Young Writers Society

My eyes opened slowly. The invasive light above me threatened to burst my eyes into flames. I couldn't move; my limbs were frozen just like time seemed to be.

It took me several moments to realize what had happened, but the almost unbearable weight hovering over my chest was a constant reminder.

My eyes couldn't stop looking at the mirror. The letter was crinkled, and hardly any part of the envelope was still white because the mud overtook the paper like a brown plague. Under the letter, partially morphing into the mud stains, were five streaks where a hand had dragged its muddy fingers across the glass.

My hand came up to cover my mouth as a terrified sob threatened to push through my lips.

The crushing weight of my panic attack and the skull-splitting headache clawing through my brain were enough to make me moan. The pain was so demanding that my eyes closed and I forgot about the letter momentarily.

My head throbbed and pulsated, like a hammer was pounding a nail into my skull. Tears were falling down my face before I even recognized that I was crying. Curiosity was buried in my chest and the need to know what was in the letter overtook the pain.

I crawled to my knees and wiped away the tears with the back of my hand. Nothing had changed on the mirror even though I kept feeling like it was all going to disappear at any second. It wasn’t real. It felt like a joke – a prank.

The bathroom felt too small as I reached up and took hold of the sink’s rim. It was cold under my hand and suddenly everything felt so much more real. The question of who had done this popped into my head.

My body seemed void of energy as I struggled to pull myself up. Knees locking, I leaned against the wall next to the sink. The light from my bedroom was pouring in through the open door, contrasting how dark my head felt at the moment. I reached over and carefully plucked the letter from the mirror, wiping away some of the mud.

Now that I was seeing it much closer, I realized that the letter had my name on it. In tiny cursive that I had to squint to see, were the letters that spelled out my name. Adira.

A fluttering feeling of something unrecognizable was flying around in my stomach. I was hit with a feeling of déjà vu that I didn’t recognize.

I flipped the letter over. The flap was already torn open, meaning that whoever had sent me the letter was probably not who stuck it to my window. Whoever had done that had stopped to open the letter first.

I didn’t know what scared me most – that someone had sent me a mysterious letter, or that someone had found it where it had blown away in the woods and taped it to my mirror.

Or the fact that they’d gotten in my house to do so. It had to be a prank.

I was still waiting for Rachel to call or Nate to spring out from behind something and yell “got you!” and I would laugh like it was funny even though the whole thing was scaring me in a way I couldn’t explain.On the other hand, I was also waiting for the lights to start flickering on and off, and the door to open with the squeal of its hinges, revealing a creepy masked man clad in black.

The feelings were a bit conflicting.

The chilling feeling that someone was watching me flitted down my spine and I whipped around. My eyes searched the bedroom, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. My bed was unmade, clothes were scattered around the floor, and the door separating my room from the rest of the house was closed.

“What the hell is happening?” I asked myself. I would have continued to think that it was all some big joke played by one of my friends, but everything was adding up to be a huge, confusing mess. The haunting clock that ticked in my ears, the dark shape in the woods, the call – and now the letter.

It was all becoming too much.

I rubbed my tired eyes with the palms of my hands. I knew they were red from crying, and my face felt tight from trails of tears.

“Get it together, Adira,” I murmured.

A sharp clanking noise took me from my train of thought. I flinched and snapped my eyes back to the bathroom. Looking down, I realized that my phone was buzzing from where I’d dropped it on the ground.

I slowly reached down to pick up the phone. Flipping it over, I saw the text that lit up the screen. Behind a crack that sliced up the glass – damage that had no doubt happened when it crashed into the hard tile – was a number I didn’t recognize, and the words “open it.”

I felt slightly sick. You could fake a call but you couldn’t star-sixty-seven a text. Unless my friends were using some random person’s phone, this wasn’t a joke.

Whoever had gotten into my house and stuck the letter to the mirror was now texting me. I began to feel lightheaded again. Grabbing the rim of the sink again for support, I clenched my eyes closed and gripping the letter tightly in one hand.

“You can do this,” I whispered. After a few deep breaths, my heart was back to normal. “Just open it.”

I took a deep breath and opened the flap on the dirty envelope. I looked inside to see a single, folded sheet of plain paper. Unlike the envelope, the letter was untouched by mud and rain. I pulled it out, lungs burning. Pulling in a few staggered breaths, I unfolded the paper.

Inside was the same tiny writing in the same swirling cursive, except this time it didn’t say my name.

It said, “I’m coming for you.”

And, after my eyes had read the last word, my phone buzzed with another text.

From the same unknown number, was the message, “you’re in danger.”