The Bad Day

It was raining. She only lived five minutes away, but that was more than enough time to become soaked through. It had been a terrible day that just kept getting worse. Little did she know that the rain was the least of her worries.

She walked in through the kitchen at the back of the house, her tabby cat, Sebastian, purring around her legs. “hi, you, aren’t you handsome.” She exclaimed as she picked him up for a cuddle.” I love you; I love you” she sang as she popped him back on the floor. As she took her coat and bag off, she crossed over the grey, tiled floor to the door. “…hello? Anyone home?” she yelled – checking whether her older brothers were home was the first point of call every day.

“Oh, my god, shut up! Why are you always so loud!” a male voice yelled back from the living room, followed by a chorus of laughter and high-fives.

“Whatever losers. It’s my turn with the computer can you lot get off it?!” she replied, dumping her belongings on the couch, and kicking her shoes off. “what are you even doing?” she tried to look over her eldest brothers’ shoulder. Her other two brothers pulled her back and blocked her view.

The boys replied with a chorus of “fuck off”, “shut up” and “go away”. She flipped them the bird and turned to grab her bag. She took one last look back at the trio. None of them even gave her a second glance. Ugh. Boys. She thought to herself, stomping up the stairs towards her bedroom.

Her sanctuary was the whole third floor of the house, lucky for her she did not even have to share her bathroom with the boys. Having her own bathroom meant she could have all the privacy in the world. Though walking up two flights of stairs everyday was torture, it was worth it for the view from her window. Her room was west facing, which meant an epic view of the sunset on clear days. But not today, the window showed her a depressing painting of black and grey, no sunrays were going to make it through the thick blanket of clouds overhead.

She sighed and turned to her own reflection instead. Like most teenage girls she was not always happy with her appearance, and today was no different. She inspected her reflection with intense scrutiny. Her acne was playing up again, which did not surprise her since she had spent all week stressing out over her art coursework.

She turned away from the mirror and started towards the desk – she was an avid writer, always scribbling away in her journal (one of the many things her brothers made fun of her for). She sat at her desk and pulled her journal from her satchel and turned to the current page and began writing.

“Dear Journal,

Today fucking SUCKED. Raining all day, my skin is absolute shit and to make it worse, the boys are on the computer, again?! Its my turn on Wednesday nights, but do they care? Of course not. Its fine though because- “

THUD.

The sudden noise startled her, and she completely lost her train of thought. It must have been one of the boys. She thought to herself, but she was unsure. None of the boys came up to her room to bother her anymore, not since the time they walked in on her trying on new underwear. No one in the family could face that kind of awkwardness again. She decided to just investigate the sound, abandoning her open journal on the desk, she walked towards her door. From the landing she could see straight down the stairs to the ground floor. She looked for any sign of movement, her eyes scanned the floor and she saw it. Laying right there on the floor below. Her journal. She ran back to her desk to check – it was gone.

“How the...?” she wondered out loud, every hair on her body stood to attention. She slowly walked back toward the stairs, barely daring to breathe. The house suddenly felt unfamiliar, cold. She inched down the stairs refusing to take her eyes off the journal laying nonchalantly on the landing. It did not look threatening in any way. No discernible light glowing over it, no suspenseful music building as she approached. Just there, which was what so unbelievable.

She picked the journal up – it felt… normal? Not too warm or too cold. It was still covered in stickers of cats, flowers, and smiley faces. She checked it all over, her initials were still carved into the spine: T.B. It was hers. The blood drained from her face. She felt her palms become clammy. I was just… how? She opened the journal, and everything went black.

She felt herself being pulled down through the darkness. She could hear a symphony of rushing wind that she felt down to her bones. There was nothing touching her skin, the only sensation she could feel was the incredible force pulling her down and down. It felt like it would never end. Infinite.

And just like that it did. She fell straight onto her back, pushing all the air out of her lungs. She took a moment to catch her breath and try to make sense of what just happened. The grass was damp beneath her. As her eyes adjusted, she took note of her surroundings. It became glaringly obvious she was not home anymore. Everything around her was alien. She sat up and looked directly overhead, looking for some sort of tunnel, some way for her to have to travelled to wherever she was now. There was nothing but clear blue sky and scorching sunrays.

She looked around, brushing grass from her hands. She had fallen in a meadow, surrounded by a thick edge of forest. She stood up and checked her pockets, looking for her phone. I will just call dad. She tried to control her breathing and resist the panic rising in her throat. When did I last have it? She had not taken it out of her coat pocket – which was in the living room. At home. Home.

