I make it back to the table my face red and panting. I sit down and put my head into my hands and hold it there for a second. Brittany reaches over the table and grabs my wrist. I can't even make eye contact with her, I just continue looking down at my food watching it get cold.
"Hey, are you okay?" She moves her chair closer to me. I lift my head and notice people walking by looking at me.
"Did something happen to you?"
I lean back in my chair and let out an exaggerated sigh. I put a smile on my face and grab my burger. I take a bite and look at Brittany. I can see she knows something is wrong with me, she should, she has known me since we were kids. I look away from her but she grabs my face forcing me to look at her.
"Tell me what's wrong" she started talking to me in a demanding tone, it was the first time she's ever spoken to me like that. I would be lying if I said it wasn't the kind of hot.
"I saw the shadow figure from the house, I think it's following me." My voice is a little shaky.
I start to tell her everything that has happened since we left the house and she grabs me and hugs me tight, I can smell her favorite cashmere scented perfume filling my nose. I wrap my arms around her and fall into her embrace. We finish our meal in silence, she calls her mom and asks if she can pick us up from the mall.
We waited for a few and her mom finally arrived to pick us up. We walk to the car and get in, I greet her mom and we take off. We drive to her house and we get out of the car and go into her house. We head to her room which is right next to the front door and close the door.
"Where's your dad? Working late again?"
Brittany walks over to her closet and opens it," yeah, he always works late lately." She takes out some clothes and stuffs them into a book bag. She opens the dresser and grabs some pajamas also throwing them into the bag.
"I'm sleeping at your house tonight, by the way, I told my mom already."
I turn my head slowly towards her dramatically "Well thanks for telling me" I jokingly tell her.
"Yeeeah, about that, I don't need your permission" she walks over to me and slaps my back "so yeah, you're stuck with me tonight." She laughs while putting her backpack over her shoulders. Her mom knocks on her door and asks if we're ready to go. I get up from her bed and we walk out the door into the car; Her mom drops us off after about a 15-minute drive.
We stand outside the house in the driveway remembering everything from earlier. We hesitantly start walking to the front door. There are no cars in the driveway yet, so we take our time going inside.
"Shit, we forgot to put the board away" I facepalm myself in disappointment. We both look at each other and take a deep breath as we walk into the house. You can feel the drastic change from the outside to the inside, the air feels heavier almost as if something is stuck in your throat. I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing and you can see the goosebumps on my arm.
Nervously we walk up the stairs taking each step slowly. We stand outside the door looking at each other periodically telling the other to go in first. After some back and forth and a game of rock, paper, and scissors, I end up going into the room first. I peek in the door hoping I don't see anything standing in the corner.
"Is it safe?" Brittany grabs my shoulder staying close to me.
"Everything is okay" I walk over to the board which is still on the floor and start to put it away. She throws her backpack on the bed and throws herself into my pillows.
"I call next to the wall tonight," she kicks her shoes off her feet and lays on her side looking at me, "I'm kind of tired, let's put a movie on!"
"Don't you want to change first?" She looks at me and pouts
"I don't want to get up now!" She kicks upwards throwing a tantrum
"Alright, but I'm going to get comfortable and be cozy," I smile at her and wink
She squints at me while getting off the bed, she grabs her bag and walks to the bathroom across the hall. I quickly change before she gets back and jump under the covers on the side next to the wall.
She comes back in and drops her bag on the floor. She stomps her foot on the floor looking at me with pouty lips.
"I called that side!" She said in a sad voice "Now I have to sleep next to the floor, what if I fall off the bed?"
"You could take the guest room or take out the sleeping bag."
She jumps on the bed and grabs my arm pulling me from the side of the bed she wanted. We start to wrestle until we both start to get out of breath. She laid across me and we both started laughing.
"Fine, take your side back."
She excitingly jumps up and jumps under the covers. She takes one of my pillows and grabs the remote for the tv. I lay down next to her as she scrolls through the tv trying to find a movie.
"Are you going to find something or are you just going to be indecisive?" I poke fun at her. She stops at a random movie and looks at me. She starts to poke my face as she quickly moves it so I wouldn't grab it. She looks at me with a serious expression,
"What was that thing from earlier? Why do you think it's following you?"
"I don't know what that thing is, I don't know what it could ever want."
