Payton Klaer

Tuesday, October 13th

A package arrived at the doorstep of Celia and Vicky’s apartment. This was completely normal. Both girls were known for buying things quickly and without a second thought. Celia was known for her trinkets and colorful t-shirts. She kept little dishes for keys or rings and random items scattered around the apartment. Celia hung her and Vicky’s photos on the walls in strangely shaped frames. Her room was filled with posters containing vibrant drawings with text you could barely read. Vicky didn’t mind the headache of color in the rest of the apartment as long as her room was left alone. She liked muted tones and stuck to shades of black and green. Her dispersed decorations were books and plants and weird candles.

When Celia brought the package inside, she didn’t think to look at the shipping label before tearing into it. If she didn’t recognize the contents, she’d set it aside for Vicky. That’s just how they worked. Besides, what if the box held the new collection of limited edition character postcards she had been waiting months for? She couldn’t wait for another second. The moment she saw the deep purple, so dark it almost appeared black, she carefully placed the half-open package on the counter for Vicky. Celia didn’t have an ounce of green on her thumbs – she had no need for a vase.

When Vicky returned from working at the radio studio late that night, she peered inside the half-open box on the counter. Why had Celia left this out? Vicky hadn’t bought anything recently. She needed to save for her summer vacation with her cousin (they were traveling to California). Tickets to fly across the country from her shared apartment in New York were not cheap.

So, she left the vase sitting on the counter, mentally taking a note to ask Celia to not leave her box sitting out for too long.

Saturday, October 17th

It took all week for the girls to realize that neither of them owned the vase that occupied their counter. The shipping label was addressed to both of them but was sent from someone in Wisconsin. Neither of them knew anyone named “Edric Valpor” in Wisconsin. Neither of them knew anyone in Wisconsin.

Not to mention the ominous note they had found at the bottom of the box.

To Miss Celia and Miss Vicky, you have been chosen to partake in a competition. You have one task: maintain the provided object for as long as possible. Winners will move on to round two and have a chance at winning $200. Losers will be eliminated. Good luck.

The note felt like something straight out of a horror movie but, hey, it was a free vase and some sketchy money. So, they examined the ornate swirls and whisps surrounding the vase. Without a second thought, the vase found a new home on their kitchen counter.

Celia didn’t ask Vicky why the top was filled with cork, stopping them from looking inside. Vicky didn’t tell Celia about the feeling in her gut that something was very wrong with the vase.

Wednesday, October 21st

Celia had been hearing things. She didn’t want to sound crazy, but she thought it was coming from inside the vase. She was fine before they opened the box but now…

She could hear someone in the distance every time she was in the living room. But it felt like a memory – the conversation was there but she couldn’t tell who was talking or where they were. Whoever it was wouldn’t stop begging.

“Please help me.”

“I can live again if you help me.”

“You must be the one.”

She didn’t know how to help. She wanted to, but something about it seemed off.

Vicky had also been hearing things, but she thought it was about time for her to go crazy. Maybe the strange vase had been the tipping point in her ten-year-long spiral downward. When she passed the vase, sitting lonely on the kitchen counter, she heard shouts. The cries from inside filled her mind until she could recall the exact emphasis on the words as she slept.

“Why did you do it?”

“It’s all your fault.”

“You are now nothing.”

The only difference between the two of them was that Vicky knew exactly what the vase was recounting. And, it sounded like her sister.

Friday, October 23rd

It didn’t take long for the whispers to become too much to keep a secret. Celia had noted that Vicky had been more on-edge recently. She would come home from work and go straight to her room instead of joining Celia for their post-work debrief sessions. She was ordering takeout instead of cooking. She was leaving a mess of her makeup in the bathroom instead of leaving the sink spotless.

This is what lead Celia to ask her roommate if she had heard the voices too. Once the question was in the air, Vicky’s head snapped over to the vase, and she yanked Celia by the arm into her room, slamming the door behind her.

They talked for hours about what was going on. Maybe the vase just had some weird technology inside that sent out messages every so often. That could explain the cork. It had to be part of this game, right? Celia nodded along with Vicky, glad to see the stress leaving her roommate’s shoulders. If it was really part of some bigger challenge, of course there was a bigger component than taking care of a normal vase. There had to be something to eliminate players.

That was their final explanation of the strange voices.
Celia wasn’t told of the shouts of anger Vicky was hearing. Vicky wasn’t told of the desperate pleading Celia was hearing. But they both went on with their night, watching a movie in the living room where they both pretended to hear nothing that bothered them.

Monday, October 26th

Vicky was home alone that night. Celia was volunteering at the public library and wouldn’t be home for… half an hour. Vicky could last that long, right? Once her roommate returned they could figure out what to do with the vase. They could throw it away or find the return address and ship it back – whatever they needed to do to get it out of their home.

Vicky sat on the floor of the living room, hands over her ears, shouting back at the vase. It was screaming that it was all her fault. That she hadn’t even tried. That it should have been her.

