yessleep

It was always eight minutes to 10pm.

Seven minutes to ten, and I am dressed in the filthy, torn remnants of my senior prom dress.

Six minutes to ten, and I throw myself onto cool concrete and play dead for exactly twelve seconds.

I can’t breathe.

When do I get up?

Now.

No.

Too fast. I’ll be caught if I’m moving too fast. I need to slow myself down. I need to blend in with the nothing.

Now.

I linger for a moment and second-guess myself. I start to wonder if someone was waiting for me to get up.

But I can’t take the risk of waiting.

I spring to my feet, driving my aching body into a run.

It takes me too long to run through town, and I can barely remember where I am running. There is just an endless creeping shadow and the skeleton of what I used to call normality.

The town diner where I spent most of my time is now a meeting place for those who are looking for me.

The school has been converted into a battleground, and the clock tower is where I will die if I can’t run. 10pm is when it begins. It happened to my brother and my sister, but it won’t happen to me. I leap over a fence leading into someone’s flower garden and almost slip into their pool. I hate countdowns because counting down meant 10pm was getting closer.

Still, though, I mutter one under my breath.

10 collapses into 9 and 8 and 7, and I’m driving my arms into a sprint. When I am on 4 and 3 and 2, I’m kneeling in the fields behind my house, narrowly escaping a blinding white beam of light trying to find me in the shadow.

I kicked my heels off at some point, settling on bare feet. My breath is heavy and painful, and my stomach twists into knots as I press myself into the dirt and lay still until the light has skimmed over me, darting left and then right as if it is a sentient thing.

When I risk lifting my head, I stare at the illuminated night and our town clock tower looming over us. The clock face taunts me as I resume crawling, my hands fisting into dirt and grass, my breath thinning. In the corner of my eye, flashlights have joined the large beam of light—and then figures bleeding from every corner. I revel in the silence and keep going until I reach our hiding place.

I can see familiar faces carved into the dark, and my breath starts to quicken. Just a little more. I know exactly when it will turn 10pm. I know when to slam my hands over my ears and when to bite into my tongue to taste blood. I can sense the clock tower awaiting my attempt to escape. It wants me to try.

It wants me to drown out its singing voice in my ears. When a flashlight beam hits me, I throw myself into grass and dirt and play dead. This time, the light doesn’t skim me. It hangs over my body, burning into the backs of my legs and head. It strays on me for a minute longer before there’s a shout in the distance and my heart drops into my stomach. They’ve found someone. It’s probably Ben Ashcroft. He was the only one who was too slow. With the wandering light distracted, I risked it.

Jumping to my feet, I used my legs to catapult myself into a sprint. The dress is too long and trails behind, and my injuries and swimming head do not help. But when I’m safe from the light and surrounded by familiar faces pressed into the dirt around me, I let out a breath and managed a breathy sob bridging on hysteria. Surrounding me are the remnants of what was supposed to be a magical night, sequined dresses and suits and flower crowns. I join the others, who kneel with dirt splattering their legs and red smearing their faces. We watch the one, long beam of light in front of us.

It grows brighter, so bright we have to shade our eyes. In the distance, I can see figures patrolling, faces I used to know and trust. We take a step back as one, some of us stumbling and staggering, with one girl pressing her hand over her mouth. I know 10 looms.

It’s so close, I can almost taste it.

And so, my hands do exactly what they always do; my fingers creeping towards my ears while my breath starts to thin and bile finds its way to the back of my mouth. I can’t see the clock face from this angle. But I can imagine it as if it is already inside my head, creeping into my brain. I see an expanse of white and a ticker creeping toward oblivion. Shoulder to shoulder, we lay in the dirt on our stomachs and wait for the end.

“So much for graduation.”

There’s a figure next to me. I know her name, but I don’t know her. She is almost painfully beautiful, drowned in shadow and yet illuminated by her beauty. Her arms are folded across her chest, eyes haunted. I start to agree when one of the guys yells, “Duck!” and we do. I was already sensing it getting closer—and there it is. It’s right above us, skimming over our attempt to once again play dead. I shove my face into damp grass and gritted dirt which sticks to my cheeks. One minute to ten.

