Shine ~ Guardians #1 (BEING REWRITTEN, MAY TAKE DOWN)

~II~

II

"AUNT RACHEL, I'M home!"I yell, softly kicking the door shut behind me.

Silence engulfs the two storey house that Rachel and I share. After a few minutes I notice that there's not a single light on. Where's Rachel?

"Rachel?"I call. There's no answer as I walk into the kitchen, placing my bag on the island counter."Rach? Are you here?"

I pull my iPhone out of my back pocket to check for any missed calls or new messages from her; nothing.

"What the..."I trail off when I see the bright yellow Post-It stuck to the fridge. There's a message scribble on it in my aunt's handwriting, shaky, like she'd written it in a hurry.

Juniper,

Please, don't burn the house down while I'm gone. No trying to make hot chocolate like last time; I don't feel like coming home to the stove on fire and you sleeping in the lounge room, blissfully unaware of !the danger you were in.

I got an urgent call from work and I'll be gone for a while, I'll be back tomorrow night at the latest.

Aside from not killing yourself and basically the whole street, neighbourhood and possible country, I have one more favour to ask you; please don't leave the house. Stay inside. Only leave if it's absolutely necessary or if Fox is with you.

I love you, Juniper.

Love, Rachel xxx

How odd. Rachel usually just says 'Had to go to work. I'll be back soon. Lots of love Rachel xxx'.

I sigh, crumpling the piece of paper in my hand.

If it were any other day, or night I guess, I would have called Fox to sleep over at my place like we always do when Rachel has to go to work on short notice. But alas, Foxy's mother is taking him out to dinner tonight to meet her new boyfriend - the third one this week. When he was eleven his parent got a divorce after years of constant fighting and Eli got full custody of Fox but still allows him to see his mother, Laura.

So instead of calling the one person I actually want to see, I'm going to go to my room, watch the Hangover trilogy, eat popcorn, chocolate, ice cream and basically stay up the whole night.

I pull off my shoes as I shuffle up the stairs to my room. Almost instinctively I cast a glance at the blue door on my left before quickly glancing away. No one has been in there for almost five years, and I know it's going to be a long time before either Rachel or I work up the guts to open the door again. It would be hard to see, all of his stuff still in there. When Chase left all he took was a small duffle bag of clothes, no more no less. I'd bet almost anything his unfinished homework from school is still sitting on his bed, with angry scribbles from where he didn't get one of the questions and I had had to help him with it.

My eyes start to burn at the memory so I quicken my pace to my room where I place the first Hangover into my DVD player and open my cupboard drawers, sifting through to find my favourite pair of pyjamas. After a few minutes of searching I find them and pull them out.

They used belonged to my mother. After my parents' disappearance Rachel gave me almost everything that had was my mum's.

As I stand there, pulling on the yellow pyjama shorts with purple dinosaurs chasing butterflies, I hear it.

There's a slow scraping, like in a horror movie, somewhere close outside.

The torturous scraping picks up speed, sounding like nails on a chalkboard and I grimace.