Scared of the Dark

The Incident of August 3rd

"Alice! Breakfast will be ready soon." My sister Cassidy, with whom I shared an apartment called. I opened my eyes and sat up quickly, causing my vision to go dark and fuzzy for a few seconds. Proceeding getting dizzy I later back down in bed, confused and disoriented. When I finally realized I was not in my bed but tangled around my old baby blanket and my pillow on the ground, I got up "Just a sec!" My jet black hair was everywhere. I grabbed my green headband from my nightstand and pushed my hair out of my face. When I looked over I happened to see that my alarm clock read twelve o- twelve o clock?! I have to get up and eat and get dre- oh, right. Summer break. I have got to get that into my head already, it's been a week. I leaned over to my left with half of my body falling off of the bed, and opened the top drawer of my nightstand. Not even bothering to look at it, I moved my hand around until I felt the familiar journal I grabbed almost every morning and a pen. I pushed the drawer shut and leaned back against my headboard. I opened the black, white and silver notebook and wrote down everything I could remember from the dream, or nightmare, rather. I drew a few things I remembered as well, like the nightgown I was wearing. It was a grey-white color with long, kimono-like sleeves and frills at the bottom. It came up just above my knees. As I looked down at my detailed depiction of the gown I realized that my memory of my dreams were becoming more and more vivid since my usage of the dream diary. I was about half-way through the book by now. I've been using this thing for a few years now. I put little flag-stickies on special entries. I put different colors for different instances. Red was for nightmares. I had a bunch of those. Yellow were reoccurring dreams, or ones with similar images or events. Green was for lucid dreams. I loved those. You could do what ever you like in them. You have to.. well.. practice to get that sort of dream. I've been having more and more of them recently, though still not a very large amount. You basically realize you are dreaming and can control your environment and do things like fly. On last night's dream entry, I stuck a red flag. I also drew that case with the purple flowers to the best of my ability. I always made sure to write down my dreams if any right after waking up so I could capture the most detailed and accurate depiction of my dreams. Sometimes when I get bored, I flip through the stories and think about what might have happened if I hadn't woken up. But I didn't have time for that now. I put the journal away in the drawer and shut it. I then pushed the blankets off of my body and walked through the short hallway. Before even taking two steps I turned right into the kitchen, where I smelled bacon and heard sizzling on a pan. Thanking the heavens for my sister making bacon and eggs, I grabbed my "morning mug" which was big and had a cool prism on it which was splitting light into colors. "Hey Alice." she said, looking away from her flawless eggs. "Nightmare? You look...shaken." she said. "Yeah,"I said. "What's new?" She smiled. "Some spooky skellies and dogs wearing white sheets get you again?" She had that goofy smile on, like when your waiting for someone to trigger a prank you made. I elbowed her in the rib. "Hey! You should know better than to elbow the person making your breakfast." I chuckled. "Oh golly, What are you going to poison me with? Nightlock? I'll take my chances."I made myself my "coffee" which consisted of about 20% actual coffee, 10% sugar, 30% caramel, and 40% vanilla creamer. So, even if I didn't get enough energy from the actually coffee, all the sugar would get me going. I sat at the nook we had in the corner of the kitchen and waited for breakfast. When she was finally done, she set it down on the table along with her cup of orange juice. With some magical wonder, Cassy got through her day without coffee. I devoured the bacon and eggs, but Cassidy just ate half of her bacon and pushed her eggs around. Cassy's not eating her food? Yeah, something's up. "You alright there?" I asked. She didn't look up from her plate. "You don't reme- nevermind. I'm fine." she said. Im fine? Well, in girl language that means "I am most certainly not fine" What's up with her? Huh. "You know you can tell me anything, Cassy. I'm your sister." She still didn't look up from her eggs. "I'm full." she got up from her chair and put her plate near the sink. Before I knew it, she was off to her room. I decided that it wasn't good to push her, and let her have some time to herself. I finished my coffee and the couch after putting my plate in the sink and turning on the TV. I was watching some episode of The Walking Dead from season 4. Though in the back of my mind, I was a bit worried for Cassy. I wonder what was the matter? She was usually so bubbly and optimistic. I remember when we went on vacation last year and there was this high cliff you could jump off into the water. While I feared that I would splat and die on the water, she was going on about how it would be cool to pierce the water in a pencil dive. She even convinced me to dive. That trip was before we...no. I shook my head, dismissing the thought from my mind. I turned off the television. The episode had just ended, and I wasn't in the mood anymore. Suddenly, I heard a subtle, quiet sound. It took me a while to recognize my sister sobbing and hiccuping. I quickly rushed down the hall. I called for her as I approached her door and opened it."Cassy what's wro-" I saw her sitting on her bed holding the locket. I had forgotten that today was the anniversary of the incident five years ago.

We don't really remember what happened then, to be honest. What the two of us had come up with was that there was some kind of accident and our family, including our parent and brother Sam vanished off the face of the Earth. Nobody remembered them besides us, their accounts and id's had vanished without a trace, and we were only left with the most vague memories of them. Sometimes I feel like maybe they never existed in the first place, but if this was true Cassidy wouldn't remember them. The date of the incident however was the most clear part of it all; August 3rd.

Today though, the date slipped my mind. The locket she held was a cube containing a picture of a tree. It was strange but it was all that we had left that we knew for sure was our mother's. We woke up that day with that locket in our parents bedroom and nothing else. For now I sat with her on the bed and tried desperately to remember my family.