Later in the day, in the void of the night, inside the warm and comfy home, when outside was snowing cats and dog, were Richi, Terry, and Ilinca, having a girl sleepover, or a sleepless night where they would spend the entire day of 31st of December together, waiting for the New Years Eve spending time together.

On the second floor, in the second living floor of the home, a smaller room than the main one but it works for them, Richi was piercing her hand through the old CD’s from a dirty cardboard box.

“Love laugh is power? Look… I want to be loved? What are these, these look so old, maybe five hundred years old?”

“These are from the lost and found, so don’t blame it on me that we don’t have anything good, okay, I’m not responsible for this”

As the other two were confronting each other in the bad taste of the CD’s, with Terry trying to keep her reputation as a person with good movie taste, Ilinca with her back stuck to the bed, sunk inside it a little bit, even, that’s how comfy the bed was, was reading with curiosity, the back of a CD that looked unopened, still having the thin, plastic sigil on it, with an odd cover that could resemble that it would be about a horror movie from the use of light and items inside it.

“What about this? “The ones that were left”. It may be something good”

“Ilinca, you know Terry can’t handle horror movies…(whispers and gets and hides the edge of her mouth with the back of her hand) they give her some nasty nightmares”

“That’s not even 0 percent true. I love horror movies, I’ve grown with them, and you two…make my life a horror movie… so”

“Horror it is!”

Exclaimed Richi, restlessly jumping from the ground, from a carpet with artificial fur on it, comfy as well, and jumped to get the movie from Ilinca’s hand, that’s how excited she was about the horror movie night.

“One hour and a half inside the movie, about a man that was doing experiments on humans with furniture, which, when I hear about it, seems pretty bad to be honest, like how can you even make something like this interesting, eh?

Anyway, one hour and a half in the movie, Richi and Ilinca were deep asleep underneath a blanket, seeming in a cozy position, very comfortable and relaxed, in such a deep sleep that you could literally slam two frying pans one in the other and none of them would wake up.

The last remaining warrior, fighting the urge to just close her eyes—well, actually, she was more just frightened to close her tired and underlined with eyebags, eyes from the sights she was seeing in the horror movie, which her ego forced her to watch, now, instead of lying about it somehow and telling otherwise, Terry’s ego forced her to stay awake , unlike Ilinca and Richi who were already in the deep state of sleeping.

The movie ended abruptly, but somehow it luckily ended, giving a massive relief for Terry who could finally blink, watering her red and hurting eyes from all of that focusing and trying to not get jumpscared. As a story it was pretty weird… It was about the main character, an antagonist of the story, or the bad guy of the story, who was turning people into furniture or objects and then he smashed the furniture and laughed at that—it was a really weird experiment and an odd movie, in conclusion. Even though it ended, the movie still let Terry in a slight shock from everything she just saw and everything she can’t erase from her memory ever again. This movie will stay engraved inside the walls of her brain, scaring her for the rest of existence, by the way, this is how the fear of darkness is being created, or nyctophobia, which is… exactly, by watching a very scary movie, that’s is where you can get it from, it like hits a click inside your brain, and oh man, I got to say that it’s though living with it.

Putting her hand on the remote control, she closed the TV, hitting it blank with a single tap on the off button. She hid herself fast, like lightning fast, hiding her entire body underneath the blanket like a small child hiding from the monsters owned by the entirety of the darkness that covered the living room right now. The couch, a long on, on which all three were on top of it, had leather exterior, so every small move she made, it was heard loudly, and when I say loudly, I say loudly, and with this, Terry tried her best to not move not even one inch, even if she didn’t feel comfortable in the position she found herself to be. With all three on the couch, Richi was extended out just like a frog, occupying most of the space, and Ilinca was sitting with her legs crossed and her head fallen backward, on the edge of the couch.

Minutes upon minutes passed and Terry couldn’t force herself to sleep. It was because she didn’t have any background noise or so, let’s say some “white noise” to keep her calm, I mean it’s nothing wrong with it, many people need some white noise before they go to sleep, and I do as well, don’t you??

