nightmares

stairs

The girl often worried about her friends, since they were reckless and dumb. She often called them in the middle of the night and day, just because of a small bad feeling. Sometimes those feelings were right.

"Well, Cecilia told me she was just nervous. You know how she is." The person on the other side of the call spoke. The girl could vividly imagine her friend twirling her long black hair around her finger as they spoke to one another.

"I know, but I still can't stop worrying. Something tells me there's more about Cecilia going on." The girl said. "You know what, Gloria? Cecilia seems suspicious to me sometimes. I feel as if she's keeping things from us."

"Jesse! What's wrong with you?" The person on the phone yelled. "I can't believe you'd say that about her. Would you like someone saying behind your back that you give them bad vibes?" She sounded mad.

"Sorry," Jesse said and immediately hung up. "Screwed up again, you dumbass?" She mumbled to herself. Jesse walked down the hallway of her house and stopped beside a mirror. She couldn't smile. She couldn't lift her eyes from the depressing way they stared into themselves. She couldn't even try to pretend to not look like something was wrong with her. Something was wrong with her. That's what everybody said, except her friends. The statement wasn't completely true, Jesse wasn't always in a bad mood. During school, she seemed to just sulk half of the day.

She kept walking to the kitchen and got a glass of water. Jesse watched out the kitchen window at the street as she sipped the glass. She could've sworn that she saw someone standing in the shadows of the treeline. Jesse carefully dropped the now dirty glass into the sink and looked up to see the person was gone.

A knock on the window startled her. She looked around but didn't see anything that could've knocked on the window. The sound didn't even sound close. She slowly walked through the house as she heard more knocks, each one of them happening in the room she was in. Eventually, they led her to her bedroom. Jesse pulled back her curtains to see a small female deer outside in the front yard. The deer suddenly jerked its head in an unnatural motion towards the window. It's body faced away from the house, but its head looked at Jesse in the eye.

Jesse slowly backed away from the window. "W-what the hell..." She said in horror as the window was knocked on one more time. Then it was silent, for the rest of the day Jesse didn't see the deer or hear knocking again.

...

Jesse walked toward her school in the early morning, half an hour before school started at 7 a.m. Cecilia happily greeted her as Jesse walked past her house.

"Jesse! Good morning! Wait for me, so I can walk with you."

Jesse hesitantly stopped. She sat down on the curb and waited for Cecilia. Cecilia had been walking her mother's collie, dressed but with messy bed hair and flip-flops. Soon, Cecilia rushed back out the door, fully ready for school with her backpack slung over her left shoulder. She happily jogged over to the open garage and grabbed her bike. Cecilia was just happy to be able to spend some extra time with someone who didn't hate her. The two girls set off, Cecilia riding her bike as slow as she could without falling over to make sure she didn't get too far ahead of Jesse. The two went toward the school in silence for 10 minutes.

"I wish we had the convenience everyone else does of living a minute away from the school," Cecilia said with a small laugh.

Jesse nodded in agreement. "I have so much to do in the morning too."

"Like? I thought you just woke up at 6, got ready, and started walking the 20 minutes to school." Cecilia asked, curious about this mysterious morning routine that Jesse seemed to have.