I start to cover my ears as usual when a warm hand wraps around my wrist and yanks me to my unsteady feet. I start to scream before I recognize the silhouette in front of me.

I know her touch when her arms wrap around my neck and pull me closer to her. I know the smell of her favorite perfume. But I can’t see her face. Mom.

Confusion blurred in my mind because it… it can’t be my mom, right? I saw her. I saw her… the words don’t even make it to the forefront of my mind because I find myself uncaring. I was alone without her, without dad, my brother and sister already captured by the light. But now I have her. I don’t have time to speak, my mother is already dragging me away from the others with breathy promises to them that she will keep me safe. I ignore the other’s looks of horror, their wide eyes and parted lips attempting to speak, and follow my mom. I asked her where we were going, and she tightened her grip on my hand. When the beam of light flashes across over our heads, she pulls me behind a wall, and then tells me to dive into the back of the car that she has parked across the road.

I make it three steps before the bells start to ring.

10pm.

I can hear screams out of the window, and the thick smell of smoke curls in the back of my nose and throat, choking me. It starts, and I don’t have my hands over my ears. Ten perfect tolls—and each one slams into me like waves of ice water, writhing through me. I can’t protect myself. Instead of panicking, I throw myself into the back seat of mom’s car, burying my head in the sweater which smelled like my brother; the cigarettes he tried to hide, mixed with the stink of body odor.

My hands are already sticky with sweat and glued to my ears when Mom threw open the car door and jumped inside.

“Are you okay?” Her voice was barely audible through the cruel tolls ringing in my skull. I managed to nod, managed to tell her through gritted teeth that as soon as we were out of town, I would be okay. She asks me where my siblings are, and I break out into tears. I’m half aware of a flashlight finding the window I’m pressed against, and I press myself into seats that smell like my family; like normality, and wait for my mom to take me away. When I was a little kid, my mom always told me to count elephants when I was scared.

So, I did. I squeezed my eyes shut, tried to ignore my mother’s shaky driving over terrain she shouldn’t be going over, and started to count.

One elephant.

Someone threw a rock at our car, and I screamed. I didn’t have hands to muffle my screech—they were already blocking out the clock tower trying to get into my head. Two elephants. A thump caught me off guard. Muffled screaming that was too close. Another thump. This one was more violent.

Someone was in the trunk of my mom’s car. There’s a crash behind me, but I’m too scared to lift my head. Three elephants. Mom takes a detour. I ask her where we are going, and she says she is taking a shortcut across town. But I know the only safe place was the field where I had left the others. The only solace we had from the light, from the bell tolls inside our heads, was getting further and further away. Four elephants, and I risk lifting my head and immediately shade my eyes. The light is so powerful, drowning out the dark that felt like safety, that felt like hope. “Mom.” the words slip from my mouth in a whimper.

“Sweetie, where’s your sister?”

“She was caught,” I said. “You know she was caught.”

Mom hummed, tightening her grip on the wheel. “Is she alive?”

I gulp down hysterical breaths. “I… I don’t know! But this isn’t the way out of town.” I watched the road fly by, well aware that we were heading straight for the centre. My head hit the leather seat, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

Straight for the light.

I could barely hear my own voice, as the bell tolls suffocate my skull, drawing the breath from my lungs.

“Where are we going?” By the time the words leave my mouth, there is only heavenly light seeping into me through the windows, bathing me in warmth.

My thoughts were cotton candy as the clock tower found what it had been searching for. It found me, staring directly into the heart of the clock face looming directly over my head. Outside, I can see shadows of parents carrying their unconscious children toward the swirling, mystical light which was growing more beautiful the longer I allowed myself to lose myself in it.

Thump.

Someone.

Was.

In.

The.

Trunk.

Of.

Our.

Car.

Mmmphmmhh!

Someone was screaming in the trunk of my mother’s car.

Five elephants.

Mom tells me to take my hands off of my ears. She says it’s safe, and I do. I ask her to turn around and show me that she is not human.

She does not turn around.

Thump.

Six elephants.

