The Phantom Spirits

The Unusual Routines of a "Phantom"

The sun bleeds through my blinds, hurting my light sensitive eyes. My eyes immediately flash open and stare into the intricate designs of my dark painted ceiling. My spirit animal, the cheetah, is the star of my painting, running through the middle of dark animal spirits. Since the news of every new spirit animal born in our family, we have a painter paint their animal on each of our ceilings. My family has always been different, peculiar, unusual... call it what you want, but it truly is special. Each child born into our family is blessed with the spirit of a different animal, once every few decades the second of a spirit animal will be born, but only ever a second, never a third. My sister, Alya, was named after her spirit animal, the serpent. We share similar traits with our spirit animals, for example, I can run faster than humanly possible because of the cheetah in me. My sister is stealthy and quiet. My mom is loud and tends to ramble, since her spirit is the parrot. My dad is alert and fast, since he is a falcon. Our physical features are similar also, my hair is dirty blonde, my sister's hair is light green, my mom's hair is red and my dad's hair is brown. The only downfall of this is that we can never show our eyes to anyone other than our own family. It is said to "hollow" out any human that looks into our eyes, so we are forced to wear contacts or pretend we are blind. Alya doesn't have to wear contacts, since her eyes are green and that's a natural color, so she has to close her eyes and pretend she can't see. It's hard for her, but it keeps everyone safe, including us. However, I can wear contacts, since my eyes are blazing yellow with spots of a cheetah. I chose the most normal color, so no one would ever notice. Hazel. We disguise ourselves with the most normal clothes, and the most normal appearances, but we are nothing normal at all. We are called "Phantoms", we are said to be myths, but only we know that we are real. Nobody has inquired about our family, we are used to masquerading as normal, and we always have been quite good at it. The price to pay, is if someone finds out, we turn into our spirit animal, so I would turn into a cheetah, and we couldn't turn back until they forgot. It is risky, so we hide ourselves. I thought I have been pretty good about acting normal, never looking directly at anyone, keeping quiet, speaking only when asked, but I guess I wasn't, because someone found out.