One Week in June | ONC2020

June 7th 1:51 PM

"So you went under the water and the next minute the world was frozen?" Officer Taylor asks for the fifteenth million time since I started explaining what happened.

"Yes, and they were alive when I went under, but when I resurfaced everyone was dead." I'm past being frustrated at this point. Having to rehash my friends' deaths over and over has started making me numb to the fact that they're actually gone.

"And you didn't see the dark shadowy demon figure until after the world turned into something from Frozen?"

"Yes. If it was there before that point I didn't notice it. I was more preoccupied with enjoying my vacation."

"Were your friends perhaps trying to make you unwind and bit more than you intended to?" She hints at something that I'm not picking up on. "Could one of your friends slipped you something that might have made you hallucinate?"

"First off, no. They would never do that. They know how anti-drug I am and would never make me take something unknowingly. Second, do you think that I just hallucinated the frostbite and wounds all over my body? I'm not a big fan of having my body in pain?" I huff and cross my arms over my chest. As if to prove a point, a sharp pain instantly runs across the parts of my arms that were in contact with the frozen dock when I was curled up on it and I quickly unfurl my arms to let them hang by my side.

"It just doesn't add up, Reia." Officer Taylor reaches out and places her hand on mine. "Try seeing it from my point of view, a young girl calls the police claiming that there was a death on a lake that has never seen such atrocities, she's completely covered in injuries and raving on about some snowy winter scene she's just narrowly escaped from, and once the police arrive there are no bodies of the deceased or remnants of the snow." She shakes her head with disappointment as she stands up and pulls on her sunglasses, readying herself to leave.

"So that's it?" I stand up a little too quickly on my aching feet and have to catch myself on the railing to avoid tumbling back to the ground. "You're not going to help me find my friends?" A wave of panic washes over me as she doesn't respond.

After a few minutes of flipping through the notes she's taken, Officer Taylor finally replies, "The best I can do for you is contact you in forty-eight hours and see if your friends are still missing, then I can file a missing person's case for them. But until then, Kepnick PD isn't going to be able to help you unless a body surfaces. No body, no crime." She shrugs slightly and leaves me on the back patio alone.

"They're dead!" I scream after her, trying my best to walk, but the wooden patio is too much for my tender bare feet. I crumble to the ground and the wind is knocked out of my chest. With a final push, I desperately yell to try to keep her here, "Please, you have to believe me! They're somewhere in the lake!"

"I'll see you in two days Miss Marlow." I hear her say as she closes the door to her police cruiser and tears out of the dirt parking lot at the front of the lake house. I break into tears for the first time since all this chaos has unfolded. I cry for my friends who have no one looking for their bodies, I cry for myself and that fact that I'm now left alone in the world where my favorite people have been ripped away from me, and I cry out of anger for ever bringing my friends here in the first place. If I had listened to my Mom's warnings then none of this would have happened. I was so worried about maintaining traditions before life and obligations tore us apart that I ignored the clear red flags that my mother was trying to convey.

I sit up and wipe the tears off my cheeks as I furrow my brow in confusion. How did my mother know something was wrong? Why was she so adamant that we spend the summer trip at home for some sort of staycation? Did she know something bad was going to happen? That thought sends another shiver of fear and anger down my spine. What else does my Mom know that she's not telling me?

I muscle my way up to my tender feet and slowly make my way back inside the lake house. I could spend my day sitting on the edge of the porch wondering what's going on, or I could get ready for my Mom to arrive in the next hour. I called her right after the police and without hesitation she dropped what she was doing to drive the two hours to Lake Kepnick. I check the clock as I hobble into the living room and plop down onto the nearest couch. I groan out in a mixture of pain and relief. I never noticed how plush the couches in this house are, but I'm grateful to whichever relative chipped in a little extra to make sure these things were soft and comfortable.

Mom shouldn't be more than an hour getting here which is just enough time for me to take a nap. I yawn and curl up into the soft fabric underneath me as I close my eyes. Within minutes I'm out like a light, having left the whole house unlocked for my Mom to easily get in, but deep down I'm still holding onto the hope that my friends might just be playing an elaborate prank on me and they'll all come bursting through the doors any minute now.

In my dream, I'm back swimming in the lake. The warm water lapping up against my bare skin as I glide through the water effortlessly. My friends are playing off in the distance, splashing and laughing in the summer lake water as I slowly start making my way over towards them. However, the more I try to propel myself further in the direction of my friends, the harder the water resists against me until it feels like there's a rapid-like current pushing me further and further into the middle of the lake.

I scream out for their help but when my friends turn their faces towards me they have the same frozen, horrified looks that they did when they died in the lake. With gaping mouths, they all start screaming for help along with me. Their panicked and pained sounds creep into my bones and vibrates through my whole being.

I turn away from them trying to make a break for the other side of the lake, but I can feel hands gab onto my legs and start to drag me down to the bottom of my lake. Before my head fully submerges under the water I spot the same dark, shadowy figure floating above the water and it's headed right towards me. The closer it gets, the more clearly I can start to see its features. It's not actually an it but rather a she. Her long hair streams down in black tendrils all the way to her ankles, some parts of her grey face are being covered by the obsidian strands and as they move with the wind I can see her face is in the same, mortified expression that my friends wear. Her charcoal black eyes burn with anger as she leans in closer to me, my mouth gasping for air just below the surface of the water. She whispers just a few simple words that send shivers down my spine as the hands clenching onto my ankles drag me down to the bottom of the lake.

"It's not over yet."