Illusional

The Attic

    And that is what we did. When Stella opened the attic door, a lot of dust suddenly flew out into the closet, hinting the attic in question was either really old or hasn't been used recently or frequently enough. The ladder to get into the attic was already attached to the door, but it was hard to pull down, so we asked Brandon and Andrew to help pull it down (as you may have already known, they are pretty strong guys. No wonder they have so many girls lined up by their doors. It's actually pretty vain, in my opinion. At least my girlfriend appreciates me as a literal stick figure... sorry, am I angrily jotting again...?)

    One by one, we all went up to the attic (with our light sources, of course) and it was actually pretty spacious. Almost... inhabitable. Everyone else was also pretty amazed at the sight of such an attic.

    After exploring for a couple of minutes, I actually found a child in the corner of a room, crying. I went up to it carefully (so as to not scare it by accident)

    "Hey, little fella... what's wrong?" I asked in a sorrowful way. But he said nothing. He just kept crying. I wonder if Dad had something to do with this; if anyone one of us had the capacity to make children cry, it would be him...

I asked him again what was wrong, if everything was fine, and if he wanted to talk about anything, but then the crying stopped. In fact, a small chuckle came out of him, then a small giggle... then a guffaw. Then he turned at me, and laughed diabolically, as if I had just fallen into a trap he seemingly pulled on me (and frankly, I wouldn't be too surprised, knowing me)

    Suddenly, he lunged at me and starting hitting me. It didn't hurt a lot, but it felt like I was being stung by bees. Soon after, all sorts of children (I counted at least 4) seemingly emerged from the walls of the attic, laughing as well, and came running straight for me, and I noticed that some were targeting Stella, too. Oddly enough, we were the only two targets; everyone else wasn't being jumped by children.

Marleigh and Leo started looking around for help, and noticed a room hiding in a corner. Scared to know what was inside, they opened the door and... Dad was in there. But he was tied up and tape was over his mouth, so they grabbed Andrew and Brandon (again) to help untie and untape Dad.

Me, Stella, and everyone else came to Dad and quickly shut and locked the door behind us (to prevent the children from coming in) and Dad quickly caught his breath. Meanwhile, the children were banging on the door very loudly. I hugged Dad, relieved he was okay, but he quickly shoved me out of the way, which I was quite livid about.

"Dad, what was that all about?!" I screamed, almost at the top of my lungs.

"You shut your mouth, you little sluggart! It's that tone, behavior, and attitude that I don't even want you near my presence."

"What did I even do? I help you out, have my friends free you, and express my genuine love for you. And you're just carelessly shove me over like I'm nothing but a little piece of poop to you?!"

"You are a little piece of poop to me! It even regurgitates me to even say your name." Dad replied back, almost sounding like the devil. "Now, to answer your question, I shoved you out of the way for getting all of these so-called "children" in the attic when I was just getting some "quiet time" after somebody wouldn't shut up down there!" Now, "somebody" wasn't directed to anyone in particular.

"Okay, how do you even know I am the reason these children are here in the first place?" I asked in a very interrogative way.

"I agree; you're just assuming with basically no evidence." Zachary backed me up.

    "I do! In case you forgot—which you did—Mason's an absolute joke to this world!" Dad yelled at him. When he heard what Dad said to him, he started backing into a corner, but Brandon motioned him to stay strong and not to let Dad get to him.

    "I bet Stella had something to do with this, too." Dad continued.

Stella almost lost it at that, but she managed to cool down and boldly said, "Please don't make any more false accusations towards me and Mason. I'm not going to allow you to treat us this way." I almost blushed when she said that.

"I'm not making false accusations, and I'll prove it to ya! I'll prove it to you all!"

"Bro, just admit you're wrong and that he and Stella didn't do anything wrong." Brandon said, defending our case.

"I agree. There shouldn't be any reason to be arguing about stuff like this, either." Andrew seconded.

"Well, there has to be children that we've never met before somehow."

"We may never know why. Plus, it isn't safe here regardless; they're still banging on that door! We need to get out of here!" Marleigh explained.

"Alright, but for now, they're still human beings, not to mention, our new, unexpected guests, so we should treat them with respect." Stella said.

Dad begrudgingly agreed. "Fine, but before we leave here I'm going to prove it to you all, and you all will be sorry for how you treated me!"

I just agreed with him, as did everyone else. There's no point in reasoning with him, or even telling the truth to him. I'm done fighting with him.

Philip opened the door, prepared to run from them, or fight them if he had the strength to, but when he opened the door, the children were completely gone. He said it was safe to get out, as the children suddenly disappeared, but he doesn't know how. Nobody else did, either. We slowly started to make our way down from the attic, but it was still pitch black, and Dad didn't have a light source on him (I was actually a little amused by that)