Mom parks the car directly in front of the clock tower and its wandering beam. She still does not turn around, instead telling me to get out of the car. I do. Slowly. Seven elephants. I jump out of the backseat, not before catching the reflection of my mother in the car mirror. She tells me to ignore it and I do. I know I can’t look into the light and allow the ringing to find my mind. But Mom is my safe place. I trust her to protect me. When I step into the light, allowing the bell tolls to take me, I am smiling. I drop down to my knees when my legs give up on me. Eight elephants, I can no longer stand up.

Nine elephants.

I glimpse my own fleeting reflection.

Ten elephants.

10pm.

I start to scream.

…

“Lucinda. How much sleep did you get last night?”

Huh?

The voice cut through both the light and a whirring white noise that had taken over my mind.

“Lucinda!”

I woke up with a lump in my throat and a pit in my gut. I had no recollection of my dream except a bright light getting closer, encompassing everything around me, and the unearthly feeling of 10pm. I’ve always had an irrational fear of that particular time. The teacher’s tone quickly brought me back to reality, and I found my forehead uncomfortably stuck to my workbook. In the corner of my eye, late afternoon sunlight filtered through the blinds, casting a shadow over my classmates. I didn’t even realize I’d fallen asleep in class.

I could chalk it up to a lot of things, but the main reason was my inability to sleep when I was supposed to be asleep. I could stay up all night, watching TV shows and reading books, listening to music on my iPod, and as soon as sunlight hit, my thoughts turned to mush and I suddenly wanted to sleep the whole day away, regardless of school. “Not enough,” was all I could reply, blinking away the dream still stirring at the back of my mind.

I had a habit of forgetting dreams and nightmares. I had heard some people could hold onto splinters of their dreams but mine were gone before I could pick out anything of importance.

Cal Marley was crying again.

I didn’t have to twist around in my chair to see, I could already hear his sniffles. It’s not like it was surprising since the kid couldn’t go one class without bursting into tears, but his outbursts were starting to get frustrating. The teachers ignored him and so did my classmates, though when he was really going for it, wailing like a baby into his desk, I couldn’t resist wincing. Nobody knew why Cal cried. He had always been like that. Though it’s not like he ever had a reason to cry, triggered by something genuinely sad. Cal just cried.

He sobbed all the way through classes and then lunch—and I’d see him trying to hide his face and his tears on the way home from school. I could hear him behind me trying to draw in breaths, trembling in his chair. It’s not like he was the weirdo of the class. Cal was actually pretty popular, aside from the incessant crying. When I turned in my seat, his head of brown curls was buried in his arms. The teacher had given up on Cal a long time ago.

He was smart enough, answering questions thrown to the class, when he wasn’t in this weird state—so she let him cry. Which was jarring. It was almost every class. I would be trying to concentrate on my work, and Cal Marley would be wailing, sobbing, screaming into his arms like a child.

Initially, he was dragged out of class to calm down. These days, however, the boy was just left alone. I wondered if there was something going on at home that was triggering this lapse in mental state. It’s not like he was always like this. It was like a switch had been pulled; one minute he would be talking to a friend or chewing on his pen, his gaze glued to his books—and the next, his expression would crumple suddenly, lips carving into an O, but no sound coming out. He used to be worse.

Cal would start screaming out of nowhere, clawing at his hair and mumbling gibberish to himself before being escorted out by a teacher. I don’t know what they calmed him down with, but I would see him hours later acting like himself again, bumping shoulders in the crowd, his gaze glued to a dogeared paperback he was reading.

I didn’t pay attention to this kid usually, but something about him that afternoon caught my eye. “Luce.” Mrs. Thornberry coaxed me to turn back to the front of the class with a frustrated hiss, and I did, not before taking notice of the drawing pad sticking from Cal Marley’s backpack. Cal wasn’t an artist. I had seen his attempt at drawing stick people, and even they were painfully bad. But Cal wasn’t drawing.

Something slimy accumulated at the back of my throat when I glimpsed his canvas. He hadn’t drawn people or objects, or even his surroundings.

No. Cal had drawn a countdown.

