first day of school

A Story by yessica

Something is about to change.

The rain tapped on her window. Plop, plop, plop. Her head throbbed. The pattering rain was a reminder of the ache in her brain. She was convinced the sound should soothe her and lull her into a wondrous, blissful sleep. No, it simply poked its grubby finger at the bruises inside her head.

She should be in school, third period just about, not happy but at least busy. Instead, she was in bed agonizing over not being able to shut her damned mind off. The sound of the rain started becoming more and more excruciating, until it was a clear Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepp: incessant and unbearably annoying. Slurring out a “whadafuh” she jumped out of bed, her eyes suddenly smashed with blackness. “Shoot. I have to stop getting up so fast.” and stumbled barefoot out her bedroom door and across the chilly house.

“Jesus! Where is that coming from?” Kari mumbled, intimidated by the emptiness of her small house. Not fully awake she followed her ears into the dead center of the dwelling. At first she thought her father had left a landline unhinged, but the disturbance was from her parents room not the kitchen phone. She staggered through the open door, stroking the polished wood doorframe to make sure she was not dreaming. Peering across the dim room, she saw the phone was hung; the alarm clock however, would not shut up.

“Aha! Got you b*****d!” she victoriously announced to the grey clock while jabbing buttons. “That’s odd, the rents should be home, it’s 11:11.”

She rolled her eyes at her parent’s carelessness and turned to plop back into scattered dreams with little chance of real sleep, when the annoying sound pierced her ears again.

“What?” she whirled around and turned the clock off a second time, but it would simply ring over and over again. Louder each time.

“The hell!” Now she was starting to freak out. She unplugged it. But the dial kept teasing her with a bright red 11:11. She was about to scream and smash the thing when she remembered it had batteries.

“S-s-s**t” she cursed under her breath as she struggled to get her hands to stop shaking long enough to remove the batteries. The apparatus was finally dead, but the red display was burned into her memory. It was teasing her, she could feel the presence of the digits in the room like a being so concrete she could almost touch it.

“Ok now I’m f*****g insane. It’s official!” she threw the clock onto the bed and scampered to her room, diving headfirst under the covers and shutting her eyes. But even that wouldn’t shake the goose bumps that were creeping down her spine. She kept getting thoughts of how the code meant imminent change. She’d been hoping for change all summer, but this omen, on the first day of school that had to be cancelled due to a hurricane, this was just too weird and she didn’t want to deal with it. She stayed tense in her cool bed, her own body heat suffocating her. Her flight or fight instinct telling her to keep moving, but her legs too heavy to even try. She was paralyzed with fear, and she felt stupid about it, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that this change was not what she had in mind when she wished for it. “Damned superstitions” she choked out in sour morning breath. Then without realizing it she lost consciousness, falling into a peaceful sleep for the first time in four years.