I'm not just some crazy girl. You'll believe me if you just take a moment and see the Leech the way I saw it. I know you will. Just listen.

It started when I was in Japan. I'd been living with a host family for a few months, and my semester abroad was almost over. I had the nerve to believe I'd begun to acclimate; that I understood their culture and could call myself one of them.

On more than a few nights, gathered around the fire, they told me their superstitions and scary stories. Their myths were very different from the ones I'd grown up with, and I found them fascinating, but not scary. They were too different.

There was a heavy emphasis on choice. Rather than facing a mindless slasher that simply wanted to kill you, many Japanese horror stories involved entities approaching an unwary victim in a public place and giving them a choice. If the victim answered one way, they would be killed horribly in a specific manner. If the victim took the other choice... they would be killed horribly in another specific manner. These unwinnable situations made me laugh until the father of my host family explained to me, in quiet tones, the true subtext.

It was all about the third option. It was all about the innate fear of customs in a very traditional society. The only way to survive was to simply know the acceptable third answer and give that one instead. He squeezed my arm and told me that I, as a foreigner, stood no chance of knowing the third answer. If I saw someone approaching me in public, no matter how innocent it seemed, I was to run away before they could speak and give me that fatal choice.

I smiled and laughed it off, but his warning made me shiver a few times over my last few days. As a girl alone in another country, I was already on guard while walking through public spaces, but the towering maze of Tokyo took on a grey and tense tone whenever I thought of what might lurk among the crowds. I stuck to paths that went through the many hidden gardens and parks, and I always looked around warily.

That fear faded, though. I can't tell you why, not exactly. I was young, I thought I was smart, and I was American. Nothing could really hurt me. And besides, I was one of them now, right? I'd spent months there living like they did! So, on my last day, when a woman began walking intently toward me from the opposite end of a long subway car, I stayed in my seat.

She had long black hair, beautiful dark eyes, and a dark green dress that seemed out of place in a crowded car otherwise filled with grey shirts, dark suits, and white blouses. I saw these details about her before I saw the deep scars on her face and hands, as if a maniacal American slasher had brutally carved her up and left her to die some years ago. As she shuffled toward me, the lights flickered once.

The boy in the seat next to me shivered and focused worriedly on his portable game. Adults looked away, tense, and the teenagers opposite me finally stopped talking and began staring at their shoes. They knew. They knew, and there was nothing any of them could—or would—do for me. I was a foreigner, and a stranger to them.

But they listened. Oh, did they listen. I could almost hear them straining their ears to hear her whispers over the keening of wheels on rails beneath us. Every small step the woman took seemed louder than the one before.

Even then, I still didn't believe. I thought it was a prank, or someone being strange. I thought the others in the car with me were turning away out of courtesy or disgust at her scars. When I saw a tear fall from the cheek of the boy next to me—when I saw it splatter onto his game screen while he continued to pretend to play—that was when I understood.

She stood directly above me, and I raised my eyes to meet hers.

Her scars crinkled horribly as she gave me a seemingly innocent smile, and she asked, in a pleasant but whispery voice: "Do you have a sister?"

I froze. If I said yes, what would happen? If I said no, what else would happen? When the lights flickered again and her face moved without moving right down close to mine, I almost panicked and told her the truth.

Inches away from me, her smile widened. She turned her head slowly—horribly slowly—until her neck reached a ninety degree angle.

On the verge of passing out from fright, I forced myself to start breathing again.

Her smile turned into an angry frown.

I cowered back against the person behind me, who shrieked.

The scarred woman in green began to reach for me—but the car came to a smooth stop, the doors opened, and I dodged around her and ran out with the crowd. To their credit, none screamed. They simply hurried off to their various destinations while attempting to seem like nothing was wrong. Nobody wanted to draw attention to themselves; nobody wanted to get noticed by the woman in green or by polite society.