I watched him scribble the number, followed by 9 and then 8. His shading became progressively more violent before the nib of his pencil snapped, and I turned back to face my teacher with a knot in my gut. It was at lunchtime when I was dared by my group of friends to ask him what his deal was. Well, one of the girls had a thing for him, but definitely not the crying. So, I was tasked with talking to him—and my prize for completing the mission was any movie at Blockbuster.

Cal was sitting alone as usual. He did have friends on the football team, though they weren’t fans of his emotional breakdowns. I could see the blue and gold of his letterman jacket hanging off him, the reddish brown of his hair held back by his glasses.

Cal was pretty blind without his glasses, but he was also a fairly attractive guy—and glasses were for nerds. When I plonked my cafeteria tray of mystery meat and a carton of milk in front of him, he was squinting at his book, trying and failing to hide his sniffling with the sleeve of his letterman. “Why are you always crying?” I asked, getting straight to the point. I had already rehearsed this conversation multiple times in my head, and the imaginary version of Cal had gotten way too defensive when I tried to break the ice. So, I just came right out with it, my wandering gaze already searching for his sketchbook.

Cal didn’t respond at first, his gaze flicking to grains on the table. I leaned my chin on my fist, trying to smile.

“You’re always wailing,” I said, a lilt to my tone. I didn’t expect to get emotional myself. Maybe his tangled emotions were contagious. I don’t know what it was about him, but being around Cal was like being suffocated by a tumultuous cloud. I felt it immediately, a sudden ache in my chest and a tightening in my gut. I swallowed thickly. “What’s making you cry?

He lifted his gaze, lips curling into a scowl. “Leave me alone.”

“But there must be a reason,” I said. “Is it something you can’t tell me?”

Something shifted in his expression, and for the first time in a long time, Cal smiled. Well, it was the start of one. I had seen him smile before but his smiles were always splintered and fake. But looking at him right then, really taking every part of him in, I realized my classmate’s eyes were hollow.

His expression was past pain and despair, past numbing agony he couldn’t feel—it was nothing. What could have possibly led him to this? He was sixteen years old. He used to be the brightest student in our class, and one day was hit by a depression and pain he couldn’t articulate; only in gut-wrenching sobs that must have been tearing him apart. Cal Marley was a shadow with a human face. He almost resembled an alien pretending to be human. Leaning towards me, he mimicked me, resting his chin on his fist, his gaze searching mine for something I didn’t understand.

“I cry because I’m awake.”

I frowned. “You cry because you’re… awake?”

“Yes.”

“So, is something going on at home?” I lowered my voice. “You can talk to the school counselor, you know. That’s what she’s there for.” I slid across my chocolate cupcake. “You can have this.”

I was about to leave, with my mission complete, when the boy scoffed. Cal’s eyes narrowed. “Do you remember what we did the night of our graduation?”

His words kind of took me off guard. I leaned back, folding my arms across my chest. “Have you been hit on the head?” I reached forward to check his temperature before he shooed me away. “We don’t graduate until next year,” I chuckled. “Unless you’re psychic?”

I thought the boy was going to hurl his soda at me, but instead, he sighed and buried his head in his arms, sniffling. “You’re not awake, so go away.”

“Dude, I’m pretty sure I’m awake,” I poked him. “You’re the one acting crazy.”

Cal lifted his head, his eyes red-rimmed. I could see where he’d tried and failed to swipe at his cheeks, and claw marks he’d made with his nails. “You really think you’re awake?” He pulled out his iPod, flashing the tiny screen in my face. “What do you see?”

I frowned at the distorted version of my face wobbling on the screen. “I see… me?”

He nodded patiently. “Do you see your real face?”

Something about his words sent shivers creeping down my spine. Suddenly, it hit me, an overwhelming urge to get away from him. It was suffocating, a weight dragging me down to the depths of the ocean, plunging me into the dark. But it wasn’t the dark. What should have been pooling oblivion ripping me apart, was instead painful light bleeding into me, tendrils of sparking electricity slipping into my nose and mouth. I choked on phantom fingers pushing their way through my lips, trying to delve into my lungs. I felt my breath starting to thin, my vision blurring. Cal’s face became no face at all, and then a shadow.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” was all I could whisper, blinking through intense brain fog beginning to choke me, strangling the words in my mouth. I have always imagined my fear like tiny bugs skittering across my arm and the back of my neck. I’ve always been able to slap them off me before they could creep under my flesh, burrowing into my bones. Except now, my mouth was filled with them. They were everywhere, wriggling into my nose and pulsating on my tongue. I could feel them creeping down my back, entwined around my spine. I started to move, to get up, to get away from the boy who was drowning me in light—not dark. The light I didn’t want to see.

