by Kim Cormack
“What did they say?” Derek whispered.
Owen whispered back, “I can’t understand them, there’s too much of an echo. Maybe it’s because I can’t see. I can’t focus in on only one of their voices.” The sound of something running at the door again crackled through the room. If she couldn’t understand them she was going to have to just tell them what she wanted and know that her words would not be able to be unheard by her classmates.
She ordered, “Destroy everything that tries to hurt me and save the others.” When she heard nothing in response, she decided to try a different approach. Owen whispered. “You know why I had to ignore you. If I was caught speaking to someone that wasn’t there, they would have put me back in the hospital.”
One echo free voice whispered, “We have always been on your side Owen. We will always do what's best for you. Do you trust us to do what's best for you now?”
Derek whispered, “What are they saying?”
Owen didn’t answer him back. She wanted the twenty or so poltergeist that had filled the other desks in the classroom to know they had her complete attention. “Yes, I trust you to do what's best for me. Do whatever you need to do.” Owen heard the cupboard door in front of her slide open. She tried to hold it closed but a large sliver of the wood from the door lodged in the palm of her hand. She didn't have time to react before she felt hands clutching at her throat. No! No! What was happening? No! She clawed at the phantom cutting off her oxygen supply. Please! No! Stop! She couldn’t do anything but try to squirm away. There was nowhere for her to go. She clawed at her neck, gasping for breath. Her eyes were burning…her brain was on fire and then... nothing.
For Reasons Unknown
The first thing she felt as her senses returned was a slow pulsating headache. She tried to sit up and smoked her head on the inside the cupboard. Owe, that sucked. She felt her neck. It was sore. Her memory began to return in fragments…She fell asleep in detention…they were locked in the classroom. Something was trying to get in so they hid. Someone was choking her. That was the last thing she remembered. Owen knocked on the particle board, “Derek... Derek, are you still in there? Only silence in response. She slid open the barrier between her and the unknown. She had to struggle to get out. She was all cramped from being in there. She could barely stand. How long had she been in that cupboard? As she regained her equilibrium, she noticed that the lights were on in the classroom and the windows were wide open. Had she dreamt that? Confused she raced to the window, prepared for the apocalypse she’d imagined outside. It appeared to be an ordinary day. No hordes of zombies as she’d envisioned. Owen glanced up at the clock. There was a round faded circle above the teacher's desk, marking the absence of the clock. She took in the spotlessly clean classroom. Derek had stood up for her. She remembered that…Owen walked to the back of the room and slid open the cupboard where Derek had been hiding. It was full of perfectly sorted papers and supplies. If it was a dream, why had she woken up in the cupboard? She walked across the room and pushed open the other one where Janice had been hiding. It was full of bins and stacks of paper. The floors were wet and smelled of orange scented cleaner. She opened the completely intact classroom door. The hallway was clean and vacant. What in the hell was going on? Owen strolled down the hallway to her locker and opened the lock. Her bag was sitting inside. She threw it over her shoulder and began to walk towards the main entrance. She wasn't sure what alternate universe she was in but she was going the hell home. She heard voices in the hallway and dove into the bathroom. She raced into a stall and locked the door. What time is it? What happened? Owen dug around in her bag and pulled out her cell phone. It was almost dead. There were a ton of messages from her mother. She only had time to see the clock clearly before the battery died. It said it was seven o'clock in the morning...The next day. She sat there for a moment just staring at the blank screen. While she was looking at the cell phone, she looked down at her hand. She had blood under her fingernails. She left her bag in the stall and bolted to the sink. She looked at her reflection in the mirror. She’d recently washed her hair. It was still damp. Her face had been scrubbed clean. She wasn't wearing the clothes she'd worn to school yesterday. She was wearing clothing that looked like they had been salvaged from the lost and found. She thoroughly washed her hands, running them under the hot water until her fingernails looked clean. She dried her hair under the hand dryer and messed it up a bit. Owen went back to her bag and rifled around until she found her black eyeliner. She quickly applied it. She had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. Guilt…she felt guilty. Owen stared at herself in the mirror until one of her regular visitors appeared behind her. “What did I do?” she whispered.
