Chapter Four: Arual turns into a monster (This chapter is in Lesley’s point of view)
I was sitting on the sofa reading an abridged version of The War of the Worlds when Alexandra burst in. She and Minerva are best of friends. Maybe I should tell you who Minerva is first. Minerva is my fifteen year old sister. She and Alexandra are weird. They go somewhere every other day and giggle a lot. They spend more than two hours on the phone, too. Well, that’s one thing. They love talking. Whether it be using the phone or just face-to-face, they love talking. I think they could win a prize! Alexandra is okay (I think she likes me), even though we don’t talk much to each other. Minerva calls her Ally. That’s her nickname. Today, at least right now, we (I and Minerva) were in the living room. I am (as you already know) reading and abridged version of The War of the Worlds, while Minerva was reading fashion magazine. Our parents had gone out. Then, the door opened, and Alexandra slipped in, looking for all the world like somebody had died.
“What are you so angry about?” asked Minerva, flipping a page nonchalantly.
“I can’t believe it,” grumbled Alexandra. “You forgot! Today’s my birthday!”
“Really?”
“No! It’s the President’s birthday, whaddya think?”
“Really?”
“No, I’m forgetting. Not nice, is it?”
“Hey, I’m sorry.”
“Okay. Are we going to stay in here?”
“No. What about a pizza?”
“Fine by me,” said Alexandra, poking about in her pockets for extra change.
“That’s great,” said Minerva, and they ran out of the door, slamming it behind them.
See? That’s a pretty good example of how they are usually. Well, after a little while, I got bored of the version of The War of the Worlds that I had, so I thought of reading Sophie’s diary. I know that you must have thought I must have gotten bored of reading thick and dusty volumes like Sophie’s diary, but you are wrong. I opened the book and leafed through the pages till I found out the part in the book I was in.
April 2nd
I have got great news to tell you, today we put our plan into action and guess what, and it worked! We have reached our goal, we have got the ball! Everybody was rejoicing today and we had something that resembled a festival, the only problem was, we were not going to waste the food in our celebration. Tomorrow we are going to lay the circle. The circle is mainly the leaders sitting together in a circle. Inside the circle, the ball will be kept. Then, all together the leaders will tell the ball what we need. Then…nobody really knows what will happen, so I can’t really say anything. We have everything in mind.
Yours happily,
Sophie
I looked at the page. Guess that the book really had a happy ending. The only thing I am really surprised is, that couldn’t be a happy ending, because it wasn’t an ending at all. There are plenty of pages left, and they were all filled in with writing! I was about to turn the page when suddenly, there was a noise outside.
I got out. It sounded like a cat had fallen out of the window and had started to drown in a well or something because there was a shriek and a splash involved in it. But, that was partly not possible because for one thing, we didn’t have a well and second of all, there weren’t any cats near our building too. I opened our door and walked outside into the corridor. I went down the stairs and I ran into the lobby. I opened the main doors and went outside, on to the pavement.
It was a really hot and humid day, today. There were hot winds blowing and I missed our air-conditioned living room. I looked outside. There weren’t any cats or wells, like I had mentioned. There wasn’t anybody outside. Not even Mr. Sanders. Mr. Sanders was our next door neighbor. His flat was on the left of our flat. He was an accountant. He was bald. He usually wore an orange checked shirt, an orange tie and an orange pair of pants. In all, you could say that he loved the color orange. He usually hung outside, in his deckchair slurping orange juice like usual on Saturdays. Today was a Saturday and all, but there was no Mr. Sanders drinking orange juice outside. That was awkward.
Our other neighbor on the right, was a middle-aged woman called Arual, I know, I know, strange name. She wasn’t all that bad, but she was quite crabby when you annoyed her. And she got annoyed very easily. I wasn’t allowed to run around outside in our corridor, I wasn’t allowed to make any noise, I wasn’t allowed to knock on the walls, and today she came and complained that I was making too much noise and I wasn’t even speaking! She was going way too unfair. And the really, annoying thing is, she never gets annoyed whenever Minerva’s friend Ally comes to chat, Arual never shouted at them! She had just sort of moved to our building a month ago. I had hoped that she wouldn’t become our neighbor forever after the first few days. That would be horrible.
Arual always wore black. She had short, black and sort of greasy hair. You could call her hair greasy because it always stuck to her head, and if she bended sown to pick something, her hair always stuck to her neck and head. It never came down and touch her hand.
Yeah, as I was saying, there was no body outside. Suddenly, I felt cold. It was freezing! I shivered. There were some cold winds blowing. Now that was awkward. In the middle of the summer? That was strange. I was about to turn around to go up and into my flat, when I suddenly saw something through the corner of my eye. Like a person! I think he or she was wearing a cloak because, I could hear a swishing noise and something flowing behind him or her. I looked. There was nobody there now. The pavement was bare and empty and there was nobody else, except me. This was getting creepy. Maybe I should go back to my flat. So I turned around and went up. This time, I didn’t see any really, strange person with a cloak. Thank goodness.
I was in the lobby, when I noticed that Arual was standing there. She was wearing something that looked like a long plain gown. Oh, yeah! It was a long robe. But, why would she want to wear a robe? That wasn’t Arual. There was something strange about the robe. It was plain white. It looked like it was made from silk. There wasn’t a stain for it, which was quite surprising for me, because, I am very clumsy, and most of the eatable items I drop, usually fall on my clothes.
Arual looked at me in a strange way. She looked at me like she knew why I was there; why I was standing there looking at her. She then did something strange. She raised her right hand, closed her eyes and muttered something under her breath. I didn’t understand what she was doing. Then, I felt all the air knock out of my body. I fell down on my back. What had Arual done to me? It wasn’t anything human, that was for sure because, she had just knocked the air out of me without even punching or hitting me!
I was starting to feel scared now. Arual was walking slowly towards me. Something told me that, when Arual reached me, something more painful would happen. I had to find a way out of here fast! Now, she was only ten feet away from me. This was hopeless. No one could save me now. Suddenly, I noticed something that scared me at night, a long time after this incident.
Arual started to change. Her robe began to tear. Her hands and feet began to swell, her body started to become larger and fatter. Her whole body started to become green and grotesque. Then small holes started to appear and they began to ooze green stuff. And her face was horrible. Her eyes became long and bulged in their sockets. Her mouth became fatter and turned purple. Her nose got squished. Her teeth turned into fangs. Her chin bulged. Her cheeks became longer like loose bits of skin and drooped down. All in all, I couldn’t recognize her anymore.
She lunged forwards. I ducked and ran to the other side of the main desk. I had hoped that the monster wouldn’t have thought that I was there, of all places.
“You will not escape!” It said. The voice was raspy and not Arual’s at all. One thing was for sure. It was not human.
“I have been searching for you for a long time, Lesley Adams! I had my suspicions but now they are clear! I know now that it is you! You will be the one to destroy me later, but you will not live to that day!”
Now, I was seriously freaked out. What was that thing talking about? It wasn’t really making any sense. That was for sure. Then suddenly, the monster swung its hand and that connected with my face. I don’t really know what happened next. All I can tell you was that, for a few minutes, I had been flying through the air and just when I thought that I was going to crash against the wall, there was this noise like an explosion. I can’t tell you anything more, because I was unconscious.
If you are reading this story and you like it so far, tell me if I have succeeded in making Arual look as grotesque as possible! Anyways, I am glad you read the story.