We lay there talking about random things for the rest of the night. We start to grow tired as we both start yawning. My eyes start to get heavy as I fight to keep them open. Brittany fell asleep while she was trying to fight her sleep so she can stay up. I lay there fighting my sleep taking heavy blinks in between hoping it will keep me up.
In between blinks, I start to see a figure moving forward slowly. With every blink, it gets closer and closer. My body can barely react, the exhaustion was too much for me after today. I can feel the presence of someone or something in the room staring at me. My eyes finally close as I fall into a deep sleep.
As I lay there I can feel myself leaving my body. Eventually, I can see my body laying in the bed next to Brittany. I look around the room and I can see something in the corner of my room. I try to keep away but it quickly looks in my direction. It already noticed me. I try to find a way to get away from it but it lunges at me. I can barely get away before it latches its claws into my leg. I can see my body jerk in the bed as I scream in pain. I kick the shadow figure off of me as I start to run.
I run out of my room and run downstairs. I only make it before I see the figure standing there. I stop in my tracks and turn around to run back into my room. I turn around and see another figure standing on the top of the stair.
This one is different, the figure has a smiling face with humanoid features, It waves at me from the top of the stairs. Fear fills my body, as I realize I have nowhere to run to. I can feel the air get thinner with every step they take. They slowly, one by one take a step toward me. Unable to run I crouch down in the fetal position calling for help. I start to pray hoping anything, anyone can hear me. I feel their hands grab the back of my neck, I start to scream hysterically. I suddenly wake up back in my body jolting up from my sleep. I wake up screaming, waking up Brittany. She sits up and tries her best to calm me down.
"Hey, hey, it's okay, look at me" she hugs me calming me down as I start to cry on her shoulder. I was unable to speak as she sat there hugging, periodically kissing my head telling me its okay.
I look around the room as the lights were still off, I can barely see anything around me. The moonlight from the window beaming into the room illuminates the corner of my room where I can see the smiling entity waving at me.
We stay up for the remainder of the night, talking about random things that happened to us at school. We start to hear footsteps on the stairs but we chalk it up to my parents leaving for work. We look at the time, it's 6:45 in the morning."Lucky today is Saturday huh" we look at each other and get out of bed opening the door to go downstairs. We make it to the end of the stairs and see my mom in the kitchen making coffee."Good morning mom," I walk up to her and kiss her on the cheek."Oh Brittany, I didn't know you were here, would you two like some breakfast?" We both exchange looks and quickly nod our heads and say yes."Why are you two up so early anyways?" She walks over to the pantry and grabs a box of the complete mix of pancakes. She grabs her mixing bowl from the bottom cabinets and her mixing spoon."We went to bed early last night and I guess our bodies woke us up," I tried to come up with a decent excuse.She makes us breakfast and gives us both a kiss on the foreh
We both stand there in shock looking into the doorway. This demon stands there waving and smiling, our lifeless bodies laying across each other on the floor in front of it. I grab her hand tighter and run pulling her behind me. We run down the hallway that doesn't seem to end. We run and see another open door, we look inside and it's the same demon with our bodies under him, smiling and waving. "I can't do this," Brittany runs taking her hand away from mine. She runs down and turns a corner in the hallway. I run after her and turn the corner, it's a dead end. I start to breathe rapidly, I can feel the air getting thinner as it gets hard for me to breathe. I turn around to look towards the door, I see the hand of the demon emerge from the room, clenching the wall, pulling itself forward to peak its smiling face at me. "Stay away, get out of here!" I start yelling at the demon, and the demon bolts out of the room running towards me. I start to run away from it, looking behind me as
I stood looking at my wrist in shock, Brittany standing there holding the knife in her hands. I start to tear up, Brittany quickly throws the knife to the floor. She hugs me but she immediately smacks me across the face. I could understand why she smacked me so I did not attempt to get angry at her."What the hell are you doing?" Brittany irritatingly says"I don't know, it felt like I lost control of my body, I..." I start choking up, unable to keep my tears back anymore. I burst out in tears sobbing uncontrollably.I push away from Brittany and turn my face, trying to stop myself from crying. Brittany reaches her hand out to me but I push it away and walk upstairs. I look at the time, it's only 9:00 am. All of this happened in 3 hours. It felt like we were in that dream forever. I walk into the mirror and look at myself, shocked by what I see I quickly turn my face. I saw myself with burnt skin, missing one eye, as I bled from the other, skin falling off my face, and missing my l
