As I sat trembling in the closet, the image of me wandering in the small garden in my old neighbour's house popped into my head.
I saw myself as a little girl walking through the tall thin grass that brushed my bare calves as I moved. I vividly remember the wildflowers I saw there. There were so many colours and they were more beautiful then any flowers I'd seen.
Wordlessly, I walked over to one of them, a pretty yellow one that looked so much like a sunflower only I knew it wasn't. I just knew it wasn't. None of the flowers were normal.
I plucked a flower and a sweet scent wafted through the air and into my nose causing, me to swoon.
My head spun slightly and I had to shut my eyes for a moment to get myself.
I don't know what got into me then. I started to pluck all the other flowers. I plucked as much as I could but when I had a two handfuls I knew it was enough.
As I walked away from the garden, there was this feeling of ice snaking up and around in my body that I tried to ignore but I couldn't.
It was that day that everything started.
“Rose!” I snapped out of my trance.
Mari and Leslie were sitting at the other side of the closet. They were trying to get words out of me but I was frozen in terror. They just didn't understand. I didn't want to remember. Although I knew I had to.
“Rose please just think, just remember…” Leslie slurred through her sobs.
I wish I didn't know. I wish I wasn't able to see into the future. At least if bad things happen to us, I won't feel guilty.
At first I thought these things were just me getting déjà vu’s like any normal person. But no. When something random would happen I'd get the feeling I've seen it before, but I knew this feeling wasn't like any normal déjà vu's because at that moment I'd know what was going to happen next.
Now we were being hunted by something out of a fucking nightmare. Creatures that should only exist in a horror novel. At least that’s what I could make out of from the tiny glimpse I caught as we ran away from them. And I was expected to know what happens next so we could try to see if we could escape them.
What the fuck do they think would happen next? We're going to fucking die!
I started to hyperventilate. Funny, because I knew this was coming. I also knew that Mari was going to come and console me and tell me it would be fine, that I just needed to tell them what was going to happen.
Oh no…I'm remembering…I don't want to remember…
“Rose, it's okay,” she said. “You just need to focus, remember okay?”
I shook my head like a little child, like the little child that picked those flowers in that old lady's garden.
“No, no I don't want to remember!”
“Rose you have to! Or we'll die!”
Leslie materialises at the other side and I also trying her best to get me to remember.
It works, somehow, and I close my eyes shut. And then all the images come in little by little.
“They'll hear a sound from the closet,” I begin quietly with a shaky voice. “And then they come in the room searching for where it came from. Then one of us, out of fright will push something down and they'll know the sound is coming from here and then…and then…”
“You don't have to say it, it's fine,” they tell me although I can hear their heart pounding against their chests.
“So what now, we don't do anything and they leave?” Mari asks.
“I think we need to run…” I whisper and I can feel their stares in the dark room.
“What?”
“The first sound…” I try to explain but then we heard the shriek of the creatures. Although there's something about the sound that I find…weird.
Mari almost cries out loud but Leslie clamps her hand over her mouth.
“They'll go in the bathroom to search there and then we have to run…” I whisper again.
“What? no! We can't outrun those things!”
“Yes we can and that's the only way. If we stay here someone's going to push something down, it's fate, you can't change it. But we can try…if we run.”
Mari shakes her head. “Rose no…”
“Stay behind me.” I hear the door to the bathroom open and the thud of feet. “It's just two of them. If we run as fast as we can we can make it. If we stay here, we're not safe.”
“Okay…” they agree finally.
We hear the faucet open and the sound of water hitting the ceramic bowl of the sink. And then I open the door and we dark out of there as fast as we can.
The creatures waste no time in spotting us and they let out a terrible shreik that almost makes me to stop running and fall to the ground to lie in a fetal position.
But I have to run, I tell myself and pump my legs. I can hear the monsters running after us but we don't stop, we keep running.
And soon we get out of the house. Once we do, I slam the door shut to give us more time and we speed off down the road screaming.
But as we run, and image forms in my head. I see the two creatures taking off their face…no their masks and crackling as they fall to the couches in the living room. They're our two male friends, Corey and Max, I realize. It was all a prank. How did we not fucking know…?
“Guys!” I scream and they stop, staring at me with wide eyes.
“It was a prank! It was Max and Corey…they're in costumes!”
Mari's eyes widen at my words but Leslie is running her hands through her hair and blinking, utterly confused. Mari marches back to the house but before she can get to the door, the two idiots stumble out of the house still cackling, their voice loud in the dead of the night.
“This is why you shouldn't have too much alcohol,” Max says in between laughter and we run over to beat them up.