The vacant looking man behind her whispered, “Don't worry, we cleaned it up for you. Nobody will ever know.”
“I’ll know,” Owen whispered at the specter behind her in the mirror.
The image answered, “You always forget. You say the same thing every time. You will forget.” Her mind grew hazy. Her line of site wavered and her body crumpled to the floor.
Owen awoke on the bathroom tile, with a teacher shaking her saying, “Miss Steinberg, are you okay?”
She touched her throat. It was sore but covered by material. She had no idea what happened to her...She wanted to remember something but she knew the drill. She said the usual things, “If you want to call my mom that’s fine. I didn't eat breakfast. I've had a nasty flu. I should go home and eat something. Maybe I’ll try to get some sleep. I live across the street. It’s not far” She'd lost a day or two, many times before. She didn’t panic anymore.
The teacher said, “Have your mother write you a note, remember to bring it to the office tomorrow.”
She strolled out of the school into the sunshine feeling glorious freedom. She couldn't help but know it’s a strange reaction to simply leaving the school but she knew better than to overthink things. Owen walked across the street. She unlocked the door to her house and opened it, closing it quickly behind her. Her living room was full of the dead. She stood there, knowing it was time to stop fighting the inevitable. Owen met their eyes and asked, “What do you want me to do?”
One of the macabre looking beings rose to his feet and began to slowly clap his hands. Soon the others joined in and the applause grew too loud. Owen covered her ears and maneuvered through the group of the damned. She needed to get into her bedroom. She locked the door and backed up until she was against her bed. It occurred to her that a locked door wasn’t going to stop them, if they wanted to come in, they’d walk right through it. Owen sat down as she took her shoes and socks off. Normally, she would have taken off her shoes right at the front door but she was both confused and strangely honored by the overwhelming number of dead, squeezed into her small living room. This was her life and perhaps it was time she owned it. She sat there for a minute and thought about the boy that she’d despised for so long. She liked him now. He’d earned her respect by standing up for her, although she wished he’d stood up for her a little bit sooner. Where was he? She thought of her classroom with the missing clock and it felt like a cosmic joke. She was always missing time. She hopped up and walked to the bathroom. Owen stood in front of the mirror, knowing something had happened, she just couldn’t remember what it was. Perhaps, it was better if the details stayed buried. She needed a shower. Owen removed her clothing and turned on the tap, pulling back the shower curtains so she didn’t get a dose of water far before she was ready and drench the bathroom floor with the spray from the shower head. One might think it was strange to take a shower with a living room full of deceased guests waiting but this was normal for her. She was just happy to have a shower by herself. Just before she stepped into the shower she glanced in the mirror and froze. Her skin was caked in dried blood. Was this real? Was the blood real or was it another hallucination? She didn’t want to know. It would be better if she didn’t know. Owen stepped into the shower and closed her eyes under the spray, allowing the liquid forgi
veness to wash her sins away. She turned up the hot water and scrubbed her skin until it was red. What had she done? Had she killed them or was she just there? It was highly unlikely that her undead friends would tell her the truth. In this case, the truth wouldn’t set her free. It would likely destroy her. Was this her fault? She didn’t even know if the blood was real. Was it a ploy to keep her under thumb? She stepped out of the shower and the evidence was gone. Except her clothes. She had no idea what they’d done with her clothes. Were they at the school? She noticed the clothes she was wearing before she got into the shower were missing. One of them had been in here while she was naked…Awesome. She wrapped a towel around her body and wandered out of the washroom to her bedroom. Wonderful. Her room was full of the undead. It looked like she was having a morbid pajama party. She sighed but didn’t bother telling them to get the hell out of her room because she knew they wouldn’t listen. Why would they? She walked right through one of them to get to the clothes in her dresser. She’d never been able to get used to the icy sensation as she passed through one. Owen made eye contact with one of the boys that appeared to be around her age as she dropped her towel. His eyes widened and she smiled. Teenage ghost boys get embarrassed too. Good to know. She slipped on her clothes and wandered back to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Why was her toothbrush on the floor? She picked it up and chucked it out. Oral hygiene was something she never messed around with. She rifled around under the sink searching for a new toothbrush. She knew she had one. She found it