I walked out of my apartment, flyers in hand. Going against my mom's wishes, I moved to an apartment a few miles from campus. But what does my mom know? She can't even keep her eyes white. Sophomore year was the year I would be on my own. It's been almost three months since school started and I'm hard pressed to find a roommate. Rent has been sticking one to me lately, but I don't mind as much as I should. I like being on my own, no roommates to steal my food or dirty up the place, even if it means I have to eat one meal a day. It's worth it. As I pin my flyers down the street, I head towards the Party City. I'm stuck getting the little party trinkets that make everything "fun" for my sororities Halloween party.
"Welcome to Party City!" The overly peppy cashier chimes.
"Thank you." I say, going straight to the creepy mask on the stores back wall. Halloween has always been my favorite time of the year, surpassing Christmas by a landslide. As a kid, I believed that a fat man came down my chimney just as much as I believed an all knowing skydaddy was up there in the clouds. I laugh at the thought, and remember that I'm here for the party trinkets.
I spot the party beads and and throw every black, orange, and purple ones there were. My cart had atleast 20 pounds of beads in it by the time I was done. I asked the cashier to bring all the pumpkin and skull sunglasses they had, ending up with 2 giant boxes. As if 50 pounds of crap wasn't enough, I had to get 20 bags of plastic spider rings. It would be a nice touch in the Jell-O shots. Once I spotted the face paint and glow sticks, I just had to get them.
"Good lord, what do you need all of this for?" The smiley cashier asked as she kept repeatedly scanning the beads like a robot.
"My sorority is throwing a Halloween party tomorrow and I was put in charge of all the fun things." I said with air quotes.
I scanned over the candies on the counter, throwing in a giant sour patch kid or two. Under the counter I spotted neatly stacked boxes with the word Ouja carved on the top. I pick up one of the boxes to examin it.
"I wouldn't buy that if I were you."
I look up with a confused expression on my face, too intertwined in the game to be fully coherent.
"The game. I wouldn't even open the box. It's very dangerous." She eyed the box for a while, then went back to scanning.
"You can't really believe in this load of crap?" I laugh and continue to examine the box. I knew the game involved contacting so called spirits or crap, but for people to actually believe it?
"My roomate in college was at a party, just like yours, and they played with that thing. One of the girls started to puke blood and her eyes turned black. No lie."
She really was scared of this... game.
"Add this to the tab." I smiled as I handed the game to her. She was reluctant to even touch it- I swore I saw her lip tremble.
"Let's see if this baby really works. What's better than a bunch of drunk college kids and a so called demon board?" I almost sounded like a psycho with my enthusiasm, but if there's no god, there's no devil. So there's nothing for me to worry about.
---
I pull my covers up to my neck and snuggle up to my pillow. I grab my phone off the night stand and open up a new tab.
Google: Ouja boards
The real history of the Ouija board is just about as mysterious as how the "game" works. Ouija historian Robert Murch has been researching the story of the board since 1992; when he started his research, he says, no one really knew anything about its origins, which struck him as odd: "For such an iconic thing that strikes both fear and wonder in American culture, how can no one know where it came from?"
Why am I looking this up? I know it's a load of crap. I turn off my phone and role over so I face the door.