Light I was irrationally terrified of, deep, deep down. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. Everything I had been always able to do was suddenly so painfully hard. Getting to my feet and breathing, just simple breaths. My fingers felt weak around my tray when I tried to grasp hold of it. They felt so wrong like they were detached from my hands.

I felt my body aching an internal ache I had never felt before—and now feeling it, understanding it, I realized it had always been there. It took everything in me to speak, and even then my speech felt wrong and tangled in my mouth.

I took a deep breath and exhaled, spitting out the bugs muffling my words. “Reflections can be distorted sometimes, but I can just see my usual… face.” I don’t why I paused. Why I felt like what I was saying wasn’t real. The world seemed to blur around me between my words, and somehow Cal Marley became the only thing that seemed like reality. “You’re not awake,” Cal’s voice cut into my thoughts, and I turned back to him, swiping at my chin where phantom bugs skittered across my chin. “If you were awake, you would be crying too,” his lips curved into a small smile. “I get it. I don’t want to see all of this either,” his gaze flicked to the bustling crowd around us, “But I’m not allowed to sleep. I have to stay awake.”

“You’re not making any sense.” I gritted out.

Cal inclined his head. “Do you want to wake up?”

“What?”

“10pm.” Cal said under his breath, after shooting an uneasy glance at a teacher standing by the door. “Wait until 10pm. Go inside your bathroom and look into a mirror,” he mimed plugging his ears. “And make sure to block out the clock tower. It screws with our heads.” He got close to me, his warm breath tickling my cheeks. “That’s why we’re here. Why we’re stuck in a nightmare.”

“Stuck?”

He nodded, picking up my iPod and dangling it in front of my eyes. “You can’t see it because of what they did to you. But I can.” Cal pointed to himself. “I wasn’t an idiot that night. I stayed exactly where we were supposed to be, and I didn’t get caught.”

The boy caught my eye. “Unlike you,” he muttered. “You and the others were spirited away by your upside-down parents.” He pulled out his sketchpad and showed me a badly drawn depiction of a group of stick people running towards what I presumed was a hill. Cal had just drawn a wavy line, shaded it in, and then labelled it with “Primrose Hill.” Which was directly behind my house. He turned the page, and this time he’d drawn the stick people lying in shaded scribbles labelled “field.”

Oh, boy.

Cal’s story was intriguing, sure. But it was the first time in a long time I’d actually seen him speaking like normal. The guy had two states. He was either uncontrollably sobbing into his desk or quiet and reserved, the smart kid in the class. “You sound out of your mind,” I told him, reveling in the normality easing back into focus. So, Cal was just a nut. “But I kind of dig it. Have you been reading Creepypasta?” I poked him in the forehead. “Have you heard the new one about the creepy tree-man?”

“I’m being serious.” Cal’s expression didn’t falter. “You have to plug your ears and look in the mirror at exactly 10pm, or it won’t work.”

“So, Bloody Mary?” I rolled my eyes. In a way, I was relieved that it was my own mind playing tricks on me. I flicked off the last bug lingering on my lip. “Also, I don’t know what urban myth you’re copying off of, but our town doesn’t have a clock tower.”

His expression darkened, and that lingering spider tightened its grip on my spine. “Exactly.”

Before I could respond, he got to his feet, shouldering his backpack. “If you want to wake up, do exactly what I say, and I’ll be in touch,” he murmured. “If you would prefer to stay docile and brainwashed, feel free to completely forget what I told you, and go back to sleeping.” Cal shuffled away, his gaze already lost in front of him, not anything penetrable, just an oblivion he could see.

“What’s going on?”