Ten years ago, her sister died in a freak rockfall while they both had been hiking. Vicky ran out of the path of the boulders falling toward them. When she turned around, safe from the crushing rocks, she caught a glimpse of her sister being swept away. A day later, she cried with her mom seeing the recovered body. Vicky knew it had been her fault. She knew that she hadn’t tried. She knew that it should have been her. Her sister was always the more “perfect” daughter. Straight A’s in school, accepted into an elite college, going to study something pretentious like law or nursing – Vicky didn’t even know. Instead, her parents had been stuck with their other daughter who ended up dropping out of school and hadn’t amounted to anything.

The screaming wouldn’t stop this time. Normally, it said a sentence or two in passing but now it was shouting again and again and again. Vicky wanted to do anything just to get it to shut up for a second.

She didn’t hear the apartment door unlock and open behind her as she lifted the vase, dropping it from above her head onto the hardwood floor. In just a second, everything turned to chaos.

Vicky could clearly see the whisps of black pouring from inside the vase. No, it wasn’t pouring. That was too gentle. It gushed. It surged. It exploded. No matter how much of the strange substance escaped it was never enough. It took Celia screaming from the doorway to snap Vicky out of her stare into the flowing blackness.

Celia acted quicker than Vicky, rushing from the doorway, grabbing hold of Vicky’s arm, and slamming the bathroom door behind them. Sometime during their mad dash to get away, the… thing had taken a physical form. While it had started as a wispy smoke spewing from the shattered vase, now it was solid, tangible, and real. Celia would know, it had ripped her jacket off as they passed by.

This is why they ended up with something on the other side of their bathroom door. There they were, cowering in a room that didn’t have any means of escape. Of course, they had chosen the only room with no windows. Of course, their phones were discarded on the floor and in the pocket of a jacket in the living room as they ran away. Now, they had no options. Even if there was a strange rescuer coming to save them, what good could they do? This was otherworldly. Something out of a fantasy novel. A horrific monster.

But yet, it stood on the other side of the door.

Hours later, Celia couldn’t stop whispering to herself. Vicky couldn’t stop wishing she would just shut up.

There was a scratch. A jangle of the doornob.

Whatever it was, it wouldn’t stop – that they did know. They also knew this was completely and entirely their fault. No one asked them to accept the strange package that they didn’t know the origin of. No one begged them to open the cardboard, revealing the ornate vase and absurd challenge inside. Most of all, no one told them to keep their drastically different experiences to themselves.

Tuesday, October 27th

Sometime during the early hours of the morning, the thing had stopped its scratching. But Celia kept her eyes on the door. Something about the way Vicky reacted to it was drastically different than how she had reacted. For Celia, this thing just wanted to exist. Maybe it needed help. Maybe something was wrong with it. But for Vicky, it seemed like life or death. When the vase had initially shattered, Vicky had let out a shriek so unlike anything Celia had ever heard before. It was pure terror.

When they first escaped the clutches of its claws behind the door of the bathroom, Vicky had sat sobbing for too long. She’d never seen Vicky cry before in their two years of friendship. Between failing exams in college and going through breakups, never once did Vicky openly shed a tear in front of Celia. It felt like Vicky was finally letting the floodgates open – exploding with things Celia never knew were within her roommate.

Now, Vicky was passed out on the bathroom floor with a towel acting as a blanket. Celia didn’t know what to do. She could open the door, test the waters, see if the strange being beyond their door was gone or just needed help. But that also meant igniting the fire within Vicky again. Subjecting her to whatever she had been hearing from the vase for the past two weeks. That she wouldn’t do. Celia could never do that to Vicky.

People hated her roommate. They said she was weird and rude and spoke her mind too often. But Celia found comfort in her honesty. She didn’t need to camouflage into someone she wasn’t when she was with her. Besides, Vicky had been the only person she could rely on when her parents got divorced. And, when she was in college, Vicky helped her with calculus so she could graduate even though Vicky had dropped out six months earlier.

And now they were both hiding in the bathroom from something that shouldn’t exist.

Hours seemed to pass where Celia hadn’t heard so much as a floorboard creek outside of their door. But she refused to look at the other side. Eventually, Vicky woke up in a state of panic. She couldn’t get more than a few words out between breaths that didn’t seem to fill her lungs enough. Celia held her roommate’s shoulders tight, saying again and again that they were safe. That the thing couldn’t reach them in here. That everything would be okay. Then, Vicky made the decision to open the door. Just a crack – enough to see where it had gone. She tumbled back when she saw the black singe on the wood floor. It looked like the creature had caught fire and died right outside the door with its silhouette perfectly preserved on the ground. Long fingers curved toward the underside of the door. A monstrously large head and body spanned from the bathroom door almost to the kitchen at least twenty feet away. But it was gone. No more whispers were coming from the shattered vase in their living room. There was no more being that was trying to rip them apart.

There was nothing.

Wednesday, October 28th

The following morning, a letter slipped under their door. It was a pristine white envelope with a wax seal keeping the paper inside from spilling out. Celia saw it first and quietly ripped it open in the kitchen. Vicky was occupied in the living room, scrolling through endless stores online in search of a large enough rug to cover the stain left behind from the previous day. Celia read the contents to herself before dropping the letter into the trash.

Congratulations Miss Vicky and Miss Celia on surviving round one. We wish you both luck in your future encounters. Welcome to round two.

She didn’t tell Vicky what she had read. She couldn’t bear to.