Roulette (2)

Harper slammed the trunk a bit too hard after finishing putting her bags inside eliciting a loud yell from Miles. “I said be careful with my baby!”

            “Calm down, dude! Your ‘baby’ is fine!” Harper climbed into the front passenger seat happy that she didn’t have to sit in the back, for once. She glanced back at Miles and gave him the finger before sitting back and putting on her seatbelt. KayZee had already started driving away when Harper realized she forgot her favorite headphones. The cordless ones that were grey and had flashing blue lights on the ear cups. ‘Crap…Now I have to listen to Jenna talking shit about people at school.’

            Fortunately for Harper, Jenna pretended to be asleep almost the entire ride to the cabin, only giving herself away a couple of times when she started smiling. To be honest, she was loving the fact that Luka and Mateo were sitting close enough to each other. She kept waiting for them to start talking to each other, but it never happened. Mateo had fallen asleep only a few minutes after the group began their trip, and Luka had his earphones in listening to music the whole time. He must have been trying to avoid Mateo and just gotten bored, electing to continue playing his same favorite songs on repeat.

            “Uh…that’s no fun,” Jenna whispered to herself.

            “What isn’t?” Miles asked.

            Jenna glanced at Miles, suddenly getting the best idea shed ever had in her life. She quickly took out her phone opening the texting app. Miles stared at her confused. Jenna was shady sometimes, and apparently this was one of those times. Which meant Miles wasn’t going to like where this was going. Jenna furiously typed something into the text box, then stared blankly at the headrest in front of her, holding her phone tightly in her hands as they rested on her lap. Miles felt his phone vibrate. He never turned the ringer on. He got annoyed at the sound when he’d receive several Twitter notifications at once.

            Looking down at the screen, he read the text message that he’d gotten. It was from Jenna. ‘The fuck is she planning?’ he thought. The message read: “Let’s play Roulette”.

            Miles looked at Jenna, who was still acting as if she couldn’t turn her head to the left. His eyebrow raised involuntarily as he looked back down at his phone. By now, he knew not to say anything about this out loud. ‘What the hell is Roulette?’

            “I don’t have a revolver, Jen…” Miles sent his own message to Jenna who looked down and read it.

            Miles watched her Jenna type her response so quickly he wasn’t sure he’d be able to understand it when it reached his phone.

            “Not Russian Roulette. This is different. Its like truth or dare, without the dare.”

            “Where’s the fun in that?”

            “You have to ask a question and if someone knows the person is lying they figuratively take the bullet. I brought vodka, though. So, if someone gets called out they have to take a shot of Belvedere. All the fun you could ever want.” Jenna finished the message with a winking emoji which Miles stared at for a few minutes. He felt that it was weird for her to send the emoji when her face was so stoic.

            “You’re crazy…but it does sound like fun.” He felt a large smile spread across his face. He wasn’t sure what Jenna was up to, but there was alcohol involved. Any reason to party was good enough for him. And Miles loved to party.

***

            KayZee pulled into the driveway of her parents’ cabin, and everyone except for her was impressed at the beautiful building. The house stood two stories tall and was surrounded on all sides by huge, bare trees collecting snow on their branches. Harper wouldn’t stop talking about how much she loved the paint color; brown on the outside with white window and door frames, and shutters. The sun room built off to the side that didn’t get much use in the winter was also painted white. Mateo, thinking the walkout basement was the front entrance, walked directly towards one of the sliding glass doors.

            “Hey, KayZee! Why are your front doors made of glass? Isn’t that dangerous, or something?”

            “Because those aren’t the front doors!” Harper yelled. “Stupid…”

            “Oh…” Mateo picked up his bag and joined everyone else at the real front door as they funneled in.

            Harper grimaced at the mounted heads of a wolf, a buck, and a bear above the fireplace. She hated that people hunted animals for sport but understood the point of hunting for food. Even if she didn’t like it.

            “Uh…so, does your dad hunt, KayZee?” Harper asked, bumping into a wooden coffee table.

            “Nope. He just thought they looked cool, so his friend gave them to him,” KayZee replied. “My dad just likes to show off. Anyway, there are three bedrooms upstairs, two downstairs, and there’s a murphy bed in the basement. I’ll let you guys pick where you wanna sleep.”

            “Dibs on the basement!” Mateo said much too loudly before running off the wrong direction.

            “It’s the other way…” KayZee stated.

            Mateo ran across the room to the other side of the house where the stairs to the basement were. The lights were off, and even with the floor-to-ceiling windows, it was rather dark. He turned the light on, half expecting there to be a masked murderer standing at the base of the stairs with a bloody chainsaw. Of course, there wasn’t so Mateo walked down the stairs to check out the basement, excitedly pulling down the murphy bed and placing his bag on top of the mattress. Pulling the bed down revealed a shelf at the top of the large, wooden case that housed bed sheets.

            “This is awesome!” Mateo began to happily jump up and down. “It’s like Scooby-Doo! Without a secret room to get dragged into.”

            Miles stared in the direction of the basement stairs. “The funny thing is…he doesn’t like basements. He’ll probably end up sleeping on the couch,” He chuckled. ‘Or on the floor next to my bed.’

