Day One

        “You’re dead,” the screen that had kept Katy captivated for hours is now the same screen that is implying that she should get up and go do something. She exits the app, Relatives 2, a game in which you try to escape your crazy grandparents’ cabin in the woods by finding keys to the front door.

Katy sets her phone on the charger and goes downstairs to have dinner with her mom, Brandy. Ever since Katy’s father left for unknown reasons, her and her mom have had dinner with each other every Thursday night as a sort of compensation for his absence. Most Thursday night dinner conversations consist of how bad of a person Preston was for leaving us, this and that, and occasionally Brandy will ask how Katy’s day was. Today was one of those days.

“How was your day, Katy?”

“It was normal.” Katy replied blandly. “How was yours?”

“Different. It started last night when I had a dream about Preston coming back. At that point I woke up but was able to fall back asleep. Then in my second half of my dream there were a lot of people in an amphitheater and I was sitting next to Travis Scott. We ended up becoming good friends and he said I would be on the next album, even though I have never even considered rapping as a career. That part of the dream must have been inspired by Preston’s failing ‘rap career’.”

“Wow Mom, that’s a very quirky dream. You are very lucky that you remember your dreams. I hardly ever remember my dreams, and when I do remember them, it’s always the weird ones. I never get to remember the dreams where I get to go on a cruise with Zach Efron, or something like that. Well anyways, dinner was good, but I am very full. I’m going to go to my room for the night. Bye mom.” As Katy walked upstairs, she thought of how that Thursday night dinner was different from all the other ones. Mom seemed open to talk, yet nervous to actually say something. As if she wanted to hide something but didn’t want to show she had something to hide.

Katy opened the door to her room and saw the picture of her family when they were a family of three instead of a family of two, if you want to even call it that. The picture was taken when Katy was six years old and they were all in front of the Eiffel Tower. She didn’t remember much, but she remembered how happy her mom and dad were. She also remembered how Preston said he would never leave the family no matter the situation.

“I guess that was some bullshit,” Katy thought to herself, “I wish he could see the state of this family right now. How bad my mom needs him. How bad she is now without his love.” Katy decided to stop thinking so negative. She normally isn’t a pessimist but tonight was…. off. The dinner had seemed to mess with her mood a little bit. She decided to get some sleep to try to get out of the funk she was in.

Day Two

Katy woke up late in the afternoon due to the fact she had a hard time sleeping the night before. She had a dream about how her mom had killed her Dad and as soon as she turned around to kill her, Katy woke up. Katy went downstairs to get some late afternoon breakfast, and her mom was coincidentally making pancakes and bacon, the exact meal Katy was thinking of as she walked downstairs.

“Good morning Katy, khdgvjlhscphhh jhjpsdfo?” Brandy said. The last part of her sentence sounded like gibberish as the facial expression on her face stayed the same. It’s almost as if the writer’s cat walked on the keyboard as he was writing that sentence.

“Excuse me mom? Can you repeat the last part of that sentence?”

“Could you not hear me? Idjvpozj89dugj. I said how did you sleep?”

“Uhhhh… Good. What about you?”

“Kjsoihefdbsfiu ldsh80eoisnejds. Ue8fy8ce0iohfnuyas89ihdsfilkh79ciujba;ode=0uwdobsmsbziyshlsa c7a9stgbfljas ksaapknsois.” Katy’s head was spinning at this point. She had no idea what reality she was in. She took the food and went back to her room speechless. The minute she finished eating, Katy passed out in her bean bag chair that is in her room.

She woke up to a door creeping open and footsteps slowly getting closer and closer. When she opened her eyes, her mom was standing over her with a balled up t-shirt in her hand.

“Hey mom, what’s up?” Katy said startled. She waited for a reply but all she saw was a blank expression in her mom’s face and a mouth cracked open just enough to see her tongue.

“Um, Mom? You good?”

“I’m so sorry Katy. I’m so, so sorry for this.” Brandy mumbled. The sky was dark, so that meant it was official that Katy had slept through the whole day five days in a row now.

Brandy, without moving any other part of her body, turned around and walked out the door. Katy was spooked by this. So to cope with this experience, she decided to hop on Relatives 2 to ease her mind. She played this all the way until two am when she finally passed out.

Day three

Katy woke up early with a splitting headache. She stumbled downstairs to get some headache meds and go back to lay in bed. She took the pills then went back to her room. As she rounded the turn to go down the hallway into her room, she saw a shadowy figure standing in Brandy and Preston’s old room. It didn’t look like Brandy though, it was a tall, bulky man with no hair. Katy rubbed her eyes and the figure had disappeared. She went in her room to play Relatives 2 for the remainder of the day.

She was on level three, which meant she had been caught three times by the grandparents already. One more and she would have to restart all her progress. Moments later, she died again and she entered a cutscene in which both of the grandparents were setting her up for a beheading. Moments later, her head was rolling on the floor in front of the grandparents. They both look at the head, and then simultaneously look at the camera, then it goes black. Katy tried and tried again all day until she couldn’t do it anymore and she went to bed early.

Day four

Katy woke up and dragged herself out of bed at a ripe time of 10:00 am. She peeked in Brandy’s room to find her laying face down on her bed with no blanket on, in full clothes. She gently closed the door and started walking down the hallway. She thought to herself, “Who in their right mind sleeps like that? She has been acting really weird lately.” About three seconds later she heard distant screaming coming from her mother’s room along with fiery lights coming out from the bottom.

“Oh hell naw. I have seen this in the movies before. This part is when the main character dies over some stupid stuff. I’m out of here.” Katy said as she went downstairs to make herself some breakfast.

She was feeling like some pancakes and bacon, but her mom wasn’t awake and she always made them the best. So she decided to pour herself some cereal. She really liked the Oreo bites cereal with milk. That were the best option when pancakes and bacon weren’t an option. So she poured a bowl of that and went back to her room to watch Netflix. She really enjoys horror movies, her favorite one right now is called Family. It’s about a family that gets possessed by a demon and goes crazy and kills each other.

As soon as this happens in the movie, she hears a loud bang from outside her room and looks up from her laptop. The previously closed door is wide open and has that T-shirt Mom had been holding the other day in the door frame. Katy got up to see the balled up shirt and felt something inside it. She picked up the shirt and a bloodied knife fell out of it. Along with that, there was a note on the shirt that read, “He dead, she dead. In your future, you will experience a behead.”

Katy did not like the sound of that at all, but also did not want to ask her mom about it because of the way she had been acting lately. She knows from the movies that when weird stuff starts happening, they are normally possessed by a demon, or Mom is secretly a robot and is short circuiting. She resumed her movie to try to take her mind off of what had just happened. By the end of the day, she had completed the movie for the seventh time. After a long day off doing nothing and talking to nobody, she was exhausted and needed a good night’s sleep. As she dozed off, she heard in the back of her head what sounded to be like the screams of hell. Not enough to keep her from falling asleep though, as she was out like a light in about 15 minutes.

Day Five

Katy woke up as the sun was barely up, her phone clock reading 4:55 am. As she adjusts to the current light, she sees her mom floating in the doorway with the same knife from yesterday. It took Katy a minute to process the situation before being able to say anything or even being able to scream.

“I killed him and I will kill you too.” Brandy said in Preston’s voice.

“Ahhh.. I’m dead aren’t I?” Katy said to the reader. “This some demon shit from the movies.”

Katy’s demon- infused mom dashed over to where Katy was laying down and swiftly beheaded her with the steak knife, then proceeded to disappear. The house was left empty. Not a rat in the walls or a pet wandering the halls. The only thing left in the house was the memories of Katy and Brandy of Thursday night dinner.