I Have Friends in Holy Spaces

8: The Only Mass I'll Attend is A Mass Breakfast

  The next few days I spent in my house, acting like a recluse until I was forced to go out. I didn't know if Father Way had actually heard me that day in the park and though I hoped to God that he didn't, but luck was never on my side.

    The night was full of snow, gently making its descent from the dark sky into the pavement by hundreds. In my living room, the Christmas tree stood tall, the star finally on top, illuminating the whole room eerily. There were some presents under the Christmas tree as well, all wrapped in idividual wrapping paper. I love choosing wrapping paper so we always end up with multiple tubes with different patterns on it.

   Every year, I always keep a lookout on a special present, taking guesses at what it could be and putting my best deductive skills to work. This year, the one I'm keeping eye on is the one in the back, nearly behind the tree. It's of moderate size and the wrapping paper was just an ordinary red and white stripes.

I was pulling an all nighter again.

I don't know why I do it, but it's been happening since I was 10; I'd stay up all night every Christmas Eve just to try and catch Santa. However, over the years when I grew older and stopped believing in Santa my all nighters were more for the fact I was on my phone scrolling through the Internet.

My eyelids felt like there were weights on top of them and I'd even close my eyes and doze off for like a minute and then wake up, wondering if I slept for too long. I turned over so that my body was facing the nightstand and took a look at my alarm clock, so tired that I forgot I could have checked the time on my phone instead. It was 3:22, we didn't start opening presents until 6:30.

Going against the sane part of my mind, I started to wish there was a tap on my window and I would see Pete so he could like at least keep me awake for the next few hours. Unfortunately, Pete worships sleep more than he worships Christ so by now he was probably drooling gallons of saliva on his pillow thinking fondly of Mikey Way. Gross.

My gaze fixated itself back on my phone and saw the screen was black. I turned it on, but it wouldn't turn on and I groaned; it was dead. "Damn unreliable phone batteries," I grumbled to myself as I stood up and made my way to the charger which was unfortunately across the room. As soon as I plugged in the phone though, it turned back on, displaying the battery percentage as 100%.

I reached for it, about to unplug it when it turned off again and I couldn't turn it back on again. For a few times it went like this, on and off and on and off. It started at a slow pace, and then would speed up and flicker faster and faster until the screen completely froze; words started to form in the center of the lock screen:

I AM COMING FOR YOU

Startled by this, I backed away slowly, fumbling over my own footsteps. The phone proceeded to start rattling, creating an annoying noise on the table. Once again, the screen started to flicker as it rattled and soon enough it just stopped abruptly and the phone went back to normal.

Silence ensued; I wanted nothing more than to just sprint out of my room and light my house on fire but I couldn't. 1. It's Christmas and isn't it a tad disrespectful to light your house on fire instead of praising Jesus? 2. I didn't know if what I just saw was real or not. I was so deprived of sleep that it could have been just my mind playing tricks on me and it most likely was. After a few more seconds of lazily dozing off while standing up, I slapped myself awake and picked up my phone and jumped back down on the bed and resumed my mindless Internet journey.

   6:30 came by pretty quickly afterwards since there was nothing to do and the fact that I had given in and fell asleep for about an hour. Sleep is like an obsession for me; if I'm not doing it, I'm thinking about it.