I’ve talked a lot about my brothers t’Jacques and Jean, I’ve mentioned Camille and Gabby in passing, but one sister thus far has gone nameless: my older sister Coco.
Coco’s pretty cool, I love her dearly and we talk constantly now, but there is a reason I haven’t mentioned her much: I’ve mostly told childhood stories, and when I was little I was absolutely terrified of her.
It all started with the dream, I think, the dream I had almost every night for years in my younger days. ‘Dream’ is a sweet word for it, ‘dream’ makes you think it was rainbows and cool animals when in actuality this nighttime occurrence was more of a psychological thriller that dove so deep into the human psyche it truly found the most base elements of fear and strung them together into a narrative so obscure but full of meaning it would make “Donnie Darko”’s Richard Kelly weep for its depth, a narrative so perfectly complete in the sphere of terror Stephen King would never pen another novel. It wasn’t a night terror, it was more sophisticated than that; it was a masterpiece of postmodernism that upon waking up from left you with the distinct impression that no one, not even your closest family could be trusted, that nowhere was safe. I wasn’t more than six years old.
It always started out the same. I would be walking along the side of my house in golden hour, with the light of the sun perfectly illuminating the crowns of the emerald bushes that towered over me then, that my mom worked so hard to trim into perfect gigantic bulbs. I would always be absentmindedly plucking leaves off of the bush and letting the wind scatter them out of my hands when I’d feel a tugging at the back of my overalls, the feeling of fingertips straining to touch my back. I would turn to see what it was, assuming it was just one of my brothers messing around, but there would always be an outstretched porcelain hand disintegrating to smoke as the light fell upon it. There would always be the dark, enigmatic eyes that peered out at me from the brush that hid the rest of the creature’s form, until I looked up. There I saw the ashy white clay ears of a rabbit protruding from the bushes, again disintegrating in the light.
I always started walking faster then. It was obvious that whatever hid in the bush was only hiding from the daylight, the daylight that was almost gone, and it was even more obvious what the creature was waiting for: me. The faster I moved towards the backdoor to my house, the faster the sun would set, the more the strange rabbit-shaped being could move to come after me. It always felt like an eternity getting to the door, and trying to balance maintaining a slow speed, holding out against the urge to run, fighting my fear of this unknowable beast that only existed to destroy me, that was a lot to do for a little girl. I always ended up breaking, no matter how hard I tried to fight the urge, it was always too much. I would end up breaking into a sprint and as fast as I ran the sky quickly turned an inky black nightscape.
I always made it right inside the backdoor, slamming it shut and double-locking it, but our back door was mostly glass with aisles of windows spanning other side- a perfect source of natural light to fill the space during the daytime and a perfect way to terrify a little girl in her sleep- there was no hiding. The best I could do was close my eyes and lean back on the bit of plaster wall that surrounded the doorway, hoping it was enough to hide my tiny frame from what lurked outside.
At the table sat my father, weary from a long day of work at the hospital, finding solace in that day’s newspaper. At the computer desk sat Coco, eyes glazed over, completely engrossed in some random flash game on the PC. I thought having my family near would help me, but I was wrong.
Outside the door, came a voice calling out to me:
“Shea! Shea! Come out and play with me!”
The voice was Coco’s, but as I looked out through the window of the door, I saw her, but it wasn’t her. The expression was something I had never seen before, her eyes completely malicious but she smiled as if she had just won a game. Then she was my father, then Camille, then my mother, my grandmother, all with the same expression. Then the creature was me, and I looked through the door as if I was looking through some twisted fun house mirror, seeing a version of me that didn’t exist, that couldn’t exist. And all the while, still Coco’s voice, it was calling me to come outside and play.
“What is all that noise for!?”
My dad would bellow, slamming down his newspaper. He would come to look out the door window, and he’d see little Coco calling out for her sister.
“Shea, go play with your sister!”
I pleaded with him, I tried to explain what had happened, what it was, I cried for Coco to turn her head from the computer to show Dad it couldn’t be her outside, I begged her, but Coco never even blinked, going on playing her game. Eventually, Dad would pick me up, open the door and force me outside, closing the door behind him. And the creature in the likeness of Coco would smile, and its teeth would grow long and pointed, and it would tell me one thing:
“Run.”
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