When Dreams Consume Reality

02. Shitty Things

Dedicated to enchanted171 for being the 1st person to check this story out! Do stop by her book 'Brown Girl's Dilemmas'. It's fun, fast paced and personally I find it quite cute! It also features Zayn Malik ;)
And coincidentally both of our stories have hit #22 in their respective genres on the same freakin' day! :p

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I flicked on the tiny flashlight that I always kept in my room and extracted my pair of Converse sneakers from under the bed.

I quickly threw on a pair of crumpled dark blue jeans and a black tee (you know, for camouflage) and sneaked out of my room after pocketing the flashlight and my cell phone, making as little noise as possible, though I wasn't sure if the loud creak of the door had really escaped my aunt's hypersensitive ears.

She was such a light sleeper that sometimes I wondered if she slept at all. But maybe it wasn't her fault. This over-a-hundred-years-old house was literally falling to pieces and I wouldn't be surprised if some robber came waltzing in through the front door without as much as a punch to it. Although I hadn't heard of any burglaries taking place in Karoi, a withering house was reason enough to make my aunt paranoid.

I waited with baited breath above the staircase. But no yelling came from the room across from mine.

I heaved a sigh of relief at having made it through the first part of my great late night mission.

Damn! Why did people need to celebrate birthdays at midnight? I mean there's the whole day left. Couldn't my friends have chosen to surprise me at a little less ungodly hour?

Your friends went out of their way to celebrate your sixteenth birthday and this is what you think?! Stop complaining, you ungrateful freak!

Jeez! I can't even joke with myself. Can you believe it? My own mind bossing me around!

Uh, I'm such a fool. Of course your mind would boss you! It's the CPU after all.

You really need to shut the fudge up, Chitra!

I could only cringe listening to my bossy self.

Okay. Now, here comes the tricky part.

Creaking door is one thing, but creaky stairs? Whether I dashed down or took one step at a time, the noise in this dead hour of the night was bound to give me away. So, I did something that I had only seen in the movies and the consequences might've led me to the hospital, if I wasn't already dead by then.

I dangled my left leg over the wooden railing supported by sturdy iron rods (thank you, dead architects!) and after whispering a short prayer, I began to slide down while clutching the part of the railing behind me.

After fifty excruciating seconds, I made it to the landing.

Let's just say, it's a lot different than what they show in the movies.

My coccyx was on fire!

Rubbing the sore spot above my butt, I hobbled towards one of the five tiny doors in the ground floor that opened to the outside.