Don’t Turn Around

The redundant screeching of her alarm threw her from her sleep with an abrupt harshness she had become blissfully unaccustomed to over the break. Her hair was knotted and the blanket that was once so carefully placed over her was now twisted and nearly sideways. “Why? Why do you hate me? What did I ever do to you?” She barely opened her mouth in some drowsy attempt to save her energy. Her left hand reached backwards and slammed the snooze button on that plastic torture device sitting on her nightstand and on its way back pulled the unoccupied portion of her pillow over the other half of her head in an effort to keep the conscious world at bay even if just for a few more moments.

The winter sun was still hiding beneath the horizon as her feet met the sobering, algid hardwood floor. The tail of the blanket she had wrapped around her as a defense against the invading cold dragged behind her shuffling feet. She stumbled over to her futon and picked a blue shirt with pink flowers dispersed evenly across the wrinkly plane of fabric off the pile of what she deemed to be “clean enough” clothes and swapped it for the gray shirt that had accompanied her in that blissful unconsciousness that that plastic irritation box had pulled her from. A look in the mirror hanging from her door assured her a wrinkled shirt and sweat pants were good enough for a half awake day of school.

The bus ride was ordinary save for the boy she found in the nearly quarantined seat next to her when she woke up from her morning nap. He looked twitchy and pale and he clutched his backpack tightly against his chest causing the gray cotton of his shirt to twist and fall and fold over into the edge of the black mesh of his backpack. He looked unfamiliar and and she spent the next few minutes trying to figure out who he was. First casually bringing up faces and their conjugate names then toward the end frantically searching for anything to link to this new face. She abandoned her efforts and stared out the window, a pass time she had grown to enjoy. The bus slowed and the brakes squealed and for a moment the clangor of the children cluttering the bus was over powered. A moving truck pulled up next to the bus and the girl jolted back around toward the boy.
“You’re with that new family that moved in a few days back aren’t you?” Her voice was still drowsy with interspersed bits of curiosity and excitement for her answer to her own question.
His eyes shot down and after resting for a moment creeped over a to the right as far as they could, making not to move his head. His right eye twitched, then his lower lip, then his whole mouth. His eyes found the window next to her and darted back to the seat in front of him. His eyes fixated on a small crevice in the glossy blue plastic and he forced saliva down his throat.
“Hi. I’m Grace. Welcome to Clearfield!” The words were accompanied with more excitement this time, not for an answered question but for meeting someone new. It was such an uncommon occurrence for the population to change here, whether it be from coming or going. His eyes stayed attached to the same spot for the rest of the ride.

As the only open lockers were those surrounding Grace’s his locker was next to hers. The lockers were glossy and black, nearly as tall as them. The popular girls used them as mirrors when they didn’t have time to open them and use the actual mirrors stored inside. The boy was always reluctant to use his locker. It looked as though it pained him. On the fairly rare occasion Grace did see him use it he would focus intently on just the combination wheel. One of classes was directly behind his locker and he would always make a large loop to get to the door. Grace always thought it was weird but figured it was something with OCD or the likes.

Grace woke up just as she always did: reluctantly and in a blanket cocoon. She approached the always approving mirror in old jeans and a baggy white shirt. The mirror had a smudge just over her left shoulder, she was far from a clean freak so it didn’t surprise her. Everything progressed as per the usual timeline: an exchange of “I love you” between her and her parents. The keyed up boy clutching his backpack staring at the seat in front of him. But today something was different. The boy was mumbling something today. It may not have been directed at her or at anyone really but Grace was excited none the less. He mumbled the same thing the entire ride. It grew to annoy her but she made a game of it. Every few cycles she’d pick up a new word or two. She never got all the words but she pieced together something to the effect of “I’m not afraid of you anymore.” She figured she shouldn’t expect anything different from him. He seemed crazy anyway.

He spoke again that day, the first and only time he’d said anything to anyone even after a week of going to school there. Grace was attempting to clean a smudge off her locker with no avail. She saw the boy look toward her in the farthest corner of her vision and looked at him full of wonder.
“This is it” she thought, “I’ve cracked him. He’s finally going to say something. Do something.”
He looked at her still trying to remove the blemish from her locker and flashed a bent smile of relief and malice.
“Don’t turn around.” The words fell deeply out of crooked grin.
“What does that even- oh who cares? He’s a lune anyway,” she reassured herself.
The boy exited in his usual paranoid 90 degree turn.

The smudge on her mirror grew, taking on some gray color above the black. The boy on the bus carried on the same as yesterday, mumbling some nonsense grace neither the energy nor the interest to decipher. The smudge on her locker emulated the one making it’s home on her mirror. The next morning Grace awoke with an exceptional hate for the world. The walk from her bed to the pile of clothes was too much effort so she decided to go to school in her pajamas, bypassing her usual check in the mirror. She made her way to the bus half awake and fell back into the enchanted unconsciousness she had been enjoying just 10 minutes ago. The boy wasn’t there when she emerged from it this time but she didn’t care. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for the boy to ride with his parent anyway. Grace sat alone in fifth period that day as the boy had not shown up for school. The blemish on her locker had grown significantly. It was now more gray than black and began to take on some sort of shape.

That night she found the smudge on her mirror in full detail, a hunched over creature in the corner of her room. It had long, black hair that looked groomed but torn rather than cut. It looked up at her and her brown eyes stared into its solid black eyes through the safety of the mirror. She froze and her entire body locked up almost as if this things eyes were holding her there. Just beneath its eyes were deep dark circles and beneath those a wide, open smile with large and exaggerated human like teeth. Its lower jaw was suspended by multiple strained lines of gray flesh. It’s spine and ribs were visible through its macerated skin.
“Don’t turn around.” The words stung. “Is this what he was talking about? Am I going to be like him? Oh God I don’t want to be like him.” She made a 90 degree turn and walked over her bed. She turned over in the comfort and protection of her blanket and stared out her window. With one hand she reached back and turned off the lamp on her nightstand. She could now see her face in the window and above it the creature. It squatted on the small wooden furnishing and looked directly down at her, drool dripping from its mouth.

It only took a week for Grace to realize she had become just like that boy that she hadn’t seen since that day he didn’t come to school. She painfully and quickly averted her eyes away from any surface that was even the slightest bit reflective. She never fully turned around, even if she hadn’t seen that- that thing. But it was driving her insane. She saw it everywhere. Every time her phone went black or her laptop or the T.V. It was always there lurking over her, drooling and greedy, its black beady eyes fixed on hers.
“What if it isn’t real? What if it’s just some cruel mind game? I’ll turn around right now. That’ll show it.” It took her days to follow through on that threat.

The police thought it was some sort of cereal kidnapping. They interrogated the bus driver, teachers, even some of the parents but none of it got them anywhere. Grace’s mother spent most of her time in Grace’s room after that, regretting all the times she’d yelled at her daughter for the pile of dirty clothes on her futon or for all the times she had slept in.That room was hell and she was eternally damned. Grace’s father could barely do his job and got fired after 2 months of subpar work. Her father finally convinced his mother that they would have to rent out Grace’s room or they would lose the house entirely. Her mother hated each and every moment she spent cleaning her daughter’s room.
Her husband’s voice echoed through the house and found its way to the room. “You almost done in there? Dinner’s ready!”
She replied with irritation, “Yeah just let me get this smudge off the mirror and I’ll be right there.”