Chapter 1
At first, it’s the faint creak of the floorboards.
Moving in at the epicentre of a booming metropolis was hard enough after she and her family wasted years away in a dingy old town in the middle of nowhere. At first she’d dismissed the weird creaking as a characteristic feature of not-so-cheap yet rickety apartments that were far too overpriced for their own good.
But the peculiarities didn’t end in the groaning floorboards alone.
The strange taxidermied bass hanging on the wall (that was impossible to remove, mind you, not like they hadn’t tried) was another unsettling factor. Its round, glassy eyes had seemed to follow her every step of the way, as if it were silently watching, calculating; waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.
She doesn’t know what harm taxidermied fish are capable of doing, but she doesn’t feel like sticking around to find out, either.
At first she’d chalked up this feeling of unease to being unfamiliar in her new home:— moving out away from family was tough, especially in an environment she’d never really been exposed to. Things felt alien more often than not, and even if her people come to visit her once a week, change was still difficult and she still needs time to adjust.
But every now and then she can’t help but feel as though she’s a victim of unwarranted paranormal activity.
Sometimes she finds her severely tangled headphones untangled and sitting on the desk, with the previously shut-down laptop now on standby . Sometimes it was the stray sock that she’d turn the place over to find, sitting neatly on top of the laundry basket, even though she knows damn well that she’d given up searching for it a couple hours ago.
As far as hauntings went, she surmises that the poltergeist problem he had was one of the milder ones. Her undead roommate isn’t the worst house guest to have around, even though it could use a couple of classes in electronic device etiquette.
Which was what she had thought, until a few days later.
Now, Jeanelle does not think she is a terrible person. If you’d asked if she was a person with terrible music taste, however, she would be inclined to agree. After several verbal spats and a handwritten apology note later too, but that isn’t relevant.
But she is human, after all.
And like most humans, she had set aside some time for herself, with nothing but her and a speaker, blasting questionable tunes that she prays the neighbours can’t hear, in the confines of her own bedroom (which, might she add, she pays for)
However, when it had switched to a particularly egregious track (that she’s just listening for the shits and giggles, she swears;—), the speaker just turns off.
Jeanelle frowns. The speaker had been plugged in, and it was relatively new to be faulty.
She turns the thing on again, and it plays for a few seconds until it turns itself off.
She turns it on again. This time, it took a minute till it stopped playing.
Jeanelle now finds herself incredibly frustrated. She turns the speaker on, and waits for a moment, and then quickly moves her hand towards the power button of the device, and finds her hands brush against someone else’s.
Without thinking, she grabs it.
She looks down, expecting to be greeted with empty air, or an invisible appendage.What she does not expect is to grip something solid. She finds herself holding someone else’s hand.
She looks up, and finds a pair of eyes, widened with surprise, staring back at her.
