Jenny hugged all her new friends she had made in that first semester of freshman year goodbye as her parents carried her luggage to the car. There was her roomie/bffl/future maid of honor Katie, her suitemates Laura and Emily, and Kaci, the girl from down the hall with whom she had shared a sloppy drunken kiss at her first rager and she still wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it but did her hug feel a little warmer? A little tighter? Did Kaci whisper in her ear that she loved her? Who knows.
Jenny inserted herself into the minivan, surrounded by all the laundry she hadn’t done in the past three and a half months. She would have brought it home for Thanksgiving, but she decided instead to assert her independence and have a “Friendsgiving” of turkey Lunchables and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
“So how’s school?” Mom asked, turning around in the passenger’s seat.
“It’s great,” Jenny answered, “I’m making so many new friends, and I really liked all my classes.”
“Are you glad to be coming home?” Dad asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Jenny lied.
“We’re glad to have you back,” Mom said with a sniffle, “We’re really starting to get that ‘empty nest’ feeling we’ve heard so much about, haven’t we?”
“Yes, Carol, it’s just a bit too quiet around the house without our little Jenny-Wenny.”
Jenny cringed at her old nickname. “Wait, what about Kevin?”
“Kevin!” Mom and Dad said simultaneously, as if they had totally forgotten.
“Yeah, he’s around, I guess. He’s no Jenny though!” Dad laughed.
“You’ll have to ask him how he feels about the new office, he hasn’t said anything to us about it,” Mom said.
Ah, yes. The new office. This was what Jenny’s friends had all said would happen. You go away for a while, and your parents promise to keep everything the same way, then you miss one phone call because you’re taking a midterm, or you’re too hung over to deal with parents right now, or you’re sitting just a bit too close to Kaci and you aren’t sure she noticed but you don’t want to ruin it, and they turn your room into an office. Jenny sat back and smiled knowingly. She could handle this. She was a big college girl now. She would stay in the guest room, she guessed. That would be fitting; college was her home now.
“There it is!” Mom announced as they pulled into the driveway. The house was adorned in festive lights and wreaths, and Jenny felt a pang in her heart that she had not been a part of it. Jenny hopped out of the car, leaving her parents to unpack for her and headed straight for her room.
With her hand on the doorknob, Jenny took a deep breath and prepared herself. Of course she would miss her pastel-and-unicorns décor, but she was beyond that. Now she was into unframed posters of vintage movies and strings of white Christmas lights. Jenny opened the door.
Pastel. Unicorns. Her sheets were even bunched up, as they had been the morning she left for school and neglected to make her bed. Jenny blinked and stared at it a little longer, baffled. There was still half a can of Diet Coke on her dresser next to a rotting pizza crust on a paper plate long since soaked through with grease. The television was on, set to MTV.
Jenny couldn’t believe it. She slowly pulled the door closed and backed away before turning to find her brother.
“Kevin,” Jenny called, walking down the hall toward his room. She stopped in the doorway.
A strip of masking tape divided the already smaller bedroom in half. On the left was Kevin’s bed, dresser, desk, and piles of boy stuff on the floor. On the right was a home office.
“Kevin?”
Then, from beneath the piles of dirty clothes and skateboards and video games lurched a figure. It looked like Kevin, but a pale, skinny version of Kevin. He hissed and leapt for the door, slamming it in Jenny’s face.
Jenny froze, staring at the closed door in disbelief. The noises from Kevin’s room rolled over her: a frenzied hissing, disgruntled growling, and finally the distinct lapping of tongue on wounded flesh. Dazed, Jenny walked back to her room.
The sameness of her room still surprised her, but less so this time. It was kind of comforting, really. She was home. Jenny looked then to her walk-in closet. A soft yellow light was emanating from the cracks. She had left the closet empty. Jenny opened the door.
White wax pooled on the carpet, dripping from the once-tall candles. Masking tape marked out an angular ‘J’ in a pentagon on the floor. In the center of the hexagon was one of Jenny’s framed senior pictures. Each side of the pentagon bore an item: a baby sock, a tiny pre-molar, a lock of hair, a rotting guinea pig corpse, small section of gray matter preserved in a jar. Jenny’s hand instinctively went to the raised scar behind her ear and screamed. She wasn’t sure when she fell on the floor. She didn’t feel the hot wax or the dancing flames. She just kept screaming.
“What is it, sweetie? You were screaming,” Mom cooed as Jenny stirred, laying on her pastel bed.
Jenny shook the fog from her mind and remembered where she was, icy fear gripping her heart. She looked to the closet, which was no longer glowing.
“Didja have a fright?” Dad asked. Jenny flinched; she hadn’t known he was in the room.
Jenny looked with wide eyes at each of her parents in turn, lifting a shaking finger toward the closet door. “Th… the cl…” she stammered.
“The closet?” Mom finished for her, standing from the bed and moving toward the closet door. “Why, sweetie, that’s just your clothes.”
Mom twisted the doorknob, revealing all of Jenny’s clothes hanging neatly on hangers.
“We gotcha all settled in there,” Dad said, a firm hand resting menacingly on her shoulder, “now you can stay here…”
“Forever,” Mom and Dad said in unison.
Jenny’s heart skipped, then raced. She could feel her pupils dilate and her hair stand on end as the terror washed over her.
“What about school?” Jenny whispered, her vision steadily fading to black.
“You won’t be needing that anymore,” Mom hissed.
“You’ll be our little princess,” Dad sang.
Jenny felt faint. She looked up as she heard a faint scratch at the window. There, hanging upside-down from the top of the window, was the frazzled and gaunt visage of Kevin. In his own blood from his bitten fingertip he had written one word backward on the glass:
Run.
Jenny lunged for the door, but Dad’s hand was still on her and she fell to the floor. Her fingernails dug into the carpet as she felt Mom’s hand grip her ankle.
“Daddy’s little girl!” Dad growled.
“Help your mother in the kitchen!” Mom screeched.
The glass from the window shattered, distracting Mom and Dad long enough for Jenny to make it into the hallway and tumble down the stairs.
“Would you bring in the mail while you’re out?” Mom asked, her voice doubled by a threatening baritone.
A car was idling in the driveway. Jenny didn’t think, she just got in the car.
“Drive.”
Squealing tires. Revving engine. The tranquil hum of miles of pavement between Jenny and her parents. Jenny looked to the driver.
“How did you—” Jenny was cut off by Kaci’s shush, a finger over Jenny’s mouth.
“I know,” Kaci whispered, her hand still brushing Jenny’s face.
Several miles of restorative silence later, Jenny noticed something. There was a faint smell of candles coming from the glove compartment, a soft yellow glow. Kaci softly grabbed Jenny’s hand. The car sped on.
-Bri Forney, Senior Staff-Writer