Siding With The Supernatural 🔮

Okay yes, I got locked out of the dorm for the third time in as many hours, but would you believe me if I said I had a good reason this time?

About a month ago, I lost my first dorm room key only two hours after I moved in, so I had to have a new lock made. I made two copies of the key—one to put under my shoe sole, the other one under the doormat. When my physics professor threw my shoe (the one with my key) into the Madison River near the university campus, I lost my key for the second time. What a relief that I hadn’t carried the third key with me that day—my backpack that would have carried it was stolen while I almost drowned attempting to get my shoe. What a shame that I happened to have my Mac, my iPad Pro (with an Apple Pencil), and the adorable Alabama postcard from my granny in that backpack.

This lunch, I had my key in the back pocket of my jeans when I rushed into the tutoring center bathroom. When I pulled down my pants to sit on the toilet, I heard a plop, but I just assumed that my big waste came out a little earlier than expected. After my business, I flushed the toilet and saw something metal—something golden—swirling down in the water. I didn’t think it was natural that the big waste was shining, but oh well, you know.

So I was down to zero again. I ended up taking a walk down to the river to kill some time and figure out what to do. I didn’t want to swim, seeing what had happened yesterday, so I just brought some food and ate. Eventually, I went back to the school, and tried to fall asleep in the hallway. When it became too embarrassing to loiter in front of the RA’s dorm waiting for them to show up, and I’d already looked through all the advertisements tacked to the cork board outside enough times to memorize the numbers to call by heart, I found myself in Hema’s dorm instead.

I slumped onto her bed, tucking her spare key into my pocket. She had bestowed it upon me after I safely accompanied her drunk friend home from a party as a token of friendship and trust. I wandered here more often than not to steal her ridiculously bougie rosewater essence spray, or to cry a storm as I recounted my art professor’s criticism of the piece I spent three entire months on. I rolled over, hugging her scratchy satin bolster closely and making a mess of her made sheets and the loose papers scattered over it. But, a worse feeling than my destructiveness was boiling in my gut.

I wondered if I’d angered some sort of spirit. Either by being a pretty crap excuse of a person in general, or if it was the manifestation of some ancient generational curse. I was weighing the possibilities of each and considering the purchase of an evil eye bracelet for protection when Hema burst through the door, a plastic bag that I recognized from the nearest boba spot swinging wildly in her hand.

“Sasha texted, said she saw you letting yourself in here to steal my rosewater again.” Hema sent me a dark look under her thick eyebrows. “But judging by how you smell, I’m guessing that’s not it.”

She thrust a drink towards me. I inspected the label—jasmine milk tea with egg pudding and caramel boba—then looked up at her with such unfiltered adoration that I was sure my eyes watered. Despite her calling out my lack of proper hygiene after my depressive slump last week, her presence instantly made me feel a million times better.

The day turned to night after a handful of therapeutic hours spent on Hema’s bed. I was swept into a deep slumber before I could lug myself back to my hopeless dorm door. When the morning approached, the intruding burden of a day’s worth of excessive responsibilities flooded my wandering mind, causing me to toss and turn more vigorously than usual. Right as another sleep cycle was within an ace of settling in, the bitter morning floor had other plans. THUD! My weary body scrambled to find myself pressed against the ground, thick splinters shooting through my knit sweater, and I was up.

Stumbling out of Hema’s room, my sleeping legs carried me to the place I called “home.” I mindlessly clutched the doorknob and thrusted all my weight against the door, which once again left me forced against a wooden barrier, and that’s when the memory of old Professor Talk-A-Lot and my shoe streamed through my head. My key had once again abandoned me in front of that door and in that moment, I was sure someone had cursed me. My whole life had been a series of recurring unfortunate events, from frequent bird droppings on my nicest coats, to spilled coffee before I was even granted a sip. For once in my time here on this rotten earth, I was motivated to make a change. But how?

I racked my brain for possible options on how to remove myself from my predicament. When no new ideas came to mind, I settled for my initial thought of buying an evil eye bracelet to ward off my misfortune. I set off into the bustling street and made my way towards the store with the amulets, hoping it was still open. Along the way, I somehow managed to slip in a muddy puddle, cover myself with dirt, and lose my phone, but I had finally arrived. As I calmed my breathing and looked up at the store, I was devastated to see that it had closed just a minute before my arrival. I really couldn’t imagine how my day could get any worse.

Maybe, just maybe it was bad karma? I thought extensively about what I could change or what I had done that was so bad, but the only thing that came to mind was this whole situation.

If I couldn’t buy myself some good luck, the only thing I could think of was to make some luck for myself. I ran back to my dorm building, careful to avoid the muddy puddles while gripping my dripping phone in my hand, and knocked on the door a couple rooms down. As I heard the footsteps heading towards the door, I hoped this girl would finally help me turn my life around. Then, the door creaked open.

“Hello?”

“Hi. We met at orientation and you mentioned you liked crystals? Could you help me out with getting some for good luck? I’ve just been having a really rough week, er, a rough year—a rough life to be honest.”

