“What the- …Again?” I shouted into the darkness.
Ever since we moved into this new house, power outages have been happening every other week. I sat idly in my bed, looking around in irritation. At this point, the outages weren’t really a surprise, but I definitely didn’t look forward to them. I took my phone from my pocket and flicked the flashlight on. My room had gone pitch black, and if I hadn’t been living in that room for over 11 years, I would be lost in my own room, not knowing where a single thing is.
That’s the annoying thing about the dark, it represents the unknown, the unidentifiable, and it represents 5:15 PM during the winter. Yeah, I know, how pleasant. I creep toward the door, pulling my glasses off my nightstand as I did, and exit into my upstairs hallway, and I make my way downstairs. My house was pretty warm at the time. Because I was already tired, the warmth was kind of putting me to sleep. I was looking around, trying to adjust my eyes, when my sister, Gwen, walked up behind me and grabbed my arm.
“Gah!” I exclaimed as I pulled my arm away from her. She just burst out laughing.
“Gotcha!” She snickered, “...Somebody’s jumpy.”
“Jerk.” I grumbled
“Oh, so it’s okay when you do it, but not me?” Gwen continued to tease as she crossed her arms.
I pouted in the dark. Usually, I was the one pulling stunts, but I can’t stand the dark. And Gwen knows that better than anyone. Peering around the room, I realize my eyes have finally adjusted. I couldn’t believe I let her spook me like that.
“Well, it's funny when I do it,” I explained
We walked to the kitchen slowly, because despite my adjusted eyes, I didn’t want to run into anything.
“I can’t believe the power went out again.” Gwen mentioned. “You know, I talked to some of my friends at school, and none of them had problems with their power. It’s like we’re the only ones in the neighborhood with iffy power.”
“Mom said if Dad didn’t call someone, she was gonna fix it herself.” I added.
We both exchanged looks of doubt and broke into laughter.
I turned around and stepped forward, expecting to continue toward the fuses, but something stopped me.
My toe stubbed against the side of our island counter and I groaned as I fell to the ground.
“Whoa, are you okay?” Gwen asked.
“Yeah…” I whimpered through gritted teeth.
There was a slight pause and then she burst into laughter again.
“What? Seriously?” I croaked.
“You said you’re okay, so I’m allowed to laugh at you. It’s, like, rule 4 of being an older sibling.” she pointed out.
“Bleh… dumb rule. Younger sibling rule 4 is far better.” I replied snidely..
“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” she inquired.
“‘We inherit everything sooner or later’ I teased, holding up her supposedly lost lipstick
“Wh- You had it this whole time?!” she snapped, in shock
I rolled away and got to my feet. She snatched it out of my hand immediately. The moonlight began to peek from behind the clouds and shone through the windows, illuminating the house with dim blue light.
“I needed this, prick…” she murmured. She stuck her tongue out at me.
I rolled my eyes and carefully maneuvered around the kitchen island and opened the cabinet which revealed a plastic container of fuses.
I grabbed an extra fuse from the container and walked in the direction of my garage. We were starting to run out of spares, I probably needed to ask Dad to order more.
My sister and I walk in and begin the search for the fuse box. Usually one of our parents would do it but since they left for a business trip, we had to do it ourselves. I was skimming my hand along the wall to find the fuse box when I saw something shuffle in the dark. First glance: I thought it was just my sister. Second glance: It was not. There was someone- no, someTHING in the garage. Calmly, but also kinda freaking-out-ly, I grabbed my sister by the wrist and pulled her behind my dad’s workbench.
“What are yo-,” she started but I quickly cut her off.
“There’s something in here…” I whispered172Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoPEMyktum3
What am I doing!? There have been animals in the garage before, what's so different now? I slide out of hiding and take a nice look at what I’m up against. Kinda big, no ears on top of its head. It’s got a pretty long tail, curling in many different directions. Large teeth, definitely carnivorous. It had really effective camouflage for the dark, in fact, I can’t actually see any other distinguishable features on this thing. But, for only what seemed to be half a second, the lights flickered on, then went back to their usual pitch black. But that was all I needed. This… creature had dark, ripple-like spikes crawling down its back, a large white X on its jet black skin. But the thing that really lets me know something is up is that… well it had 4 eyes. Back to the hiding spot I go, I think to myself. My sister looks at me and even in the dark, I can tell she’s got a mildly annoyed look on her face.
“Well?” she whispered, “What is it?”
“I… I don’t know,” I reply nervously.
I could practically hear her roll her eyes.172Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrky5XLGrdV
“Jenny, if I look and there is just a spider dangling from a web somewhere, I’m gonna flip.”
She turned to see what I saw but it wasn’t there anymore.
She smacked her lips in annoyance, she probably thought I was scaring myself.
“Hand me the fuse, I’ll do it myself.” she said.
She stood up quickly and strolled over to the fusebox which actually wasn’t far.
“See? Nothing to wor-.”
Then, suddenly, the temperature dropped and something moved just a tad bit too fast for any human to see and Gwen was gone. The lights returned completely and I looked around quickly. Both the monster and Gwen had just vanished.
I gasped out of shock and then my brain couldn’t comprehend exactly what just happened.172Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQHE4K558A5
Admittedly, I started freakin’ out there. The last time I checked, my sister can’t teleport, so I was a little concerned about her “simultaneous disappearing.” I checked around downstairs because honestly, a part of me knew that there was no possible way that she was just gone. I went upstairs (which, by the way, is much easier with light) and stepped up to her door. But instead of an actual door with a “Keep Out!” sign, it was a portal. Almost like a tear or rip in space itself.
“What the…” I whispered to myself.
It’s like everything just decided to not make any sense anymore. I eyed it carefully, and as I looked, I noticed that there was something on the other side of the rift. I leaned in a little closer, curiously examining the strange fracture in space, and all of a sudden, I felt a force pull me in. It startled me and I dropped my phone. It pulled me right through the rift, headfirst to the other side. My mouth opened to scream, but the sound came out fizzy and weak. A weight fell over my head. The sensation was hard to describe. It felt like I was being pulled through a tight tunnel of static. My skin rubbed up against the fabric of reality for a moment as it yanked me into the other side of the rift. The pulling stopped suddenly and I realized I was on the other side. As I turned, right before I could properly react, the tear just closed behind me, as if it was never there. I turn around to realize that I'm in a… small cave. It was extremely dark and cold, but there was natural light beaming in from cracks up above, which allowed me to see in the dim area.
“G-Gwen?” I stuttered.
I was completely shook up, but I did notice something useful- A way out. A threshold on my right that led to the outside world. I immediately ran out of the dark cave and the first thing I saw absolutely shocked me… grass.
Wait, no, that came out wrong.
I meant blue grass.
172Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9uYzj4Bl8R
172Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡy17zMyWKOt