Terry groaned with a single thought inside her head, bothering her—maybe, but just maybe this is the reason she couldn’t fall asleep, and to be honest, if I would have this thought as well, I couldn’t sleep as well…

“Did Richi close the windows and the door—of course not”

Then and there, Terry understood her next assignment but Terry just couldn’t force herself to get out of the bed, she thought that the antagonist would be hiding in the shadows, being ready to make his move on her, waiting to make her into an experiment, maybe a closet or a desk.

“You know what, this is my house, my rules… or my uncle’s house, but still, I am the one in charge right now, and I won’t be scared by a puny little horror movie”

Then and there, something motivated her to just get out of the bed and do what she had to do. So she got up, she pumped up her chest like masculine cartoon characters, standing menacingly for a few seconds, and made a run for it, checking every single window and most importantly, the door, and surprisingly, they were all locked.

Hurrying back to her reserved seat on the coach of dreaming, she heard a noise in the attic. The first time she didn’t want to go because she was scared that he might be catched by the fictional character of the horror movie, but she did what she had to do, for her friends to be safe, she thought that if the character would be up in the attic, then she had to take the sacrifice for the team, to make sure that the girls would remain safe.

“I’ll be back girls, don’t worry about me… Terry will keep this house safe”

Up in the attic, the dusty, dusty attic, Terry’s shaking hand moved a few inches from the normal position, making the position where she wanted to look, pretty hard to concentrate on in the darkness with the hint of light snuck in artificially, which looked like it was made out of dust particles which followed the path of light, like moths to a flame.

Checking around before going with her entire body in the attic, Terry saw nothing, I mean not nothing because the attic was sprinkled with many cardboard boxes, some written on, some just taped up at the top. There were also a few thick pillars of wood stuck in the ceiling and on the dusty plank floor, and for the rest… they were just antics, some items like decorations realistic or artificial looking, nothing really important to mention to be honest.

Terry entered with her entire body and with every single step, a loud creak would be created, making Terry more and more anxious. She hated loud sounds in the darkness.

Exploring around the attic, she just walked past boxes and antics just to see two roof windows to be opened.

“Okay… that wasn’t supposed to be open… eh—”

She got goosebumps and chills seeing that something or someone could have easily entered through the roof windows.

Again, the loud thud was heard behind her. Rapidly Terry turns around with her flashlight as well, fixing right in the point of where she heard it, like two meters away from her and she saw a brown grown cat who overthrew a box that opened when it fell missing the taped sigil. The box threw out numerous stacks of cash, stacks of euros, five hundred euro bills. The box was just filled with them.

Terry gave the notes a smell, because she never in her life seen 500’s of bills of euro in her entire life; the max she saw was the 100 one. With a quick whiff she nodded her head and put it back in the box, hiding it underneath one of the metal storage rooms that were wide open, the bunker silver looking ones with like 3 or 4 shelves, that can be used from both the back and front.

“It must be all Billy’s”

She whispered, with her voice more calm now, and not that adrenaline rushed; it was getting to normal slowly but surely, and her hands weren’t so shaky as well.

From inside the darkness of the voidic colored corners of the attic, emerged different sized rats , who stepped on her foot like they were crossing a short bridge, where Terry could feel their little feet tapping tens of times over her crocs.

Terry remained frozen without a single emotion to take out, but she let out a following scream, biting her fist, but it wasn’t like a scream you could hear, it was more like an agonized yell, a yell of disgust to be honest. She hated furry animals; they gave her chills down her spine; she absolutely hated that feeling, it was like a feeling when at the doctor, the doctor hits below your knee with a rubber hammer and it activates your leg, kind of… okay I’m yapping again, back to the story.

Continuing on with the exploration of the attic, even though she isn’t even allowed to be there, by the saying of her parents who forbidden her to go up there (the attic), why? I have no clue, I have to text them, maybe they’ll give me an answer, I’m also curious, just like y’all.

Her sight was captured by a fancy looking portrait that had a golden look-alike and 3D, homemade maybe, frame, but a very precisely made one by a professional I’m sure; a hundred percent wasn’t made by the hands of a rookie or a first timer. Inside the frame, there was a hand-drawn portrait of two grown people, possibly parents, a young woman around her 25s, and a young men looking in his 30’s, as well as three children, two girls and one boy. The parents’s and the girls faces were scratched out with a key or something because it looked like an angered wipe of their faces off the existence of the portrait. The only face intact was young Billy’s, a kid with shoulder length blonde hair, brown eyes and a big smile.

