I didn’t mean to do it.

You have to understand, I loved him. I do.

It wasn’t meant for him.

See, ever since I rejoined the Backstreet Boys, I started hearing her. This voice that touched my very soul. She wouldn’t leave me alone. I’d been ignoring her for so long that it took some time before I finally succumbed to her power. It started off so normal. I was sitting at my piano one day, toying with a melody when they came. At first I thought it was my wife, Kristen. It sounded like her a bit, only more powerful, chills ran down my spine pleasantly. I could fight it so no longer. It was calling me, haunting me. Beguiled I found myself walking down the hall at her command. No one was there when I stared at the mirror where she had told me to be.

Kevin. Finally you’ve come to be by my side.

At least at first.

Slowly but surely she appeared.

“Yes,” I whispered, feeling as if I’d fallen into a dream.

A heavenly apparition. A slender body with long pale hair. I wondered what color it had been in life. She was beautiful though, eyes that could stare right through to your soul. There are no mortal words to describe to you the beauty she possessed. It simply wasn’t human. Suddenly I forgot all about my wife and my son. All I could think about was this being before me and what she requested of me. I should’ve known then that it could lead to no good. But that was my problem, all my thinking was shut down. She motioned towards me, calling me closer to her. It was then she whispered in my ear, her plans, what she needed to be at rest.

It won’t be long, and then you can be mine forever.

I wanted whatever she wanted.

Slowly I headed outside the front door. It was a pretty night, barely a cloud in the sky. The stars shone like diamonds and were enhanced by the full moon. It was a harvest moon, larger than normal and tinged with red. Looking back it was probably a sign. Even if I’d known that I don’t think I would’ve listened. I was too enraptured by the presence beside me. I held the knife she’d given me. How she’d acquired it being not of this world, I cannot say. It shone brightly in the moonlight. I found myself smiling. To any watching I know I would’ve looked psychotic. Maybe I was. Maybe she made me so.

I honestly don’t know.

“Kev!” I heard a voice call out all of a sudden. The rational part of my mind that still existed froze. I’d forgotten he would be coming. We were going to have a late night writing session, just like the old days.

But it was too late – for him and for me.

I slammed the knife into the soft flesh. It slid in so easily. As if it wasn’t man it was tearing apart, simply hot butter. It glided that well. Again and again I did it. The blood flowed easily. It dripped over my hands, stained them immediately. I thought of raindrops then, that the body started raining. I laughed and continued the stabbing. I even thought I heard the blade scrape up against bone. I didn’t care. I felt nothing as I kept at the job. There should be pain, but I didn’t wonder why there wasn’t. It was almost therapeutic. The knife entered me again and again, rhythmically, up till the moment where the blade was finally forced away from my grasp.

Until finally sweet death captured me in its embrace.

I found myself rising above my own body. My body lay there twisted, drenched in blood. There was a pool of crimson red surrounding it. Bigger than anything I could’ve imagined in so short of time. Then again, I’d stabbed myself so many times you’d think I was serving myself up as hamburger meat. I had an odd smile on my face in death. Nick was screaming over me as he shook my body. It was strange to me. I knew he’d been screaming and fighting me as I mutilated myself. It was my blood that stained his clothes, drenched him like a simple spilt bucket of paint. Yet, it was like he hadn’t been there at all. I’d been lost in the stare of my ghostly beloved.

One who abandoned me once death came to greet me.

Only now do I understand.

See it is me who’s trapped now. I’m earthbound. I can’t go to Hell or Heaven. Instead I’m cursed to the same fate she had been. Only when I can find someone to con into a demise like my own will I be able to move on into oblivion. It had been her punishment and now it is mine. I’m banished from the home I knew. I can’t even check on my wife and son. How could I have been so stupid as to fall into that spirit’s spell? Now I’m cursed beyond anything I could’ve imagined.

I’m able to check on Nick however. It’s his fate that haunts me the most.

The authorities didn’t believe that I’d been able to stab myself so many times. They felt I’d have died before then. The knife Nick had been able to eventually free from my hands had his prints on it. His prints had hidden my own. He was soaked with my blood. He had been holding my body when my wife came outside. Nothing he said could be believed. He screamed about a woman forcing me to do it. I shook my head at the tragedy of it all. I hadn’t known he’d been able to see her. Now, he sits in a jail cell. Sitting there and awaiting a deadly fate I knew was supposed to only belong to me.

My comfort will be that when he dies he will be able to move on. He won’t be trapped as I am. I would wish this on no one. Yet one day I will, if only to get my own freedom. Until then, I will watch over Nick, and pray for his soul to be saved in a way mine will never be.

Whether I move on or not...

Mine, will forever be cursed.