everyone else to listen to. Picture a weekend away: your friends are admiring the enormous bathtub, and you’re asking why there’s a chair pushed against the attic door. The host calls it a quirk of the house. Fine. The chair can stay.
Later, when it scrapes across the ceiling while everyone is sitting downstairs, you’re already reaching for your shoes. Somebody wants to investigate. Somebody else wants a video. You want to know which friend has the car keys. You can be curious from a diner booth with the whole group accounted for. Let them call you dramatic. They can do it from the passenger seat.
November
November’s scene would be the quiet one. You’re washing a mug when you notice a figure sitting at the kitchen table. For a second, you’re about to ask whether they want anything. Then you turn fully, and the chair is empty.
The strange part comes later, when you try to explain why you weren’t frightened. Nothing lunged. Nothing broke. It felt like walking into a room where someone had been waiting patiently for you to finish what you were doing. You don’t have a name for that feeling, and you’re reluctant to hand it over to the friend who will immediately suggest filming the kitchen overnight. You don’t want a camera crew in your kitchen. You just want to tell someone that, for a moment, you felt as though you had company. In your version, you finish washing the mug. You leave the kitchen light on a little longer.