My brother fell in step with me on the way to class. Maybe it was my lack of sleep, but I could have sworn his steps were odd, misplaced and twitchy, like his feet weren’t even touching the floor.

“Nothing,” I grumbled. I couldn’t see his face, only the baseball cap he always wore, nestled over blondish brown hair.

“Then why the face?” Noah chuckled. I blinked, and he was suddenly far too close, his head inclined. “Come on, you can tell me! We’re sibs, remember!”

Come on, you can trust me, Noah’s voice was suddenly in my head, a strangled hiss. I heard every individual pained breath flitting from his lips. I felt my hands slick with something wet and warm, a stray bug skittering across my cheek. I swatted it away, but the voice split into my skull, eliciting my own cry.

We’re sibs, remember?

I shook away the voice.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” I swiped at a maggot stuck to my arm.

“Nope!” I caught his grin. “I have a looooooot of free time, if you must know.”

Under the bleeding light of the school hallway, my brother did not have a shadow.

I went home that day with a funny taste in my mouth and a twist in my gut that wouldn’t ease. Mom was in the kitchen when I dumped my bag on the table. “Your teacher called,” she said, flitting around the kitchen like a butterfly. She pulled soda from the refrigerator and set it in front of me. I cracked open the soda, taking a long gulp. I had never believed in mother’s instinct until Mom took a seat in front of me with her usual to-the-point glare. “Apparently, you haven’t been getting enough sleep.” She folded her arms across her chest when I gulped down soda to avoid answering her. “Would you like to tell me why?”

“She’s seeing a boy. Obviously.”

Noah. When I lifted my head, I couldn’t see him, but he was lurking somewhere. When he wasn’t driving me crazy at school, Noah was always in the kitchen, either sitting on the countertop with his prime intention to annoy our mother, or sitting with his feet up on the dining room table, his eyes glued to his DS. I could just about glimpse his silhouette behind the door.

This time, his face was a little clearer. I could see his mop of brown curls, the lip piercing he wasn’t allowed to get, and his sly smile. Hiding as usual. Noah and Lottie, my older (by a year!) brother and sister were for some reason always lurking in the kitchen at home, like ghosts, or more accurately, sour milk.

While Noah liked to hang around on the countertop, or sometimes even the stove when it wasn’t on—Lottie sat cross-legged on the floor. I didn’t understand why the two of them hung around in the kitchen so much. I shot Noah a glare, and Mom chuckled in response. “Noah, don’t tease your sister.” I looked up from frowning at my soda to see Mom’s gaze was on the countertop where he was sitting, but not fully looking at him. Her eyes flitted back and forth like she was searching for my brother. She took a sip from her own cup, her gaze going back to me.

“Just make sure to get some sleep tonight, okay? You need to look your best for tomorrow.”

I nodded.

In the corner of my eye, my brother’s shadow bled across the wall. I caught his swinging legs.

His grinning lips.

“Why didn’t you let me out of the trunk, Luce?”

Bubbling soda began to slowly inch its way back up my throat in a slimy paste. “What?”

THUMP.

The sound didn’t feel attached to reality, sitting in my kitchen. But it felt real.

THUMP.

Bugs filled my mouth again.

This time writhing, wiggling, and squirming across my tongue and teeth. I downed the soda, my stomach twisting with nausea. I didn’t stay in the kitchen for long. I went up to my room to try and sleep, but my mind wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop thinking about Cal’s words. It was just a stupid superstition, right?

Mom called me down for dinner, and I swallowed down spaghetti and meatballs, ignoring the conversation between my siblings and my mother. If anything, it was more one-sided.

Noah talked about his excitement for the upcoming game against Stratford and Lottie named all of her literary heroes. Mom didn’t respond to either of them, only nodding with a small smile, her lips latched to the rim of her wine glass. Noah asked me several questions about school, and if I was excited to graduate, but he wasn’t smiling when I risked glancing at him. His gaze never strayed from me, even when he was talking to Mom.

I watched him fork up pasta slowly, methodically, before stuffing it into his mouth and chewing. When his glare grew more intense, I excused myself and hurried up to my room. It was 9pm when I was getting ready for bed.