and stood up. He was behind her in the mirror. Derek was behind her in the mirror. She whirled around. He was gone. She was alone…Owen raced back down the hall and spun around, searching her crowded bedroom for him but he wasn’t among the sea of morbid faces. Was he dead? She hesitantly enquired, “Derek…Are you here?” There was no response. Maybe she was just seeing things? She slowly made her way back to the bathroom as she struggled to get the toothbrush out of the plastic and cardboard wrap. Seriously. She was going to need the blood of a damn virgin to open this childproof packaging. Usually there were perforated marks on the cardboard in the back but not this toothbrush. Not frigging today. She closed the toilet seat lid and sat on top of it. She needed time alone, just a moment to clear her mind. Had she really seen Derek? If she’d had a part in whatever happened to him, wouldn’t she be feeling a flicker of remorse? She couldn’t tell what was real anymore. She chewed through the cardboard on the back and spat it into the garbage beside the toilet. Then she stood up, ran the brush under the stream of water coming from the tap and put some toothpaste on it. She brushed her teeth, spit, rinsed out the sink, then washed her face and fixed herself up. Good, now she was all cleaned up. Feeling ready to hear out her undead house guests, Owen opened her bedroom door and they were gone. What in the hell? She wandered out into the kitchen and then into the living room. They were gone? Where did they go? She sat down on the couch and turned on the T.V Where was her mom? She’d gotten a bunch of messages, hadn’t she? She grabbed her cell phone out of her backpack and wandered around trying to remember what she’d done with the charger. Where in the hell was it? Just for one day she wanted someone else to experience her life. She never knew what was going on or what had happened. She found her cord and plugged it in. There was nothing. Not one text from her mother. She’d seen them, hadn’t she? In the bathroom at the school there were a ton of them. She’d had a bunch of missed calls and now there was nothing. She texted her mom, ‘Are you at work?’ Then she plunked her butt down on the couch and grabbed the remote. Owen turned on the TV and the news was just starting. She was about to switch the channel when she heard the announcer say, “Happy Friday the Thirteenth.”
What? It’s Wednesday. It’s not Friday? It was Wednesday when she walked in the door this morning. Her cell phone started to play her mom’s song. She leapt up and grabbed it, but it went straight to voice mail. She called her mom’s number back.
A stranger answered, “Hello, I found this phone on the street. Somebody must have dropped it.”
What was happening to her? It was happening more often. It felt like she was always trying to piece together what happened during missing spurts of time. Owen politely questioned, “Where did you find the phone?”
The stranger replied, “I’m in the park just before the hiking trails.”
Her mother didn’t hike. This was highly suspect. Owen enquired, “Will you be there for a little while? I can come and get her cell. Maybe it was stolen?”
The voice replied, “I’m just about to take my dog for a walk. I’ll be around for a while.”
“I’ll have to walk so I’ll be there in about half an hour.” The voice on the phone agreed to stick around until she made it there. Owen slid on her running shoes. She noticed the blood stains on them, but didn’t have the time to worry about it. She’d obviously been in the presence of violence but she couldn’t remember what it was or when it had happened. She locked the front door behind her and began to walk towards the park. None of her dead frenemies were following her. Where had they gone and why? Why was her mother’s cell phone in the park? She began to walk faster…The roads were oddly quiet, not a car passed by. Not even the distant humming of a vehicle’s engine. There were no chirping birds on the power lines, or in the branches of the trees above her. There were always birds somewhere judging her, squawking their opinions. Was this real? She’d lost the ability to determine what was real and what was not. She passed a large over grown plot of city property and stopped walking. This was where she’d always gone to catch crickets and frogs as a child. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of nothing… Not a chirp. Not a ribbet. There was absolute silence. Owen took a deep breath as she continued to walk to the park. She slowed her pace as she came across three crow carcasses in her path. It was normal to come across one but three struck her as a little odd. A busy cat maybe? As she continued down the sidewalk, she noticed dozens of birds scattered on someone’s lawn. A bunch of cats? She froze for a moment as she counted the birds on the lawn. Thirty-one birds. What would do this? A pulse of some kind could disrupt a flock of birds in flight. Maybe someone poisoned a bird feeder or the water in a bird bath? She continued walking as her mind tried to explain each oddity away. There were no ants on the side walk…not one. She looked behind her. Nobody was there. Not a soul, quite literally.
