Be Careful What You Wish For

Once upon a dreary night, while the graveyard was fast asleep when restless spirits were at peace, a cute blond girl took a walk.

She was very petite and fragile-looking. To the untrained eye, she would have looked like a regular girl, but she was anything but. She was rather peculiar.

Cecilia was fascinated, actually obsessed, with the world of supernatural creatures and events. Some monsters from nightmares were her biggest fixations.

On that night of the full moon, she was taking a casual stroll when she got a strange feeling that she couldn't explain that came to her occasionally. The truth was that she had a sixth sense that something was not as it should be.

Of course, as always, she dismissed the feeling, thinking it was a side effect of having seen too many supernatural movies and TV shows. However, she did pick up her pace to hurry back home.

While walking home, she took a moment to gaze at the full moon and admire its magnificence. At that precise moment, she felt goosebumps all over her skin as she saw an enormous bat fly in front of the full moon. It reminded her of a classic horror movie scene, the bat in the foreground surrounded by the full moon. It was an almost perfect reproduction of any terrifying scene she had ever had the pleasure of seeing.

Cecilia was frightened but refused to let it show even though she was alone. Although she was shaking and her legs felt like someone cut them off, she went on with an air of confidence because even though she didn't feel very confident, she thought about the horror movies and how, in most of them, the ones who showed fear were the first ones to die. Moreover, Cecilia wasn’t afraid of vampires, was she? Not bothering to answer that question posed to herself, she hurried home.

When she finally arrived home, she locked all the doors and closed all the windows under the excuse (given to herself) that there was too much smog in the air.

Cecilia turned on the lights, and soon enough, she managed to forget about the eerie experience, cataloging it under an overreaction. Since it wasn’t the first time something like that happened, she didn’t worry about it too much once safely inside her warm home.

She went to sleep that night as if nothing unusual had ever happened. However, around three o’clock that night, she jumped out of her bed, terrified. What woke her up was an odd, gut feeling that something was wrong.

Since she was living in an apartment building, she told herself it was just some noise from the neighbors waking her up. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to fool herself because she knew she wasn’t woken by any loud sounds but by an intense and disturbing feeling of being watched.

Reflexively, she looked through the nearby window and saw a dark shadow observing her from the window of the building facing hers. Her heart started beating faster, even as she was trying to think of some rational explanation for the strange situation.

The shadow didn’t move, and she could feel its eyes on her, although she tried to convince herself that it was just a coat hanger or something that had a similar shape to a human. As the shadow didn’t move, her heart rate began to slow down. Nevertheless, she went to the other room to escape the creepy stare even though she wasn't sure that was what it was. Her logic was better safe than sorry.

After an hour, she finally managed to fall asleep again on the sofa in the other room, and morning dispelled all her doubts about supernatural events. She thought of what happened as a continuation of a terrible nightmare she had. After all, it wasn't such an uncommon thing for her. That made her feel safe and ordinary, something that was comforting after such a restless night.

However, deep down, Cecilia knew the truth. A part of her soul that she kept ignoring told her she wasn’t safe. She was in more danger than she had ever been in her whole life. The type of danger one could never escape no matter how hard they tried.

A supernatural threat was lurking through the window, whether she wanted to admit it or not.