Shadow Man (Part 4)

“You believe me, now?” Jesse refused to take his eyes off of the large shadow creature.

            “Yup,” Olivia responded, her voice coming out higher pitched than it usually was.

            Jesse turned to his brother, “Not. A fucking. Word about this to Mom and Dad.”

            Izzy nodded his head, still looking shocked. He was initially going to run downstairs to tell someone, but Jesse made him rethink that idea. No one would believe a large shadow…thing was looking in through his older brother’s window. He’d sound like a little kid making up stories during playtime. On top of that, when Jesse told Izzy not to tell their parents, he looked a bit angry. The last time Izzy made Jesse mad, he cried himself to sleep two nights in a row because Jesse had convinced him he was adopted.

            “Okay, but Mom said we need to go downstairs…” Izzy said quietly, Olivia walking passed him to the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

            “Alright, then,” Jesse said calmly. “You go downstairs. I’ll wait for Olivia, we’ll be down in a minute. And remember: don’t tell anybody what you just saw.”
            Izzy looked back at the window and began to panic all over again. When Jesse saw the look on his face he turned to face the window, himself.

“What?” He asked.

The shadow man was gone. Jesse and Izzy shared looks of concern.

 “Where did it go?” Izzy started to shake the way he did when he got nervous.

“I don’t know. I kind of just does that sometimes.”

The younger boy stood quietly, taking in the new information, but having trouble processing it. “I’m…gonna go downstairs, now. I think it’d be best to be around more people.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot Mom invited a crap-ton of people.” Jesse sighed at the thought of having to socialize with his extended family. He didn’t like most of them. He didn’t even care much for his parents. If he didn’t have Izzy and Olivia, Jesse would have been sure he was a sociopath.

“Well, not a crap-ton. Only Aunt Isabella, and Minzy are downstairs, and…” Izzy trailed off.

For just a moment, Jesse remembered his younger cousin, Minzy, and how she didn’t look like either of her parents. But he sensed Izzy’s awkwardness, and stared at him, waiting for him to finish the sentence. When Izzy showed no signs of talking, Jesse responded with, “And, who else?”

“U-uncle Nick.” Izzy was beginning to lose his composure. It had been a long time since he gotten over his stutter, that Jesse’s heart broke realizing how scared his little brother was.

Jesse crosses the room toward Izzy. “Why don’t you hang out in your room for a while. You’ve already seen them, so I’ll just tell them you’re not feeling alright, and that you’re gonna take a nap.

Nodding, Izzy thanked his older brother, and walked back into his room. When he closed the door, Olivia opened the bathroom door with a blank stare on her face.

“You alright?” Jesse asked his friend. She had become a little pale.

“Yeah. Um, I’m gonna go home, if that’s alright.”

“Sure. Sorry you had to see that.”
            “Nah, it’s fine. Let me know if anything happens.”

Jesse nodded his head, hoping the shadow man didn’t follow her home. “Will do.” He smiled in an attempt to convince his best friend that things would be alright. Olivia smiled back at him, walked down the stairs with a cheery “Good bye!” to Jesse’s family as she left.

‘My turn, I guess,’ Jesse thought to himself as he descended the stairs and turned into the living room.

“It’s about time!” Jesse’s mother chastised him for taking so long to come down to greet his Aunt, Uncle, and cousin. “You almost missed your chance to see your baby cousin!”

Inwardly, Jesse chuckled. ‘She’s 4 months old. I’m sure she’ll be okay if I don’t say hi.’

“Sorry. Izzy was feeling kinda sick, so I told him to go to his room.”

“Really?” Jesse’s Dad asked. He was always the most concerned when it came to the kids being sick. “What’s wrong?”

“He just had a headache and was feeling nauseous. He’ll probably be fine, though.”

By this point, Jesse had become very used to paying attention to things in his peripheral vision. Because of this, he felt a nervous anger rise in him when he saw his Uncle Nick’s smirk stretch across his “annoying face”, as Izzy like to call it. ‘You always liked the young ones, didn’t you, pervy bastard?’ he laughed silently as he sat down on the couch furthest away from his Uncle.

“I’ll go check on him,” Jesse’s father placed his can of Coors Lite on the coffee table and stood up.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nick offered. “I’ll go see if he’s alright, and then I’ll be heading out. I’ve gotta get to work early, tomorrow.”

Shadow Man (Part 3)

The sound of the doorbell ringing sounded throughout the house, and Jesse sat up on his bed groaning. He hated that his parents invited so many people over to him now that he was back from the hospital. ‘Hopefully, not too many people are coming. All the really needed was a call from my parents that I’m not dead,’ he thought to himself.

Jesse looked up to see his younger brother standing at the top of the stairs, in front of Jesse’s open door. Izzy turned and looked at Jesse, “I don’t have to go down there, too, do I?”

“Boys! Come down, already!” their father’s voice came from downstairs.

“That answer you question?” Jesse asked, chuckling a bit at the timing.

“Yeah, yeah…”

To his surprise, the first person there was his friend, Olivia. She said a quick hello to Jesse’s parents, and turned to go up the stairs to Jesse’s room.

