To No One in Particular

A wake up Call

Caspian

     Caspian woke up to the shifting of millions of small feet on the hallway floor. They all stepped in sync. They all walked in the same direction. Each pair of feet had a body and each body had a mouth that sang a song Caspian couldn’t quite make out the whole of. It was in a language Caspian didn't understand.
What he could make out was that it sounded like a wake up song. His mother used to sing one to him.  Every morning she would come into his room, switch on the lights, and chant “Good morning, good morning! You slept the whole night through. Good morning, good morning to you!”
It took him a few years to realize it was a parody version of “Good Morning” By Debbie Reynolds, but by then, Caspian hated the song. He never told her of course, never in a million years. Now, he found himself missing it. He found himself wondering where along the lines his mother’s voice was replaced with a screeching alarm clock who didn’t give two craps about him.
However, this wakeup call was different. Almost sinister sounding. Filled with promises made but never kept. It was almost like when you’ve fallen back asleep after your mother woke you up and you hear her coming up the stairs. So, rather than face her wrath, you sprint out of bed and pretend you were up sooner. The song made Caspian want to obey.
So he did.
He pulled on a clean shirt and threw the rest of his clothes in a pile on his bed. He yanked on the new pair of shoes he had found in his room, and didn’t bother to tie them.
The children chanted-
“Somnum mi, ne surgere.
Ad terram tenebrosa.
Semper sunt prope venire.
Ut movere ad certum est.
Fascinare fascinare fascinare fascinare
Fascinare fascinare
Cras denuo experiri.”
Caspian yanked the door open and burst into the hallway which fell into a deafening silence. There were no children. No voices. No shoes squeaking on the polished floors. Nothing.
Caspian turned to go back to his room to find two notes swinging from the door. One in a deep, blood red and the other on normal lined paper.
The more menacing one read:
“This place does not guarantee you are safe from us. We will never sleep. We are always watching.”
The second one read:
“Let you sleep in a little cause you were tired. Breakfast in the dining hall from 7:00-8:00 am. Take the stairs to the ground floor and walk across the garden to the pavilion with all the tables. Save you a seat! DON’T BE LATE! -Edmund”
Caspian shoved the second note deep in his pocket. He marched into Edmund’s dorm and crumpled the paper into a ball on Edmund’s pillow and kicked over his trash can just for extra measures.
Edmund didn’t have to be his friend, but him pretending to be nice to them was worse than Edmund just telling Caspian he hated him.
Caspian made his way to the pavilion, slamming Edmund’s door behind him.