Scary Story
By Mackenzie Brown
I couldn’t hear him. I remember running frantically through brambles and mud, getting dirty and bloody but crying so hard that I didn't notice at first. I remember screaming his name, “Alex! Alex! It’s Franny! Where are you?!” And I remember tripping over something. And my breath catching in my throat. And being too afraid to get up and look back. He was so small. I thought it was a log or maybe a big rock but not an animal because it wasn't moving. I pushed myself up, shaking, vision blurry and arms trembling. Then I stood there, looking into the distance, the sun shining down, grass and leaves glistening from the rain last night like street lights fading in and out as the forest canopy blew in the wind. And for a quick moment, very far away, I thought I saw a flash of yellow reflecting off the top of his little blonde mop of hair. And a shiver passed through me as I blinked and tried to steady my gaze where he had been but was no longer. When I finally turned my head just enough to see out of the corner of my eye, all I remember was the hunter green of his raincoat and the blue of his shark rain boots and the yellow of his hair, flat on the ground.
The police came to ask us questions about why he would have gone out so late on his own. And about when we had last seen him. They said I should be glad I did not turn around and see his condition. They said I wouldn't have recognized my own brother. And it makes me feel, even now, like maybe I should have, like maybe I owed it to him because I didn't stop him from going in the first place. I feel like it was my fault he died.
For nights I lay awake, unable to shut my eyes because I could see his little body face down in the dirt and his hair matted and wet and I would jolt up, screaming. But eventually the dreams went away and for a month or two long after it happened I could get to sleep for a few hours at a time without the guilt eating me awake. That was, until the night I stopped dreaming and I started seeing. Seeing things that were real but felt like dreams.
I woke up in the middle of the night, something I had become used to. To cope I just stare into my ceiling and lay there until my eyelids become heavy. I try not to think about anything at all. But I felt it, the sickness swelling in me, and the furious tears stinging in my eyes. Then the flashes came. Yellow hair. Blue boots. Green coat. Yellow hair. Blue boots. Green coat. Wouldn't even recognize him. My own brother. Didn't want to see his condition. Yellow hair. Blue boots. Green coat. I could see him, the forest eating him up. I had nightmares like this before but this was different. My eyes were wide open and the tears were streaming all around my face and I was trembling because I was awake. But I was seeing him. And then I heard him.
“I kept yelling for you, Franny, but you ran right past me. You pushed me. And I fell. You didn't help me, Franny. Why? Did I do something wrong?” He was standing at the foot of my bed, eyes teary, yellow hair gleaming in the moonlight from my open window. “NO!” I shrieked and shot up and reached out for him. “NO! It was me! It was all my fault, I’m sorry!” But right before I could wrap my arms around him he was gone.
I looked down at the edge of my bed and he had collapsed onto the floor face down, and there was rain coming from nowhere and he was all wet and he was sinking into the floor. I cried out again. My parents burst into my room.
That’s how they found me, “in shock.” Staring at the ceiling lying in my bed but shrieking through closed lips and crying desperately. They said I was having a fit of violent tremors. And it never stopped. I would see the yellow hair, the blue boots, the green coat then suddenly I would be gasping for air, screeching as loud as I could with my mouth shut tight and writhing. They said it was a sleep disorder but I was not asleep. And I was not lying still. I was running through the drenched forest calling out for him and seeing him right in front of me then behind a nearby tree then sinking into the forest floor then behind me. And I was always too late.
Winner of the Highpoint Scary Short Story Contest, Halloween 2018!
The Notes A Heart Writes
By Rachel Miller
Sometimes, I like to write notes. They’re short. Small. A few scratches of pencil on paper that falls behind my desk or under the sheets in my bed. They don’t mean much, but within the faint indents and behind the inconsequential words, something deeper hides.
Small scraps of paper filling my pockets, I wander down halls and corridors. I see friends, standing together and laughing. Right now, I could take out a pencil, write down a few words and move on. But, I have time tonight, as I do most nights, and the pencil and paper don’t leave my pockets and I don’t move on down the darkened corridors.
Spring and summer pass and as September starts, notes start to replace words I wish I’d said, people I wish I’d seen, and things I wish I’d done. They fall out of my pockets wherever I go and cling to my ankles and stick to the bottom of my shoes as I walk. I pass friends in hallways, talking and laughing, but all the words that come out of me are from my notes and I keep walking.
I walk further down the hallway, then up and up to the second, third, fourth floors, notes following me in a long trail behind me. When I reach a room and I sit down, I read my books, do my work, all the while writing notes between algebra and citations.
People glance at these notes, but they don’t see them like I do. They see them as excuses. Their cries for the work to end, the books to burn, to live life as it comes instead of constantly searching for the future falls on deaf ears. Instead, they tell me to keep working. That this is when it counts. The books, the calculators they gesture to, those are what “counts”, not some silly notes.
At home, I pass my family and notes drop off of my shoes and onto the carpeting. That autumn, as events occur, fun is shared, and bonds are strengthened, notes begin to fill the places I once stood.
As autumn turns to winter, the notes begin to stick to my skin as I walk. They’ve reached my shins now and, as I pick up my pencils and books, I can see them out of the corner of my eye, shifting up my legs all the while.
I don’t really control them anymore, and instead, they’ve begun to write themselves, filling in blank spaces between lines with forgotten hopes, crushed dreams, and broken promises. I glance at them every now and then between glances away from a keyboard and its computer.
It’s getting harder to walk now, with them growing on their own. They’ve grown in the wrong ways and for hours, even days at a time, their sticky backs cling to the tiled surfaces of hallways, leaving me trapped in place as time seems to move on without me.
As winter trudges on, I begin to fear that one day, I’ll be stuck. Covered in notes that have crept up my body as I locked myself away, replacing words, actions, and emotions with silly slips of pink and yellow paper.
I wrote what I wished I could do if I had the time, the opportunity, the ability. If I could tear myself away from my future and focus on the now. If I could live life like it’s meant to be.
But, I wrote those words for a reason. There’s a reason they went unsaid, un-acted, un-lived. Who says I want to focus on the now? If others wanted me to focus on the now? Really, the now really doesn’t seem to matter. Right now, the only thing that seems like it matters is the future.
But, as the notes consume me, I must confess. Sometimes, late at night, between the notes covering my mouth, I wonder aloud, “will I even have a future?”