I found myself standing in front of our bathroom mirror, Cal’s words echoing in my skull. “Stand in front of your mirror and plug your ears at exactly 10pm, and you will wake up.” I studied my reflection, inclining my head. I was of medium height, with dark brown hair tied into a ponytail, and an oddly shaped nose. I pulled out the earplugs I’d grabbed from Mom’s room, rolling them around between my palms.

What did Cal mean by waking up? Glancing at the time, something ice-cold squirmed its way down my spine, a sudden weight on my chest. 9:45, and I hadn’t realized until then that I was shaking, my fingers turning white around the marble faucet. 9:46. I felt like I was going to be sick. 9:47, I was kneeling in front of the toilet, shivering. Noah’s words from earlier wouldn’t leave my mind. I didn’t let him out of the trunk. 9:48.

Something clawed its way into my mouth, a scream that had been suppressed.

9:49.

I heaved up my dinner, choking up tangled spaghetti and undigested meatballs. Pressing my forehead against the toilet seat, I could see them already, writhing black dots skittering across perfect white porcelain. 9:50. I locked myself in my room and hid away everything reflective I had. I stuffed all of my mirrors under my bed, but still, somehow, I found myself standing in front of my door, my trembling hands on the door handle. 9:55. I twisted it and pulled my door open. 9:56. I stood in front of our bathroom mirror once again, but this time I could hear my brother’s muffled shrieking from inside the car trunk. I could hear my sister’s sobbing. 9:57. Squeezing my eyes shut, I corked in earplugs. 9:58.

I waited. 9:59 was when the world around me came to a standstill, and reality contorted into something else entirely. When I opened my eyes, it was pitch dark. I started towards the switch, but my body was suddenly heavy and wrong, I had to drag myself to the wall. I reached up and felt for the switch, clicking it on. 10pm. Somehow, the world was brighter. Like I had been living, drowning in black and white. Reality slammed into me like a wave of ice water. I was running. I was running for my life—and I was with Mom…. I was with Mom, and what happened?

April 3rd, 2013, I escaped my psycho town. But I didn’t. I was still here. Reality and dream started to blur together in my head, and suddenly, time didn’t make sense. 2013.

I let out a choked breath, turning back to my reflection in the mirror. But instead of my own face was a wrinkled old woman, with eyes that were wide like mine, lips parted into an O.

Just like mine. I stumbled back, my shaking hands coming up to stroke my own face, where I felt the folds in my skin, endless stretches of wrinkles lining my forehead and face. The woman’s eyes were hollow. Ancient.

This wasn’t even old…it was drained.

Monstrous.

I don’t remember screaming. I don’t remember staggering out of the bathroom, and in the distance I could hear them. Bells. And the more I registered them, the more I let them bleed into my brain, my ancient hands blurred back to what I had always known—my manicured, seventeen-year-old fingers. I started towards my room, my thoughts whirring. I could still hear the bells clanging in my skull.

But it wasn’t 2013.

I could feel it, sense it in the years which had passed me by; not enough to turn me ancient, but enough to significantly age me.

“Mom?”

My voice was a sharp squeak which felt like mine, but more adult. While my body was thick and weak, it felt like I was paralyzed in a suit of flesh that was not mine. The stairs I thought I always knew were different. The carpet was rugged and wrong, coated in dust.

The living room was lost in time, a coat of dust hanging in the air. As I strode down the hallway, the lights blinked out one by one, making way for the orange glow of candlelight lighting up the pooling oblivion I found myself walking into. There was a shadow in Mom’s place at the table, still drinking wine.

In the blur of orange candlelight, I couldn’t make out a face. But then my gaze was drinking in our kitchen, and I stepped back, my heart diving into my throat. The first thing I saw was the splattered red on the walls, bugs crawling across the red, feasting on entrails sticking to the massacre on the wall. Then I found the headless bodies of my brother and sister on the ground, their torsos bowed in prayer to a mirror hanging from worn paintwork, while their heads hung from the wall.

Like decorations.

Maggots filled Noah’s dead, grinning mouth, popping from the crevices in his eyes. Something about the bodies turned my gut. They had been dead for so long, and yet somehow they were still intact. Lottie’s curls were still being brushed out and pulled into pigtails, Noah’s unruly curls tamed to perfection. “What is it, sweetie?”

