when you were my father

that night

It's late at night, wind blows gently through a bedroom, creating a slight chill. The curtains blow gently in the wind, as they did every night.

Mai is laying in bed, about to fall asleep, with her eyes are about to close. Something's on her mind, but she doesn't want to think about it.

Suddenly, she hears a noise coming from her closet, a strange noise that can't even be put into words. It's both loud and quiet at the same time, an unexplainable sensation emits from it.

Thinking it's just the wind, she walks towards it to make sure it's closed all the way, as she sees a little crack between the two doors. Barely noticeable, but she feels it shouldn't be open even a little bit.

The noises continue until she is about to touch the closet door, as she slowly reaches out to push the door slightly, but as soon as her fingers touch the wood.

Silence fills the room. It's a terrible silence, which makes Bia worry.

Mai has opened the door, but what's inside isn't visible, except she can see a terrifying sight. It's nothing like she's ever seen, terrifying in ways that she believed weren't possible.

Afraid, Mai starts to scream. Her cries of terror fill the room, but nobody seems to come. The high pitched air escaping from her throat carries in the wind and out the open windows.

So scared, her feet are almost glued to the ground, making it impossible for her to run away.

A great shadow engulfs the entire room.

She begins to scream harder, but still nobody seems to see, or care.

*********

"Mai?" I hear a small voice at the end of my bed.

"What?" I half-yell, wondering who wants to talk to me at whatever crazy time it is.

"Just come with me." It instructs.

I sit up and see that it's just Micah standing there, he seems worried and scared in ways I can't never seen before. "What now?" I ask him and he just gestures violently for me to follow him. So I stand up and follow my brother out of my dark room and down the hall.

We enter the kitchen, where I can see our mother still asleep on the couch. "What?" I ask, still not knowing why he felt the need to wake me up. I'm so tired and it's pitch black outside.

"I found this notebook." He says in a worried and hushed tone. In his outstretched hand, there's black composition notebook. Like the kind you use for school and notes.

"And?" I ask, still confused and annoyed that he woke me, I was so close to seeing what's in that closet in my dream.

"It says Brian on the front. Do you think it has anything to do with Brian?"

"I mean obviously it has something to do with some Brian. But, probably. Open it." I order, now slightly intrigued but not enough to lose my annoyance.

"Well, that's an invasion of privacy..." Micah begins.

"Oh, I'll open it. That way your record's still perfect." I tell him, grabbing the notebook and rolling my eyes.

Slowly I open it to look at the front page. Little do I notice, but the walls around us change. They slowly fade to a dirty brown color, all of the furniture and decorations changing with them. But of course, I'm too consumed by my curiosity of the notebook to notice.

Straightening out the first page, I see inside one sentence has been written.

Hello. I've heard so much about you Brian.

I turn to my brother, looking at his silhouetted figure in the dark. He shrugs and out of impulse I grab the pen that sits next to it, writing down a reply.

hi. I'm not Brian, but what are you?

We wait a minute, hoping for a quick reply of some sort. Little do I notice again, but outside it looks like a time-lapse shot on some reality tv show. Showing that a day has passed.

Oh, I thought you'd be Brian... I'm... someone. Who are you?

Well, I'm Kamaile. I'm here with my brother Micah. How are you writing in this notebook?

Kamaile, what a nice name. Micah's great too. Do you know Brian?

Maybe, but I'm not sure. Would you mean the young boy with brown hair and freckles?

Why yes, yes I would. Though I wouldn't say he's that young. We're twelve years old and in seventh grade.

Anyways, you didn't answer my question. How are you writing in this notebook?

Well, do you promise not to tell Brian and rip these pages out later?

Sure. Yeah, I guess.

Well each of these days that you write, earlier that day I came into Brian's house and wrote. Wait, why are you in Brian's kitchen each day?

I don't know what to say to this, so I hand Micah the pen and pull him closer to the answering notebook.

We're not in Brian's kitchen. We're at our house. This is Micah by the way, probably you can tell that this isn't my sister's handwriting. What do you mean each day? You reply within minutes to our reply.

No. I come each day after school. I make sure to get here right before Brian, but for some reason I've never even met you and never see you.

What?

Well, I don't know what the two of your's deal is, but I'm going to stop writing. And it'd be best if you stopped writing too. Leave it for Brian to see. Goodbye.

Wait, what does that mean?

Faint lettering appears on the page for a few seconds, constantly changing like they're writing back to us, but it soon stops. Suddenly, the notebook closes itself and the room starts to spin around in a craze. Turning everywhere, I can't stand up correctly or even look straight. It stops instantaneously, leaving me dizzy. The walls and furniture are back to how they normally are, but I take little notice to this in the dark.

"Brian?" I ask, noticing the boy in the corner of my living room. He's sitting down and hugging his knees. Rocking back and forth, while shaking in fear or cold. "What are you doing?"

"What do you mean?" He asks, looking straight at me, confusion showing in his eyes. "This is... Where'd my living room go? Where am I?" The boy asks and I can hear the panic rise in his voice. His words are short and breathy, he's definitely worried or scared about something.

"You're in my house. You don't know how you got here?"

"No. Just a minute ago I was writing in that notebook." He tells me pointing at the notebook we were just busily writing in."And then it got all blurry, and now I'm here."

I turn to Micah, he just shrugs.

Isla's screams pierce through the air.