Suddenly, something slammed into her left side, with so much force she was swept from her feet, and she was thrown through the air, hitting the floor, hard. She looked where the weight had come from and could not believe her eyes. The beast, there was no word she knew that could describe this – thing, was scratching around where she had stood – a good 10ft away from where she lay, ungracefully now. It was pitch black all over, all she could make from this distance were its glistening teeth and hungry eyes. She let out the smallest whimper, it was then that she locked eyes with the monstrosity. It snarled and scraped its rear limbs on the floor, like a bull preparing to charge. “what the fuck?!” she screamed as she scrambled to her feet and ran, as fast as she could in the opposite direction to the creature; the creature gave chase. She resisted the temptation to look over her shoulder as she fled her assailant – she had seen one too many horror movies, but she could not ignore the sound. A conglomeration of blood curdling noises bellowed behind her, her senses on high alert to evade the beast. When she made it to the edge of the surrounding woodlands, she risked one last look at where she came from to see the mirage of black scuttling towards her, it let out a deafening roar and increased its speed, she pushed between the branches and then, silence.

It was so gloomy and still in here she could barely make sense of her surroundings, she was only glad to be away from, whatever that was. As her eyes adjusted to the sudden change in lighting, she started to recognise the thicket of trees she had ended up in. It looked like the woods that she sometimes used as a shortcut to school. Oh, good. I, obviously, know the way. Everything will be fine. She started in the direction of home, walking confidently now, trying to disregard the danger she had just barely escaped.

The longer she walked, the less familiar the area began to feel. She picked up her pace, as though she was trying to outrun her own self-doubt, when she came across a clearing in the never-ending green she was surrounded by. She pulled branches out of her way to find a strategically balanced stack of flat stones. Atop this strange art piece was a folded note. It was the same ivory paper as her journal. Once again, every hair on her body stood to attention, tears began to stream down her face.

“Why is this happening?! What did I do?!” She cried, falling to her knees. There was no answer. “what the fuck…” she wept. Ugh, this is not helping anything. She wiped the still falling tears from her red cheeks and stood up. “Obviously, nobody is listening.” she said matter-of-factly. She plucked the note from atop the rocks and read it aloud, anything to fill the crushing silence: “what question can you never say yes to?” she paused, pondering this. “what…” she whispered. “WHAT!” she raged, screaming into the empty air. She lashed out and kicked the flat rocks to the floor, they fell with a thunderous crash that echoed through the trees. Silence fell around her once again, as the last of her soft sobs began to die out. The adrenaline was starting to wear off now, replaced by utter despair and confusion. It was only now that she realised just how silent it was in these trees. No birds chirping overhead, or ground animals rustling. She could not even hear any wind blowing between the trunks.

She threw the note to the ground and kept walking. Nothing in the scenery changed no matter how many turns she took, the same trees arrived in front of her, the same leaves crunched underfoot. She finally spotted another clearing up ahead, but relief quickly gave way to bewilderment as she once again pushed through the opening to a terrifyingly familiar sight. The perfectly folded, ivory note placed up on the exact same stack of stones she had just kicked over. Fresh tears flowed as she gingerly retrieved the note: “what question can you never say yes to?” it read. Rage was not the feeling that washed over her this time.

“what does it mean?” she said, to no one. Only silence answered her. She read and reread the page repeatedly, but the words never changed. “what question can you never say yes to?” it still read, the words mocking her as the misery fell across her face. “I don’t understand!” she wailed into the empty air. She tore the page up into confetti and threw it to the floor and sprinted straight out of the gap in the woods. She ran true, narrowly avoiding the trunks, and all at once she collided with yet another stack of stones and hit the floor. Disoriented she stood up and tried to make sense of what had happened.

And there it was. The unholy note. Pristine, it lay in the exact same clearing, for the third time. She had no control of the animalistic cry that passed through her lips as she fell to her knees. “what does it mean?!” she shouted into the nothingness. She sat there weeping for what felt like hours when an icy feeling abruptly engulfed her, as though some sort of predator was approaching. She stood straight up and strained to hear any sound in the dense silence, and then a whisper rolled, like the morning mist, to her fearful ears, an inhuman voice breathed: “are you asleep yet?”

She woke with a start. Perplexed, she scanned her surroundings. It was her bedroom. She looked down and she was wearing her usual pyjamas. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But... I was just in a forest… how did—her train of thought was interrupted by the obnoxious ring of the phone, which cut off as suddenly as it started. “must have just been a nightmare.” She said to herself, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She walked to her desk where her journal lay, harmlessly. And then she saw the words scrawled in an unknown handwriting across two pages and a scream travelled up her throat as she remembered:

“ARE YOU ASLEEP YET?”