Chapter 6 – REPORTING A GHOST
I used to think the worst thing someone could do to you online was leave.
I was wrong.
The worst thing is when they refuse to leave
even after they’ve ended things.
When they haunt you.
When they turn the spaces that once felt safe into corridors you’re afraid to walk down.
That’s what he did.
Marc left me
and then refused to let me go.
Everywhere I Went, He Was There
For a few days after the breakup, I tried to avoid Second Life entirely.
Every time I even saw the icon on my desktop, my chest tightened.
It had been our world.
Our meeting place.
Our home.
Now it felt contaminated.
But eventually, loneliness pushed me back in.
I told myself I wouldn’t talk to him.
I’d block him.
Stay in quiet places.
Stick to my own spaces.
I logged in, my avatar appearing in my small, familiar home—a skybox I’d decorated with plants, fairy lights, a sofa, a bed. A world I’d built long before I knew his name.
For a few minutes, it felt okay.
Then the notification appeared.
Marc is online.
My stomach sank.
A second later, a private message dropped onto my screen.
Marc:
> Wow. Still here.
Thought you’d have embarrassed yourself enough by now.
My hands shook.
Pheonix:
> Leave me alone.
Marc:
> You can’t tell me what to do.
This isn’t your world.
I teleported away, heart hammering.
To a club.
To a park.
To a random quiet island I didn’t think he knew.
He knew.
He appeared a minute later.
Then seconds.
Then almost instantly.
His avatar would materialise just behind mine, just close enough to feel like breathing down my neck.
Marc:
> You following me now?
Cute.
I logged off.
It didn’t matter.
Because the game had changed.
In the days that followed, it intensified.
If I logged in, he was already online.
If I teleported somewhere, he arrived after me.
If I stood still, he stood still.
Watching.
Staring.
Sometimes he’d stand far away, right at the edge of my camera view, like a threat I could only half see.
Other times, he messaged me relentlessly.
Marc:
> Everyone knows how crazy you are.
I told people.
They laughed.
Marc:
> No one will put up with you after me.
You blew your only chance.
Marc:
> You’re obsessed.
You’re sick.
Get help.
Each line was a variation on the same theme:
You are the problem.
You are broken.
You will never escape me.
And the worst part was
that a part of me believed him.
When someone has spent months learning your insecurities,
when they’ve listened to your vulnerabilities
just to weaponise them later,
it’s hard to separate their voice
from the ones already haunting your head
I thought I could keep it contained to Second Life.
Pain in pixels only.
Hurt in a virtual world.
I didn’t yet understand how determined he was to bleed into reality.
It happened on a Tuesday.
I was scrolling through my phone, trying to distract myself with unrelated nonsense, when a notification popped up from Facebook.
Message request.
I opened it.
The name wasn’t Marc.
It was one I didn’t recognise.
The message was short.
> You’re a psycho.
Stay away from him.
Everyone knows what you did.
My skin went cold.
I clicked the profile.
Nothing obvious.
Few friends.
New account.
But the wording…
the rhythm…
the way it pressed exactly on my bruises…
It felt like him.
I blocked the account, my fingers trembling.
Hours later, another message request appeared.
Different name.
Same tone.
> You really thought he wanted you? 😂
You’re delusional. Get a life.
A slow, creeping horror began to crawl up my spine.
This wasn’t just about a breakup.
This wasn’t just cruelty.
This was fixation.
This was obsession.
The next notification nearly made me drop my phone.
My younger brother messaged me.
> Who is this guy messaging me about you?
My heart stopped.
My vision blurred at the edges.
I called him immediately.
“What happened?” I demanded, voice shaking.
“He’s saying you’re unstable,” my brother replied, anger simmering beneath his confusion. “That you’re harassing him. That you’re dangerous. What the hell is going on, Phe?”
My chest constricted.
I heard the blood rushing in my ears as I struggled to speak.
“What did you say back?” I whispered.
“I told him to fuck off,” he said. “Who is he?”
I swallowed.
Tried to answer.