She looked at me dead in the eyes, grabbed me by the arm, and yanked me into her dorm room.

The room was fascinating, and a mess. The walls were covered in canvases filled with mysterious and unrecognizable sketches, many that made my spine shiver out of some fear of blurry ominous shapes. I saw thirty or more multi-hundred page books precariously working their way up toward the ceiling in great stacks. I squinted. Dorm rooms were small, or at least all our dorm rooms were small. This place seemed big, far bigger than any dorm room ought to be. The floor of the room was scattered with crystals, unused candles, and fifty small stuffed donkeys—each wearing an expression of great bewilderment. I saw a table in the center of the “dorm” covered in, you guessed it, crystals.

I, unbid, approached the table, carefully navigating the books and stuffed donkeys. Then, all at once, the books fell on me.

I gasped in surprise as I found myself on the floor for the second time today, but this time my head was pounding. Wow, those books were heavy. I shook my head and pushed myself up into a sitting position.

“Oh! I’m so sorry about that, the ghost that lives here—I just call her Maddie—is feeling especially cranky tonight,” the girl said, reaching out a hand to pull me up. “Are you okay?”

“Ah. Fine,” I grunted, shoving the books off my back. The girl gasped and rushed at me. I reached out a hand, grateful, but her hands flew past mine, picking up the books I’d thrown and hugging them to her chest.

“Careful with these!” She brushed off some non-existent dust from the cover. “They’re not meant to be touched by… regular people.”

“Right. Okay.” I started to pull myself up with the table but stopped midway. “Oh. Sorry. Is that not meant to be touched by regular people as well?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Wow. Prickly, aren’t you?”

I sighed, stumbling to my feet. “I’m just… tired. I guess.”

“You must be,” she said sympathetically. “You’ve definitely had a long week.”

I laughed humorlessly. “That’s an understatement.” If I had seen myself at that moment, I wouldn’t have recognized that desperate, miserable mess. “So. What can you do for me?”

“The real question you should be asking is what you can do for me; I have no obligation to help you.”

“Yup, yeah, that’s what I meant,” I hurriedly replied, careful not to offend her as this may have been my one chance of salvation. “You’re totally right.”

She looked at me strangely, but didn’t say anything as she busied herself grabbing crystals and plants that I had never seen before.

“Okay, I think we can start now,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. Mere seconds later, she shook her head. “Actually, I’m not ready at the moment.”

Making a distracted clicking sound with her tongue, she shifted through the mess of crystals on her desk. “Here,” she said, shoving a stuffed donkey at me. “Cuddle.”

I held the donkey at arm’s length, unsure what to do. When she kept staring at me expectantly through the thick round lenses of her glasses, I pressed the dusty donkey into my chest. “Um… what’s your name?” I asked, hoping to relieve the awkward feelings I felt snuggling a bewildered donkey.

“Maddie!” the girl exclaimed, throwing her arms up in the air.

“I thought that was the—”

“Maddie can be annoying at times,” the girl said, wrinkling her nose and pushing a golden strand of hair behind her ear. “My name is Millie. Yours?” With that, she promptly disappeared under the table.

“Uh, I’m—”

“I found it!” Millie said triumphantly, reappearing with a crystal that looked identical to at least twenty-five percent of the other crystals in the room.

“Okay, so can we get started now?”

“Yup.” Millie took off her glasses, shook out her hair, closed her eyes, and… did nothing. She held the crystal tightly in her hands while I held my donkey, and… did nothing.

“Um, excuse me?”

“Don’t rush the process,” she ordered through gritted teeth.

“Oh. Right, of course,” I said, hurriedly shutting my eyes and clamping my lips.

As I prepared myself for whatever Millie was going to do, I took the chance to finally take a break from the chaos of the last few days. I tried to completely shut off all sensations, focusing on the comforting void of my closed eyes. Of course, my stubborn mind refused to comply, stumbling between increasingly bizarre thoughts like a sleep-deprived college student.

Eventually, it slowly honed in on the mysterious yet pleasant aroma that was wafting through the room. I figured that the scent of the candles I had seen earlier had engrained itself into Millie’s walls, but the smell almost seemed to be getting stronger, and… warmer? My curiosity naturally took the better of me, so I flexed my nostrils, and took a gargantuan whiff. Immediately, thick smoke burst into my lungs, sending me into a hysterical coughing fit, and leaving me wondering why Millie was holding a candle right beneath my nose.

“Uh, what are you—” I started, but Millie cut me off, placing her finger on my lips to shush me. She suddenly began humming an eerie and ethereal, yet strangely comforting, tune. I didn’t recognize it. Even more confused now, but having learned to not distract her while she was in the middle of doing… whatever it was she was doing, I kept quiet and stood still, feeling a little awkward.