“Are you sure?" I look at her suspiciously "are you sure you want to go in there?" Brittany looks up at me with a grin that takes up her whole face and nods excitingly. She drags me into the cemetery and we walk among the graves. She starts walking faster ahead of me, cutting in between graves, I have a hard time keeping up with her. "Brit, wait up, you're going too fast!" She starts to pick up speed and is running ahead of me. I start to lose sight of her. She is running faster than normal and I'm finding it hard to keep up with her. I run faster but she is too far ahead of me as I lose her once she goes over a hill. I stop running once I get to the top. "Brittany! Brittany! Where are you?" I look around trying to catch even a glimpse of her. I hear giggling all around me as I start to cautiously walk around. I walk looking behind tombstones where the giggling seems louder. I continue calling out for Brittany but I get no response, the giggling gets louder with every attempt. "
I look around frantically, quickly trying to assess my surroundings. There is nothing but darkness all around with various spots of light coming from the moonlit windows. My body is sent into shivers as the temperature around me drops."What is this place?"I stare down into a dark, empty hallway. My eyes seem like they're playing tricks on me as I see darker shadows moving in the emptiness of the hallway. The hairs on the back of my neck start to stand, as I feel eyes piercing through my body."Is someone there?"I can feel pressure build behind my eyes as they try to adjust to the darkness. I walk around trying to find anything that can tell me where I am. I walk over to a random door, grab the doorknob and start to twist. I push and pull to open the door but it won't budge. I turn around and start to try random doors that are around me. I walk to a center of an open hallway."Hello? Is anyone there?"I start to hear whispers coming from all around me. They get louder as I sta
"Game? What game?"I ask King Bael, he brushes off what I'm saying and walks out the door. The strength in my legs is starting to come back, but they aren't strong enough for me to walk. A dark figure walks over to me and helps me stand and walks me over to King Bael."I know I already told you I would help but I need more than just your allegiance, I need to test you to make sure you are worthy."He waves his hand in front of him as three doors appear in front of him. One door was black with golden trim, the other was oak with scratches on it and the last door was white with blood splattered across it."The goal for you is to walk through the right door.""Just walk through a door, that's it?"He nods his head, "yes, that seems simple enough does it not?"I look down at my legs and over at the dark figure holding me up. I can't help but wonder if this is some kind of trick. "Yeah, yeah it seems simple enough, but what about my legs?""Oh that, don't worry about something fr
I can see a light flicker from behind me as if it's a single lightbulb illuminating the room. I slowly start to turn around when I hear clapping rapidly coming from behind me, I almost jumped out of my shoes. I turn around and see Brittany standing behind me."There you are, I've been looking everywhere for you buddy."Her face was droopy and it was as if someone was poorly mimicking her voice. Her hand flops up as if to give me a wave but quickly plops down.Brittany?"A loud cackling fills the room, a demonic face appears behind Brittany with a grin from ear to ear. It had no eyes or nose. The skin looked as if it was left in an oven for too long. Suddenly, the light that was illuminating the room flickered out and the room became pitch black.I can feel the icy breath of something I. Front of me breathing on my face, I can feel an icy cold grip wrap around my arm and start pulling me. I fight back but whatever it is that has me is stronger. I can feel a burning sensation comin
"I don't want to play a game."I stare at the little girl in front of me, my eyes fixated on her. I have an awful feeling, if I run I will die. I'm too afraid to even move let alone run. My body is tense, and I feel as if I'm being stabbed behind my eyes."Why don't you want to play with me? Is it because I'm ugly?"Baffled by what she said, the only thing I can do is just look at her. I don't have words to even say to that."Play with me! Now!"I start to quiver in place. It's bad enough that if we play and she finds me I die but if I run I also die. My choices are limited and I don't see a way out of this unless I play her game."Fine, I'll play with you, explain the rules.""The rules?" She puts a finger to her mouth as if she thinking about the rules "there aren't any real rules, it's like a simple game of hide and seek silly."She giggles and looks over to me "only thing is, you have to hide from me for 5 minutes," she extends her hands showing 5 fingers, "if you hide for