Don’t you hate moving away from your past? Just to move from all you remember and into new territories you have yet to be familiar with? Well I know I do, I hate this new house me and my mother are moving into. She recently had to transfer to another place for her job and now I have no friends, no good memories here, anything I could actually enjoy but a large and dusty house. It looked to be here for quite a few years, the coating of paint on the exterior has started to peel and it looks like a dirty white color. It seems so much bigger when we walked up to the door, to the point it brought a chill down my spin. Worried, I grab my mother’s hand as she kneels in front of me. “I know this is a new place and you have yet to be used to it but I promise that it will get better over time.” This raises my spirit just slightly as she unlocks the door. It creaks eerily as she pushes it open, dust raising from the floor and into the air. We step in and close the door behind us, the room becoming darker as we do so.
Mother reaches for a light switch and eventually flips the lights one, obviously they didn’t work. She told me to look around and see if I could find a fuze box or something to get the lights on. Lucky for me I have my flashlight my dad gave me days before he… left us. I try not to talk much about him, it brings back bad memories. I grab my flashlight, little and pink covered with stickers I thought would be cute. Luckily it still works so I told my mother I would go ahead and search upstairs, mainly because I was already near them. Wiping the dust from my clothes, I walk up the stairs with flashlight in hand. Looking behind me, it looks almost pitch black, besides mother’s phone lighting her way.
I reach the top of the stairs and it seems so much colder than the floor below. I start to shiver beneath my clothes and cross my arms to hold warmth. I scan the room to see if I can find anything that looks helpful enough, anything that could be connected to the power. Looking around, I see something big and yellow on the floor near the back. I move closer and brush the dust off to inspect it. I looks to be like some old doll house, I used to have one at my old house but it was too big to take with us so we donated it. I was sad about that because my… ”he” gave it to me when I was younger. I remember playing with it every day after school and how it was like my alter life. Tears start to well in my eyes from the memories but I gotta stay strong for my mother and myself.
I open the house and see all the individual rooms looking almost brand new, strange. There are dolls strewn about all over the house but one catches my attention. It has a green shirt and casual blue jeans, brown eyes and the skin complexion similar to mine. I remember who it reminds me of, it’s him. The tears come and rage begins to build up inside and I throw the doll across the room. Curled up in a ball, the emotions run rampant as I just become louder and louder. My mother rushes upstairs to see what’s wrong, now the question is should I really tell her what happened? I chose to hide the doll from her to protect her from what happened to me, I just tell her I got scared and tried to ignore the doll across the room slouched on the wall. We walk back downstairs when I get that chill down my spine again. I look back to see the doll sitting up on the stair but I don’t remember bringing it, I don’t like this at all I think to myself as we keep walking to find the fuze box.
I stay close to her as we make our way around, my hand locked into hers. We finally find the fuze box and switched everything on. The lights flipped on in a blinding flash when they came on and I flinched at the white lights. It takes a minute but I get my sight back, but now my mother who was just by my side is now nowhere to be found. I yell her name but I hear nothing in response. Tears start building in my eyes as my yells become more broken. I eventually give up and lay to the floor. I curl into a ball again and tears fall to my cheeks. Now I’m all alone in this house, or so I thought. I hear the faint soft voice of my mother come from upstairs. I get up quickly to see her again, not thinking about how she got up there so fast.
I climb the stairs and the room is still dark as it was before with that lifeless chill still present. I grab the flashlight I’ve kept with me and turn it on to scan the room. I don’t see any sign of my mother but someone had to be here, the dolls were all arranged looking at the doorway I stood in. I see no footprints in the dust at all, not even mine somehow. It looks like it has never been touched, in possibly years it looks. I go to inspect the dolls and find that there was yet another new one. This one looked familiar but it held a small doll in its hand. This doll she held, it looked surprisingly like me but something was off. It was the eyes, all the other eyes on the dolls were colored and beautiful but this one, it was all black. That’s when I realise that a lot of these dolls looked like I’ve seen them before. It finally hits me, I have seen all of these before.
The one that’s knew, it was my mother and I! This can only mean one thing, but before I put it all together it’s too late. The room seemed to be getting darker and everything seemed to be getting darker. Suddenly I’m on the floor, opening my eyes I look around. Something doesn’t feel right, I stand up and now that chill is gone. All the lights are out again and the voice is back. It’s from downstairs. It sounds like my mother but she seems distressed. I panic and try to turn on the flashlight, nothing works. Maybe it broke as I fell or something, either way I need to help. I run, nearly falling down the stairs as I do. I look around and the sounds all stop and that chill is back and so much stronger. Suddenly I feel something cold around my neck then nothing. Everything cuts out, it’s all dark and so cold.
I try moving but it’s like my body and mind are no longer connected together. I feel all numb as if every nerve has been removed. Suddenly I awake, a room fully lit up and unfamiliar. I still have no movement of myself no matter how much I try. Maybe I’m stuck to this life of plastic and cloth. Is this really my end or is this a start of the family I’ve always needed?