I ran all the way to my host family's house, but nobody was home. It was my last day, and we'd already said our goodbyes, but it still felt odd that they were gone. Still trembling, I took a taxi to the airport, made my flight, and tried to rationalize the encounter away. The only hint I had that it had even happened was a small cut on my upper arm where she had nearly grabbed me with her horribly long nails—a cut that had, strangely, already begun to heal into a scar.

Hours into my international flight, I finally began to calm down, and I even started feeling a bit smug. Not only had I survived an encounter with a Japanese horror entity, I'd even managed to immediately take a flight straight the hell out of the entire country. I would not end up as another unwitting cautionary tale. I was a born and bred American girl that had seen every horror movie under the sun, and I'd made all the right decisions. Awesome.

I told the story to a guy sitting next to me on my flight, and he asked, "What if she shows up here on the plane? Where will you run?"

Yeah, I shut up right about then, and stayed tense for the next few hours. Eventually, though, I realized I would be doomed no matter what if the woman in the green dress showed up here, so I finally gave in and slept. Awake or asleep, it didn't matter.

My neighboring guy woke me before we landed, joked that he'd kept guard, and reported that nobody had come for me while I'd been out. Half-heartedly thanking him, I made polite conversation, left the plane, got my stuff, and met my parents outside the airport. It was bright, sunny, and open here, and it was a relief to be back home. This was the land of simple horrors; of gory violence, zombies, and haunted locations. The scarred woman in the green dress would have no power here, if indeed she'd existed at all.

I was talkative and happy on the ride home, and my parents were glad to see me. I didn't tell them about my horrible encounter, because it honestly slipped from my mind. Everything was good. I was safe.

We pulled up to the house where I'd grown up, and it looked exactly like I'd remembered. Only a few months had gone by, true, but it'd felt like a lifetime. Lugging in my stuff alongside my dad, I began to recount some funny memory that had come to mind, when I entered the front door, turned toward the kitchen—and saw her standing there.

Green dress, scars, smile and all, the woman from the subway car thousands of miles distant stood waiting for me in my childhood home. She gave that same eerie smile and lifted a large knife.

I screamed and dropped my bags. Startled, my father dropped his, too, and my mother rushed in from outside. The woman in green brought the knife down.

She raised it, and then brought it down again, chopping vegetables.

Mistaking my reaction, my mother began screaming with me, but happily, and she pulled me forward. "It's good to see your sister again, isn't it?!"

Suddenly I was forced into a hug with both my mom and the woman in green—but instead of trying to hurt me, the horrible stranger just smiled. "It's good to see you... sis."

I pulled away, trembling forcefully. I immediately sensed that something was off, and I'd seen enough movies to know to keep my cards close to my chest. "Mom, what's going on?"

"What do you mean, honey?" she asked, smiling happily at us both before moving deeper into the kitchen to help cook.

The scarred woman in green kept her gaze and neutral smile fixated on me as I moved away from her, around the kitchen island, and toward my mom. "Why is she here?"

"Who?"

"Her." I returned the woman's stare.

My mother laughed. "You've been away too long, dear. You remember that your sister's graduated and back from college now."

I gulped. "Humor me, mom—why doesn't she look like us?"

My father came down the stairs, returning from dropping off my bags, and gave me a black look. "I thought we were past this. It's not nice to keep harping on your sister for being adopted."

Horrified, I took a step back, and bumped into the fridge. But how...? "Oh, I guess I'm super jet lagged... sorry, I was just trying to remember when that was. For... a birthday present for her and all."

My father sighed. "Same day you were born." He stepped out to get more bags from the car.

I turned away, mortified. My 'sister' never took her gaze off of me, almost taunting me with her expressionless invasion. As we both stood there, facing off silently, she lifted her knife and brought it down... on her own arm, right along one of her scars.

She didn't flinch. Instead, I did. Gripping my arm and looking down, I saw the skin slice open, bleed, heal, and fade into a scar in moments. Aghast, I looked at her, and saw the equivalent cut disappearing from her arm. Her smile grew a little wider.