Failed.
“He messaged Mum too,” my brother added quietly.
The floor seemed to tilt beneath me.
My mum.
My real life.
My family.
The world I had always kept separate from Second Life
was no longer safe.
“I’ll sort it,” I choked out. “Block him. Please. Just block him.”
My brother growled something I couldn’t focus on and hung up with a promise to “deal with it if he kept going.”
I sat there staring at the wall, phone limp in my hand, heart banging so hard it hurt.
I opened my own Facebook.
Checked my message requests.
There he was.
Not as Marc.
Not with his real name either.
But it was him.
I knew by the language.
The venom.
> You’re insane.
You’re a liar.
I told them about you.
No one believes you.
Everyone sees what you really are now.
I realised, with a mix of terror and clarity,
that he was doing online
what he had done to my mind.
Rewriting the narrative.
Casting himself as the victim.
Casting me as the villain.
If he couldn’t control me anymore,
he would control my story.
The night I finally reported him, I hadn’t slept in nearly 40 hours.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw words:
psycho
crazy
obsessed
pathetic
Words he used
because he knew they’d echo the ones I used on myself.
It was past midnight when I logged into Second Life again.
Not to play.
Not to escape.
To collect evidence.
Screenshots.
Chat logs.
His harassment.
His slurs.
His obsessive behaviour.
Every time his avatar appeared near mine, the skin on my arms prickled.
I took captures of everything—
hands shaking,
jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
He messaged me again.
Marc:
> Reporting me now? 😂
Good luck.
They won’t believe you either.
That was when I knew:
This wasn’t going to stop
until someone else saw it.
So I did something I never thought I’d do.
I opened the Abuse Report window.
The form asked for details.
User name.
Location.
Type of abuse.
Description.
I typed slowly at first.
Then faster.
> He is stalking me in-world.
He follows me everywhere I go.
He harasses me with messages and slurs.
He has found my real name and is messaging my family on Facebook.
I have blocked him repeatedly. He keeps evading it.
I do not feel safe.
This is not just “drama.”
It is targeted harassment.
My eyes burned.
My fingers ached.
I attached screenshots—
dozens of them.
Proof that what I was saying was real,
even if he had tried to convince me it was all in my head.
When I hit submit, my whole body sagged back in the chair.
I didn’t feel relief.
I felt empty.
Small.
Broken.
Just a girl in a dark room with a screen glowing in her face,
asking strangers to protect her from a man who had never even touched her outside of one day in a car.
A notification pinged five minutes later.
> Thank you for your report.
We take harassment and stalking very seriously.
The account will be reviewed.
I stared at the words.
Reviewed.
Not fixed.
Not erased.
Reviewed.
It should have felt like something.
Instead, it felt like evidence that this was real.
Not just heartbreak.
Not just overreaction.
Not just “online drama.”
Abuse.
That word lodged in my throat.
I’d been abused.
Not physically.
Not in the way people understand on instinct.
But emotionally.
Psychologically.
Systematically.
By someone who had told me
he loved me.
Logging Out – But Not Free
I logged off Second Life after that.
Closed the laptop.
Pushed it away like it was diseased.
My room was quiet.
Too quiet.
Everyone always says “just block him” like it’s a cure.
As if blocking someone severs the knot they have tied around your nervous system.
But even offline,
his words stayed.
His voice.
His songs.
His lies.
The way he said my name.
The way he looked at me while I cried in his car.
The way he turned on me so fast it felt like whiplash.
I wrapped my arms around myself and rocked slightly, breathing in shallow bursts.
“He’s just a guy,” I whispered to myself. “Just a man. Just… just someone online.”
But that wasn’t true.
He wasn’t just anything.
He was a man I had loved.
A man I had trusted.
A man I had believed.
And now, he was a ghost refusing to leave the house he’d built in my head.
I didn’t know it yet—
but soon,
I would stop looking only at what he’d done to me online
and start looking at who he really was.
Not Marc.
Never Marc.
The man behind the screen had another name.
And I was about to find it.