As the notes of the song began to melt together, I started to relax. My arms fell to my sides, and the donkey slipped out of my grasp, falling to the floor with a gentle thud. Millie’s honey-like voice was like a siren to my ears, awakening something in my chest. The feeling bloomed like a rose, and manifested itself physically as golden spirals of light, racing towards the ceiling and disappearing through. I saw a miniature version of myself in my mind’s eye. Little Me looked as bedraggled and dirty as my regular self was, and she still had the same skeptical expression I gave Millie the second she started talking about a ghost, but there was one difference. Two gently curved, cloud-like angel wings had sprouted out of my small doppelgänger’s shoulders.

The wings seemed to glow, as if the sun shone from within them, a stark contrast against the unkept vision of Little Me. Behind a ratty attempt at a ponytail and dirt-smeared cheeks glimmered two eyes, two little ponds, beautiful but eerily empty. They never moved. They stayed fixed on something. Shivering, I turned away from them, returning to the wings, which had changed slightly. A light breeze brushed my cheek as they flapped, feathers falling away, patches of golden light breaking through. They were falling faster now, and no longer delicately, as horrible tearing sounds pierced the calm serenity I had basked in. All three of my eyes burned and watered, the golden light now a blur of bright white, sending sharp, piercing pains through my head. I went to grab my hair, to shake away the pain but my arms stayed glued to my sides, unresponsive.

I shut my eyes tight from the pain, attempting to block out the bright white light, yet it still seeped through my eyelids.

Just as the pain became unbearable, the singing stopped and I jolted awake. Millie leaned over me as I got up.

“Are you okay?” she asked, helping me into a chair. “You had a very strange reaction to the spell. Most people don’t pass out like that.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Did it work?”

Millie smiled. “Only one way to find out!”

With that, I thanked her and ran all the way to Madison River. For the first time in months, I felt truly happy and carefree. Millie seemed legit. What could possibly go wrong now?

My contentment only doubled when I found my lost shoe and backpack right there, sitting side by side underneath a tree. My backpack was practically untouched, and my shoe still had the key.

But even as I breathed a sigh of relief, an uneasy feeling crept into my chest. It was getting colder, and the air seemed to whisper Madison.

Shivering, I quickly grabbed my belongings and walked away. As I got closer to my dorm, the uneasy feeling faded and was replaced with the giddiness of my good luck. I couldn’t believe Millie’s spell had worked! Now, I was eager to test how long this spell would last.

I woke up the next morning with a jump in my step. Since it was a Saturday, I decided that today was the day I would clean my chaotically filthy room. I began by dealing with the boatload of laundry strewn around my room. I put all my dirty clothes into the hamper to take down to the washing machine unit later, and poured my clean clothes out of the basket onto the bed. I had always worn mismatched socks, because one pair always seemed to be missing, but I now found that every sock had its partner. I neatly folded my socks and placed them in my drawer, but as I reached for the next one, I felt the same unsettling chill I felt in the forest the previous day. Slowly and cautiously, I turned around.

Standing in front of me was my friend, Nora. “Hey, what’s wrong?” she asked, “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” I didn’t see anything, but it definitely felt like a ghost just passed through me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, ignoring her comment.

“Oh, I was just down the hall and spotted you finally unlocking your door again. What are you on now, spare key number seven?”

“Ha ha,” I sarcastically replied.

Nora began to tell me all about a guy from her communications class, but my attention was elsewhere. Behind Nora, the air began to move. A shadowy figure floated through the room. I blinked, and the figure was gone.

“... So anyway, one thing led to another and now we’re getting drinks together,” Nora said brightly. “Anyway, I have to get going now. I’ll see you later!” She turned around and bounced out of my room.

I was suddenly filled with an inexplicable feeling of premonition. My chest tightened, the mood of the room seemed to take on a darker cast…I looked around to see if anything else was amiss. Nothing. There were no traces of anyone, or anything, being in our room other than Nora and me. And yet I felt that something was in this room, and it had no good intentions. Had I, with my usual bad luck, somehow gotten assigned to a room where some vengeful ghost lurked? Had Millie’s spell awakened a spirit that now wouldn’t leave? I suddenly remembered the ghost in her room, Maddie.

Slowly, I turned around and walked right out of my dorm room. Something was very wrong. I’d found my key, my shoe, and my backpack, but I’d also attracted something far worse. Picking up speed, I ran to the RA to demand a room change. With my poor track record of losing keys, they were reluctant to agree, but my pale, fear-stricken face was more than convincing.

Even now, I don’t dare to walk by my old room or even be anywhere near that building. From what I’ve heard, odd things are still happening there…

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Writers (in order): Irene Hong, Alyssa Tang, Annabel Willa Smith, Audrey Paleczny, Avik Belenje, Binny Park, Charles Halas, Eman Hussain, Joyce Lee, Keiss Chan, Lina Youn, Lucas Fredronic, Lyra Thompson, M.S., Madeleine (:, nim, Sophia H, and M.S.

Editor: Irene Tsen.

In collaboration with The Prose Train, a student-led nonprofit connecting student writers in a larger mission of collaborative storytelling, where authors contribute 2-15 sentences to continue the story to create a unique and final product.

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