I opened my mouth to scream something with fury, but the scarred woman lifted a knife and pointed it at my mother's back—the implication was clear.

The best I could do was to take the knife from her by offering to cook and insisting that my 'sister' sit down at the table and relax. She did so, apparently willing to play a social game of cat and mouse. As I chopped up vegetables and stared at the scar on my arm, my thoughts raced. This entity had somehow attached itself to my life! Looking around at pictures in the kitchen, I saw her in photographs that I recognized—family photos that now included her, as a child, as a teenager, as a woman—scarred from the outset. I kept my eyes on her as she sat the table, and she stared right back at me the entire time. Her disfigured smile never once changed.

We actually sat down and had dinner as a family. My parents didn't seem to notice that my 'sister' never spoke unless directly addressed, and even then only with perfect politeness. She ate little, and kept her eyes always on me. Halfway through dinner, I got angry, and I slammed my fist on the table.

She took her dinner knife and drew it across her cheek.

I fought hard not to scream as I felt my face split open, bleed, and then heal. I already knew there would be a scar, but I excused myself to go to the bathroom and look for myself. Once there, it occurred to me that the Leech—a leech on my life, time, and soul—seemed to be punishing me for rudeness. I remember saying to the mirror: "Alright, you bitch. I'll play your game." I just needed time to figure out—

Another slice opened up near my ear, bled, and quickly healed over into a scar.

She'd heard me from the dining room.

Or... she could hear me no matter what.

Walking carefully back into the dining room, I put on my best graces and sat with a smile. I couldn't think about the scars. Were they permanent? Would I live the rest of my life disfigured? Plastic surgery might fix a few, but if this kept going... no, I would just have to be polite and proper until I could figure out how to destroy her.

I volunteered to help clean up dinner and do the dishes, and my mother seemed surprised, saying that my time in Japan had done me good. I didn't know what she meant by that, but I managed to get through the evening without any further scars.

That night, I tried to whisper to my father in the dark, but he didn't understand what I meant, and I earned another scar on my arm. I slipped downstairs and into her room. My 'sister' sat holding a knife to her arm and grinning wider than I'd ever seen.

"What do you want?" I asked her.

She held the knife higher on her arm, just above a clear patch of skin where her scars had left her and been transferred to me. "Do you have a sister?"

Suddenly remembering that moment of mortal threat in the subway car, I said nothing.

She did not cut herself, but she did wait, always staring, ever staring.

I backed out and went to my own bedroom, where I lay stressed for hours. I did sleep eventually, but only because jet lag forced me into it.

The next few days were filled with terribly costly chess moves. I invited over old friends to see if they recognized her as my 'sister'—and they did. For each of these conversations with confused friends, I earned another scar. The Leech knew what I was trying to do, and she disapproved.

The worst part was running into an ex-boyfriend and finding out that he didn't remember our relationship. After much pressure, he finally admitted, "I liked your personality, but I didn't ask you out... because of your scars... sorry."

I remember screaming, and earning another scar for it. Rushing home, I looked at old year book pictures. The scars weren't just appearing now—they were appearing back then, too. I'd always had them! That same ex-boyfriend would later remember asking out my sister instead. The Leech was draining away my life right before my eyes!

What would happen when she ran out of scars and I had them all?

I couldn't talk to my parents. I couldn't talk to my friends. I shut myself in my room and spent each day alone to avoid any further social improprieties. I'd been raised American, raised rude, proud, and free, and I kept making mistakes. It was in me to swear, to nettle, and to tease, and the cost was just too high. My host family's father had been right: I was losing because I was from the wrong culture. Had I been a traditional and proper Japanese girl, the Leech might never have punished me even once.

The Leech existed to punish deviance. The Leech fed off of outsiders, rebels, and bad children. The Leech was... part of me now...

