Afraid (DISCONTINUED)

Prologue

5/13/18

You gently rubbed your thumb up and down on the page of your book, feeling the texture of its corner between your thumb and index finger. Your eyes carefully scrolled from side to side as you easily read down the page and onto the next.

You sat comfortably on the chair of your living room, one leg over the other and your elbow on the arm rest as you pressed your cheek to your knuckles. All the while, the book was balancing on your leg that was resting on the other.

Your eyes flew through the pages. Completely immersed in the book, you let reality slip from your fingers. As far as you knew, you were in that fictional world. Your living room no longer existed. The chair in which you sat was now forgotten. Instead, you saw a vast, empty field in a dark world. On the horizon rested only half of the large, yellow moon.

You looked towards the book's characters. You watched them converse, perfectly able to hear their voices in the way you believed them to sound. As they talked about their secret plans to find spiritual objects, a soft sigh was heard. However, it wasn't you nor the characters. In fact, it was much louder than any of the other surrounding noises.

Blinking back to reality, your eyes glanced over at the couch that was in front of you, and off to the right against the wall. You looked at the peaceful form of your sibling as they slept. To be honest, you grew worried for a second for you could've swore they weren't breathing. That, luckily, wasn't the case. Their breathing was just so shallow that only subtle movements were made.

You rolled your eyes as you thought back to your previous conversation with them, although it was more of a slight argument. You tried to reason with your sibling, telling them that Santa wouldn't come if they slept downstairs. However, no matter what you said, it simply flew right through their ear and out the other. They insisted on sleeping downstairs in the couch, so you let them be. Wasn't worth it, not with as stubborn a child as your sibling.

And it's not like your parents were there to tell them otherwise. They had left that morning, heading toward your aunt's house. They claimed that they needed to pick up the presents your aunt had gotten for you and your sibling, but you had your suspicions. You despised your aunt, and said feelings were very obviously reciprocated. You figured your parents were, instead, going to give your cousins the presents they had gotten for them.

Why they didn't just say that was unknown to you. Or, rather, they could've simply rephrased their claim. They could've just said that they were going to get your sibling's presents that your aunt had gotten for them. It's not like saying that would've hurt your feelings. Even your parents knew how your relationship was with her.

Nonetheless, they had asked you to come with them. They said it would be a quick stop. You actually wanted to go, simply to get out of the house for an hour or so, but you decided not as your parents had just given you an early present: the book in which you were now reading. Had you not gotten that early, you probably would've went.

Luckily, you hadn't gone. After an hour of being gone, the snow really began to pick up. The roads got super icy, and the snowflakes grew really big and puffy. The winds picked up and the snow fell faster. Eventually, you not only had to worry about slippery roads, but also the fact that you wouldn't be able to see anything by that point. And so, here you were, sitting inside the house that your parents never returned to.

Your aunt lived a little further north, and near a fairly large lake, might I add. That causes, you guessed it, lake effect snow. Compared to your house, located a little further south and by no means near any body of water, your aunt's town had extremely terrible winter weather conditions. They were snowed in only minutes after the snow and winds picked up.