Forbidden Things || Cobra Kai

72 The End's Beginning

She was all alone. It wasn't a nice feeling.

Penelope sat in her childhood bedroom, the walls just as she remembered them: pink and decorated with cute art prints held in sparkly frames. The window was covered with frilly white curtains, bright light shining behind them as they hung to the floor. Her four post bed was bigger than she ever needed it to be so she could have sleepovers with Frankie. The room was fit for a princess.

She was on the center of the bed as she looked around, something not quite right. The room was hers, she knew it; there was no mistake made. It was the room she had lived in for fifteen years, the room she grew up in. The doorframe leading into the hallway measured her height every year. This was her bedroom, but something was off about it.

Pain shot through her head as she tried to find the oddity, causing her to put her face in her hands and wince. It passed, but there was still a dull ache on her temple.

She ignored it in favor of looking up again.

Then she saw what was wrong.

She stood up and walked over to the dresser, swiping a photo frame from its top and inspecting it closely. It was a picture of her and Frankie on their first day of middle school, backpacks hanging off their shoulders, holding hands tightly. The memory was still fresh to her, as if it had happened yesterday, because she'd been so scared to go into middle school and Frankie wasn't scared of anything.

However, she knew they should be smiling in the photo, Frankie was the only one smiling. Where Penelope's own face and smile should have been was a smudgy blank space.

As she looked around the room, she realized every picture that featured her in it, her face was smudged out.

She walked over to the mirror beside her closet and looked at her reflection. Everything was right except her face, no matter where or how she moved, was blurry, as if she were looking at foggy glass. She wiped her hand over the surface, trying to wipe away the smudginess, but it remained as it was.

Scared, she ran for the door and tried to pull it open, but it was locked. No matter how hard she twisted the knob, it wouldn't budge, trapping her inside the room. She pulled and banged her fist on the wood, struggling to understand why she couldn't just open it.

Once it was undeniably obvious that she couldn't leave through the door, she ran for the window. It was a two story drop from there, but if she had to then she would jumped it. She didn't care about the risk, she wanted to leave the room. It wasn't right, giving her a dreadfully tight feeling in her chest.

When she pulled the curtains, she found nothingness.

Beyond the window was absolutely nothing, only bright white space that hurt her eyes and her head.

She squinted at it, as if she were trying to look at the sun, but she couldn't see anything. There was nothing to see. There was only white space.

"This isn't right," she said, touching the window pane. She searched for the latch, but it wasn't there. It was gone.

So she hit the glass, but it wouldn't break. She hit it as hard as she could with both hands balled into tight fists, but nothing happened. It wouldn't break and there was no latch to open it with.

The bright light of the white space began to make her head pound and she covered her eyes. She shook her head, pressing her palms into her hands, trying to make sense of everything, but it only caused pain.

She repeated, "This isn't right!"

"What isn't right?" a voice asked from behind.

Slowly, Penelope froze, unafraid of the voice and the person it belonged to.