Dark. Cold. Quiet.
That’s how it was that morning. The sunlight drowned under the heavy clouds, and had lost its shine. The cold air was pressing the frozen earth, the morning sucked out all the life and sound out of the mountanous area. The morning is so still it looked like a picture painted on grey canvas, the thin layer of snow looked grey, so did the sky and all underneath it.
The greenish yellow curtains kept some light coming into the small room with two bunk beds and two tables underneath. The table was piled up with pieces of paper, pens, books, magazines and little bottles of nail polish. The closet was slightly open, all the clothes pushed into it the night before had fallen out. A pair of earphones was hanging over the side of a bed. There was a bag full of papers and schoolwork on the floor - half done, of course, along with a few pillows that had fallen out of the bed overnight. The alarm was too quiet to hear, it kept buzzing helplessly under the weight of the huge pillow which was still on the bed.
Finally, one of her eyes opened slowly, then the other. She turned her head to the window, and right at that moment she realized that she had overslept - it was too light for it to be 7 am. She quickly stuck her hand under the pillow, snatched out the phone, and looked on the display.
- Oooohhhh crap.
She leaped up, causing another pillow and the headphones to fall onto the floor. She threw her legs over the side, and only slightly touching the table underneath, jumped down. She swung the curtains open, but was met with sunlight drowning in heavy clouds in the sky. Sharply turning round, she ran out of the room, down the stairs, another floor down, and finally the kitchen, where she usually had breakfast. Of course, noone was there, she didn’t even expect anyone to be there. But there had to be someone on duty. She entered the duty office, but found the desk empty. The house was incredibly silent, even the silent wind could not make a sound. She went back into the kitchen, grabbed a pain au chocolat on her way, and ran back upstairs. As soon as she was in the room, she threw the pillow and headphones back on the bed, grabbed her phone, snatched the first white shirt she saw in the pile near her closet, got dressed as fast as she could, took a look at herself in the mirror. She quickly ran a hairbrush through her hair, smiled to the mirror, picked up her schoolbag, and made her way to the stairs again. As her feet banged on the steps, she knew she had to think fast:
- Okay, got to make up an excuse. I was tired yesterday from the skiing, which was almost on grass anyways... No, it has to be more dramatic in my situation. I hit my head whilst skiing almost on grass, and twisted my ankle a bit too, so I was very tired... It’s holidays in four days, they can’t really be harsh on me.
She flew to the front door, grabbed the door handle, pulled it, and froze in place.
- What the...?
This was strange in two ways: firstly, the door would not open. Secondly, the glass on the upper bit of the door was smashed to pieces. She glanced at her feet: the glass was on her side, but was on the sides of the corridor, as if someone had swiped it to the side. And, the door was never, ever, locked on the inside. She stood still. Her imagination went wild straight away, giving her images of the most impossible and strange things that could have happened. She tried to calm herself:
- Someone broke the glass, it happens, maybe someone threw a ball on or something...
But straight away, she knew it was useless in convincing herself:
- Then why is the door locked on the inside?
She took a deep breath, telling herself not to imagine any more scenarios - she always tended to make more of what there was, but this strange coincidence just gave her an excuse. She remembered, that there is another way out of the house, out of the kitchen. She walked over to the kitchen, and pushed to door handle. Now, goosebumps ran up and down her spine. She could not open it, and this door didn’t even have a lock on it. She put her weight on the door, pushed further but it stood strong. She was now physically witholding herself from letting her heart rate speed up, her skin to go cold, and her hands to shake. She turned to her thoughts again - there was another way out, in the basement. The last door that she knew of to lead out of the house. She threw her bag onto the floor - she no longer cared about it, now she started to feel like a trapped mouse, a butterfly under a glass. She rushed downstairs, into the dark storage rooms, past the lockers and the shelves, into the darkest room. She flicked the lights on, the faint light ran across the cement floor, and let the door handle a little shine, but just enough for her to identify it. She pushed the door handle, kept pushing forward, wanting it to move, mindlessly telling it to move. But this one wouldn’t budge. Now, her senses took over, adrenaline rushed through the blood, she ran out of the room, and up the stairs, and onto the balcony door across from the kitchen. She looked around, looking for a good enough weapon, but did not think of anything more creative than picking up a chair and swinging it onto the glass. For a second, she shut her eyes, hearing the glass shatter, she even felt a bit fly against her skin. She jumped back, and finally opened her eyes.