The shadow’s voice was not familiar. When it turned around to face me, I only saw intense beauty enough to steal away my breath. The woman’s features were perfect, not a flaw in sight, shining dark hair haloing a heart-shaped face. I took another step back. In her slender hands was a small doll with my brother’s hair. When she pulled it’s arm, there was movement in front of me. Noah was sitting on the countertop once more, waving cheerily, a smile spread out across his lips.

Unlike earlier, though, it was strained. His cavernous eyes were dark, reflected in orange light, and if I squinted, I could see where our mother had pierced his skull, running it right through his head. Mom did the same with another doll, this time dipping it into a wooden bowl in front of her, dyeing its tiny face in scarlet. Lottie, still sitting on the floor, coughed up a fountain of streaked red, and her body on the ground jolted, the floor itself rumbling before going still.

This thing was not my mother.

I watched my mother die at my graduation party eleven years ago. And then I watched my upside-down mother murder my siblings in a twisted memory I refused to see clearly.

“Well?” the monster turned to me, and I could hear its neck snapping, it’s bones moving with every twitchy movement. She gripped the Noah doll’s head between her nails, and in turn, my brother’s head snapped back, with a disgusting, sickening snap. Her eyes found mine, and they were a cruel mimic of mom’s; the exact eyes that had bewitched me so long ago. “Lucinda, what is it?” she cocked her head, and my siblings copied her, almost mockingly, their smiles hers.

Their eyes…hers.

Instead of answering her, I turned around and forced my legs back upstairs. I was 28 years old. The realization wasn’t sinking in yet, though something didn’t make sense. 28-year-olds did not look like… like this. I wasn’t seventeen anymore, my life up until now had been a never-ending high school groundhog day.

“Why didn’t you pull me out of the trunk?”

When I twisted around, my eighteen-year-old brother was leaning against the door, and when I took notice, his clothes were dated.

High tops, and skinny jeans.

While I had been aged way beyond my years, Noah was eternally eighteen. I don’t know why I felt envious of him at that moment, embarrassed of my real face.

“I don’t know,” I managed to get out, my dream coming back to focus. Not all of it, though. “I can’t remember.”

Noah sighed. “Well, I’d hurry up remembering because Mom isn’t finished with us yet.” He bid me a two-fingered salute, before disappearing from my line of vision.

“Wait.”

“What?” My brother’s voice groaned from the other side of the door. “I’m not allowed to talk to you.”

“She’s not controlling you?” I whispered.

He didn’t reply for a moment. “She lets me wander, sometimes.”

I stared down at my hands, stroking across the dents in my flesh. “What has she done to us?”

He snorted. “You tell me! You’re the favorite sibling, the one she chose to keep. It’s obvious what she did to us.”

“Shhh!” Lottie’s hiss came from behind me, her breath tickling the back of my neck. “We’re not allowed to talk to her.”

I twisted around to see my sister, but she was gone.

Something hit my window, pulling me out of my thoughts.

I wandered over to the window, still dazed, still seeing my siblings’ corpses at the backs of my eyes. When I peered outside, there was a silhouette standing under the streetlight outside my house. When they stepped out of the shadow, I found myself staring at an ancient man frowning up at me, his arms folded across his chest. His eyes matched mine, hollowed out and tired.

Drained of something precious to us, eleven years ago.

Cal.

In the distance, a blinding beam of light scoured our town.

I found myself stumbling away from it, ducking when it illuminated my window.

I counted ten elephants before risking a peek, and Cal was still there. He didn’t say anything, only shooting me a, “I told you so” look. I reached up to jostle the earplugs, dislodging them for a moment, and heard the faded ringing of bells, while the old man in front of me contorted into a seventeen year old boy once again, before disappearing into the dark. Look, I’ve been sitting here for a long time trying to figure out what I am, and what my fake mother is. Why I am being forced to relive the year 2013, while the rest of the world resides inside the present.

I need your help.

I am trapped inside this house, inside this town I tried to escape 11 years ago. What has my upside down mother done to me? And how can I get out?

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