May's Workshop Stories

Hard Truths

Stephanie was looking forward to her birthday so much so that she ended up waking up far earlier than she had planned. As she rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her vision and see if it was early enough for her to get up and get ready for the most exciting day in her life, for her eighteenth birthday.

However, when she opened her eyes, she saw a humanoid shape at the foot of her bed. No matter how many times she blinked to chase away the odd apparition, it seemed unaffected as it remained stubbornly there. It started rooting itself into her reality, proving that it wasn't a leftover of a nightmare she had had, the same one that woke her up so early.

"Are you excited about our birthday, today, sister?" a low whisper pronounced formally. "We will have a great time, won't we?"

At first, Stephanie was so shocked that all she could do was stare in horror at the silhouette that was slowly approaching her with measured steps. Her eyes were wide open, and her mouth was opening and closing like a fish out of water, too dry to do anything else.

Finally, as the figure clicked on her bedside lamp, Stephanie managed to escape her frozen state. Thus, as those steely blue eyes, so much like her own, stared at her in wonder, she gathered all the air she could and let out a piercing scream of pure horror.

The moment she did that, the figure of the young man about her age disintegrated into nothingness. The last thing to go was the sad look in his eyes.

"Mom! Dad!" Stephanie yelled, still not convinced that the specter wouldn't return, that it wouldn't cause her harm.

It took mere moments for her parents to rush into her room with their sleep hair and wild eyes, but the second they saw her distraught state, they rushed to her side, hugging her tightly.

"Are you okay, sweetheart? Did you have a nightmare?" Alice, her mother, asked.

"Did you see something unusual?" Henry, her father, asked as he scanned the room for any potential threats that would dare touch a hair on his little girl's head.

However, all Stephanie could do was shake in her parents' embrace, comforted by their warm embraces. Still, she was unable to retell the creepy occurrence that even she couldn't yet fully process.

"Why don't we go to the kitchen, and I'll make us some hot cocoa, and you can tell us what happened?" Alice said, gently stroking her daughter's hair. "How does that sound?"

Stephanie whispered a quiet agreement, and the three of them moved to the kitchen, where Alice busied herself preparing the comforting drink. It was a drink that had the power to chase away all the fears her little girl ever had.

When the cocoa was finally prepared according to Stephanie's preference, she started retelling them what had happened. Still, saying it out loud made it sound so much less possible than living through it was. She was in two minds to just tell them that it was just a nightmare, but something stopped her as she told them every little detail of what had occurred.

What Stephanie didn't expect was for both of her parents to go pale as they listened carefully to what she had to say. When Stephanie described the boy's eyes, she could have sworn she saw tears running down her mother's face before she quickly wiped them away.

"What's the matter? Am I going crazy?" Stephanie said as she lowered her cocoa on the coaster and observed her parents' odd reaction.

"No, no, of course not," Alice hurried to reassure her.

Yet, Stephanie was convinced that she was saying that just to make her feel better. After all, she knew that she didn't have a brother, that she never had one, so her whole hallucination made no sense.