She only had a few scars left when the idea came to me. She had this huge asinine grin all the time now, and stood in my room while I slept, staring at me, basically daring me to say something rude. She held a knife over me while I slept, yes, but it was not to cut me. It was to cut herself.

And that's what gave me the idea. Furious, and desperate beyond description, I decided that I wanted my life back at any cost. I'd been thinking of the Leech in two ways: I could avoid being rude and live under her threat for the rest of my life, or I could be myself and find out what punishment awaited once all the scars had been inflicted upon me. I feared that second option. I was terrified. When the Leech became clear and beautiful, and I became horrid and misshapen, what would she do to me? Would she kill me? Discard me when I stopped being useful? Would I cease to exist altogether? Would my life completely become hers?

I'd been so afraid of that second option, it took me until she only had one scar left to remember what my benefactor had said: there was a third option, one unknowable to any but the most socially integrated, and I'd had enough time to see that, for the Leech, the social game went both ways.

I'm not just some crazy girl. You'll believe me if you just take a moment and see the Leech the way I saw it. I know you will. Just listen.

It started when I was in Japan. I'd been living with a host family for a few months, and my semester abroad was almost over. I had the nerve to believe I'd begun to acclimate; that I understood their culture and could call myself one of them.

On more than a few nights, gathered around the fire, they told me their superstitions and scary stories. Their myths were very different from the ones I'd grown up with, and I found them fascinating, but not scary. They were too different.

There was a heavy emphasis on choice. Rather than facing a mindless slasher that simply wanted to kill you, many Japanese horror stories involved entities approaching an unwary victim in a public place and giving them a choice. If the victim answered one way, they would be killed horribly in a specific manner. If the victim took the other choice... they would be killed horribly in another specific manner. These unwinnable situations made me laugh until the father of my host family explained to me, in quiet tones, the true subtext.

It was all about the third option. It was all about the innate fear of customs in a very traditional society. The only way to survive was to simply know the acceptable third answer and give that one instead. He squeezed my arm and told me that I, as a foreigner, stood no chance of knowing the third answer. If I saw someone approaching me in public, no matter how innocent it seemed, I was to run away before they could speak and give me that fatal choice.

I smiled and laughed it off, but his warning made me shiver a few times over my last few days. As a girl alone in another country, I was already on guard while walking through public spaces, but the towering maze of Tokyo took on a grey and tense tone whenever I thought of what might lurk among the crowds. I stuck to paths that went through the many hidden gardens and parks, and I always looked around warily.

That fear faded, though. I can't tell you why, not exactly. I was young, I thought I was smart, and I was American. Nothing could really hurt me. And besides, I was one of them now, right? I'd spent months there living like they did! So, on my last day, when a woman began walking intently toward me from the opposite end of a long subway car, I stayed in my seat.

She had long black hair, beautiful dark eyes, and a dark green dress that seemed out of place in a crowded car otherwise filled with grey shirts, dark suits, and white blouses. I saw these details about her before I saw the deep scars on her face and hands, as if a maniacal American slasher had brutally carved her up and left her to die some years ago. As she shuffled toward me, the lights flickered once.

The boy in the seat next to me shivered and focused worriedly on his portable game. Adults looked away, tense, and the teenagers opposite me finally stopped talking and began staring at their shoes. They knew. They knew, and there was nothing any of them could—or would—do for me. I was a foreigner, and a stranger to them.

But they listened. Oh, did they listen. I could almost hear them straining their ears to hear her whispers over the keening of wheels on rails beneath us. Every small step the woman took seemed louder than the one before.

Even then, I still didn't believe. I thought it was a prank, or someone being strange. I thought the others in the car with me were turning away out of courtesy or disgust at her scars. When I saw a tear fall from the cheek of the boy next to me—when I saw it splatter onto his game screen while he continued to pretend to play—that was when I understood.

She stood directly above me, and I raised my eyes to meet hers.

Her scars crinkled horribly as she gave me a seemingly innocent smile, and she asked, in a pleasant but whispery voice: "Do you have a sister?"