When she arrived at the park it was empty. Usually it was full of dogs and their owners. There was always somebody playing fetch and the sound of children’s laughter coming from the swings. She wandered towards the trails opening. There was nobody there. Not a chirp of a bird or a buzz of a bumble bee. She dialed her mother’s number from her own cell phone. A song began to play in the grass close to the fountain. A shiver crept up her spine. Was someone watching her? Owen spun around. There was nobody there. She crouched down, picked up her mother’s phone and searched through the incoming and outgoing text messages. This was always helpful when she couldn’t recall the days before. They’d had many conversations over the last week; All calm and completely normal. ‘When do you get home tonight? What are you up to today?’ Owen scrolled through the conversations and then through the outgoing calls. She remembered the calls she’d seen from her mother on her cell after the night at the school. There was no record of her mother ever making those calls on her cell. She looked at her own and the record of the incoming calls was gone. Had that even happened? It was a strange feeling to be losing your mind. She looked at her shoes, the blood was still there. She sat down at the picnic table and her stomach began to grumble its repetitious song of discontent. She decided to walk to the diner where her mom worked. She could have something to eat and when she got there, she’d see that her mother was safe with her own two eyes, killing two birds figuratively with one stone. The roads were still completely empty and there were still no sounds of life, no children playing, not a vehicle on the road. As she passed the lawn that had been covered with dead birds only minutes before, they were gone…It occurred to her again that
this may be a dream. She heard a sound behind her and spun around just in time to dive out of the way. It was a man with hollow lifeless eyes and blood all over his face. She’d never been so happy to see one of the undead. They didn’t usually attempt to touch her. They usually followed her until she noticed them and then they began to speak but not this one. It made a second attempt to grab for her and she didn’t move. It was only a ghost. This wasn’t an unusual sight to see. She waited for the icy rush of air as it passed through her and instead solid hands clutched her arm. A shot of adrenaline raced through her. What in the hell? It yanked her towards him and she began to struggle, in her confusion. Its face was a mangled mess as its teeth snapped at her. It was trying to bite her. She booted it in the shin with everything she had, its leg snapped as it went down, letting her go for a second. She sprinted away, glancing back as it attempted to stand and when it couldn’t, it began crawling after her. This was new. She’d never felt one of her undead frenemies grab her before. You can’t break a ghost’s leg. She stopped running as she observed it struggling to make its way to her. She was dreaming. Now, she was certain about it. She shook her head, as she casually strolled back to the squirming figment of her imagination. It seriously wanted to eat her. She was obviously having a zombie dream. She should have known something was up when her undead group of stalkers was missing, because that never happens. She shook her head again and walked away from the writhing extremely creative illusion, clawing its way towards her on the cement. All she could hear was the groans of her imaginary assailant as she strolled away. Maybe she should just go home and get back into bed? She noticed someone else in the street with raggedy torn clothing staggering towards her. Her zombie dream wasn’t over even though she’d determined that she must be dreaming…Awesome. Even though she knew this wasn’t real she avoided it by speeding up her pace as it slowly hobbled after her. Owen was almost home but she opted to just keep going. She’d wake up eventually and she was having fun, now that she knew it was only a dream. The whole thing was probably just a nightmare. Why not wander across the street to check out her school during an imaginary zombie apocalypse? There were a few jerks she’d love to see the undead version of. She grinned as she shoved on the weighted doors of the school and strolled inside.