“Hey!” Jesse said happy to his best friend after his two weeks away.

Olivia nearly tackled Jesse when she ran over to hug him tightly. “You really are back!”

“Um, yeah. Didn’t my mom tell you?”

She did, but, I mean, you got hit by a car. A CAR!”

“Yeah, Liv. I was there,” Jesse laughed, grabbing Olivia’s hand. “Come on! I’ve got something to tell you!”

Jesse glanced up at his dad who was wiggling his eyebrows at his son, insinuating a romantic relationship between the two teenagers. Jesse glared at his dad before turning around and walking up the stairs. When he and Olivia got half-way up, they heard Jesse’s dad yell, “Use protection!”

“What?” Olivia was flustered. But not as much as Jesse whose face was almost the same color red as the shirt he was wearing.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s on drugs, or something,” he said trying to diffuse the situation. It didn’t help that they could hear Izzy laughing from downstairs.

The two entered Jesse’s room, and Olivia sat down on the bed, crossing her legs in front of her. Jesse closed the door behind him as quietly as possible. He didn’t want his mother yelling at him for closing the door with a girl in his room. Again.

“So…” Olivia started. “What’s so important that you couldn’t tell me over the phone, and you have to close your door like you broke into your own house?”

Jesse chuckled a bit, looking at the floor. He had only recently realized that he felt as if he was going crazy because of the shadows he’d been seeing.

“Maybe they shouldn’t have let me out of the hospital,” he said slowly.

“Why not? Are you still in pain, or something?” Olivia began to feel a sense of panic.

“No. I’m…seeing shadows, everywhere. Most of the time, they’re just in the corner of my eye, and they disappear when I try to look at them.”

“Yeah, they’re shadow figures,” Olivia stated as if everyone should know that fact.

“What? So, you’ve seen them, too?”

“Nope. But they’re scientifically proven to be caused by blind spots in the back of people’ eyes.”
            “Do they ever show up in front of you?”

“No, that’s pretty much impossible. Why?”

Jesse stared Olivia in her hazel eye, waiting for her to understand. He imagined the words to describe his situation in his head, and telepathically sending them to his best friend.

“You can see them…in front of you?” Liv said as if saying it too loudly would cause the world to collapse in on itself. And for Jesse, maybe it already had.

“Just twice. The second time, it knocked over my lamp,” he said pointing at the desk lamp lying on its’ side amidst a puddle of broken glass from the lightbulb. Jesse still hadn’t cleaned it up. Part of him was too afraid to go near it, thinking something invisible might pick it up and throw it into his face. But he also wanted proof, no matter how admittedly weak that proof was.

Olivia looked over to the lamp, and back at Jesse. “Are you sure you didn’t just bump into it?”

            “I’m sure, Liv,” tears began to pool in his eyes, and form trails down his cheeks. “You see why I don’t wanna tell anyone else?”
            “Yeah, I do. But, I don’t think you need to go back to the hospital. You’ve been through a traumatic incident. Just give yourself time to…I don’t know, get used to being home?”

            “I’m sorry I told you,” Jesse said, whipping the tears away. “I should’ve known nobody would be leave me.”

            “It’s not that I don’t believe you, but…” Olivia paused to think of something to say. “Yeah, actually, I don’t believe you.”

            Jesse felt a little shocked but tried not let her know that.

            “You’ve never lied to me, and I don’t think you’d start now. And if you were lying, I’m sure you say something that’s actually believable.”

            Olivia began to pace back and forth, thinking. She only stopped when she had come to a conclusion. “You may not be lying.”

            After what she had just tole him, Jesse was even more shocked to hear her say that.

            “I mean, there are reasons that people can see things that other people can’t. Maybe it’s a supernatural thing. Or, maybe getting hit by a car caused some type of mental illness.”

            Jesse didn’t like that idea. “I got hit by a car and now I’m crazy? Great.”

            “Mental illness and being crazy aren’t the same thing. Read a book.”

            “It’s right there,” Jesse pointed towards his window, behind Olivia. Not taking it too seriously, she turned to face the window. There it was, just outside the window. It looked like it was grabbing onto the frame of the window on the outside, looking in. Just as featureless as the other shadows. Or maybe this was the same one.

            “I have to pee,” Olivia said, not entirely sure if she was surprised or scared.

            The shadow person moved its head presumably in her direction when the door to Jesse’s bedroom opened.

            “Hey, guys. Mom said w—what the actual fuck is that?

New Schedule for Uploads!

Hey, Everyone!

Having deadlines makes me more likely to post on my Blog, so from now on there will be a new post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Each of those days will be dedicated to a different story.

Mondays: The Pits, Wednesdays: Shadow Figures, Fridays: What Happened on Mom's Birthday. When a story is finished I'll start posting a different story on one of those days.

Thanks to everyone who reads my blog! I'll try to stay as consistent as possible. If you want to stay updated, you can flow me on my blog, or on my twitter, the link for which is at the end of this update.

--GhostWriter

Link to my Twitter:
www.twitter.com/SeeYouInHell7