“The wesgoods”

Slowly read Terry, fixing her flashlight on the name of the family probably, engraved in a thin silver looking material plate with fancy lettering.

“This must be Billy’s family… but why are most of the faces taken out?”

Slowly reading Terry saw a portrait, a picture put in a very fancy portrait which seemed to be made out of gold on the edges. There were 2 girls, 1 boy, a mother and a father in the picture, and everyone was smiling except the boy. The daughters and the son were posing in front of the 

(Alone in this)

parents. The parent’s faces were scratched out from the portrait, leaving a white blank instead of their facial expressions, but only Billy’s remained in intact shape, showing a wholesome smile with his eyes open,an expression of innocence.

“The Wesgoods… Billy’s family! And this small one has to be Billy… look at how tiny this guy was, hahah!”

The family name “Wesgoods” was engraved on a thin golden looking plate, right underneath the painting.,

As Terry kept looking at the portrait a little bit, fixing the flashlight in different parts of it, thinking if it was a real painting or was the picture put on a colored canvas, two shapes, human shapes with white blankets over them, kept getting closer and closer towards Terry.

Terry turned around to keep looking for something interesting in the attic and was met with the empty look of the entities over the blankets, giving Terry a jumpscare, screaming her voice out.

“It’s cool, yo, it’s us, calm”

“Oh my… gosh!”

“Richi… Ilinca? When did you wake up? And also… WHY ARE YOU SCARING ME!”

“I told you horror movies were her weak point”

“THEY’RE NOT!”

“We kept hearing noises from the roof and saw the ladder, we saw you and Richi came up with this cool idea to prank you. Eventually she wanted it to be longer like we were running away and you would run after us not knowing it’s us and—anyway, forget it, forget it”

Terry looked at her smartwatch situated around her left hand to check her pulse

“Look. There. See? 159 bpm, that’s the beats per minute for a man on five energy drinks”

“Look at this place yo. Look at all this stuff”

Richi departed from them and started wondering around there, curious at every unopened box she would see, wanting to open them all one by one to reveal their mysteries with her own flashlight, her personal guidance in the dark

But Ilinca stopped her search, after she found an opened box filled up entirely with fireworks and other stuff similar to that, some big, some small, some circle shaped, some cone shaped and so on.

Her tone shifted reverse of the word “faintly”, raising higher in interest and joy.

“Hey, look here, look at what I’ve found!”

With a turn of her body, an 180 degree turn, Ilinca showed the girls the box filled with fireworks, all kinds of it. Small, large, pointy, cone shaped and so on.

Richi gasped, giving out small shouts of amazement.

“Fireworks! NO WAY!

“NO. NO! Pu-Put that back Ilinca, do you know how much trouble you’re putting me in just by picking that box up?”

“Oh come on, don’t be such a wuss, Terry… let’s light them!”

Ilinca showed the girls, more she was pointing at it; it was a box filled with all different kind of fireworks

“ILINCA, GIMME THOSE!”

“Are you sure those are safe? I-I mean they were put there for a reason, right… right? Maybe they are not made to be safe or-or worse—”

“Oh come on, Terry, let’s have some fun gurls, come on come on!”

Outside of the house,  on the freshly cut grass by the current owner, with a good amount of stomped snow now underneath them and even near them and all around, Richi and Ilinca thought they’d try out the fireworks to celebrate the new years with them, hopefully

Each firework that was set on fire and lashed out in the air, towards the stars, exploded, and with each firework the explosion was louder and the show was prettier, just like a chronological step to it.

“Look at that, Richi, look at that, that looks just like the face of a pup!”

Richi looked up at the sky but couldn’t figure out what Ilinca was talking about.

“Do you still think it was a bad idea to take out these fireworks, gurl?”

“You’re both lucky they’re beautiful”

Hearing the conversation, Ilinca nodded her head in agreement towards Richi and Richi did the same with her, after which both of them laughed seeing that they both had the same reaction

With each second passing, a bigger and bigger boom colored the sky with greater and more intense colors than the last firework set on fire, quickly interrupting their conversation and then letting them hear themselves for a bit, followed by another boom.

“Look at the sparkles on that one!