Shadows in The Dark

Chapter 5

I woke up the next morning with a migraine and a cold. I throw on a wrinkled shirt and jeans and slowly made my way down the stairs.

Betsy ran into me and I stumbled backwards. “What the fuck watch it ugly,” she shouted then made a disgusted look when she looked me up and down. “What’s wrong with you, ugly?”

  Grumbled angrily, too sick to argue. I pushed past her and made my way to the kitchen coughing and sneezing. Auntie and uncle looked up from whatever they were eating when they heard me enter. “Oh Jaci are you not feeling good,” Auntie rushed to my side.

“Germs alert,” Betsy said as she walked into the pantry. Uncle fidgeted in his sit and grunted a few times. Uncle Ben had OCD and germs really set it off. I looked away from my germ freak uncle just before auntie shoved a thermometer in my mouth, I gagged.

She patted my head and searched the medicine cabinet for cold medicine. My grandparents walked in to the kitchen and did there morning rituals before noticing me.

“Sick are we,” Grandpa said before sipping his freshly made coffee.

I nodded, unable to talk around the thermometer in my mouth. The thermometer was snagged out my mouth and replaced by some disgusting medicine. “UGH,” I grimaced.

“Suck it up young one. Your body wouldn’t be in this state if you hadn’t acted the way you did,” Mama said. My eyes widened, how’d she know about yesterday’s incident. My brain was crashing, all my suspension thoughts vanished.

I just knew my body just wanted to sleep. Everything around me was a mass of colorful blurs and words had no meaning. Warmth surrounded me, lifting me up and away. Barely getting focus I saw I was in my bed and my worried family members hovering around me then darkness.

It’s foggy and the air holds certain suspense. I think I’m dreaming; I hope I am. A dark presence is within the fog that engulfs me. I shiver as a frigid wind whips past me all of the sudden. Someone shrieks somewhere off into the distance and I can’t help cowering in fear at the sound. The thick fog starts to open in the middle revealing a ghostly inhuman creature. Its movements aren’t quite ghoulish, but graceful.

As the creature closer its features started to become clearer. The creature had full curves and a tall slender figure, a girl. I vaguely recognized her raise her hand and with one swift motion disbanded the fog.

Stephanie. It was hard to comprehend that the quiet beautiful girl I meet yesterday could look so demonic and evil. She didn’t even look Hispanic anymore, but transparent like she didn’t have a definite race. Her eyes looked like a green explosion.

In the time it took me to blink she was inches away from me and pressing her ice cold fingers to my face whispering, “Prinţesă.” I was unable to move under her powerful gaze, to afraid to even try and struggle. “Calmul I tău de sine înseamnă nici un rău.” Stephanie raised a well arched eyebrow when I shivered in response. “You cannot understand me? So disappointing,” she frowned, “Very well in time you shall Princess. Don’t be frightened I’m just here to verify that your fine.”

I gulped and took a wobbly step back from her cloches. “Uh huh.”

Hands on her hips she spoke as if offend, “Do I distress you so. Is there no way of nourishing your useless fears. I am your ally.”

This so wasn’t the Stephanie I meet at school and even more so when she spoke. This Stephanie spoke weird and refined and her appearance was unnatural. As if she could hear my thoughts she answered as if I had spoken them aloud.

“I’m in my true form and not trying to camouflage myself in with humans.” Her hair is different too as I duly notice when she flicks it off her shoulders as if merely a hindrance.