Conscience

Karisa yawned. Her heavy history textbook sat on the small desk in front of her. The table’s spindly wooden legs groaned under the weight of her million-page book. A light reflected off of the silver face of the tiny clock on the red wall. Her semester exam spelled trouble; there was absolutely no way that she’d finish studying. Karisa slammed the cover down onto the pages of information and turned off the miniature radio on the dresser beside her that had been forecasting heavy rain and thunderstorms. Bloody shadows cast themselves on the wallpaper. Shivering Karisa pulled the eraser off the end of her pencil. Her room back home was perfect, no invisible entities hid there for the room was one itself, black and deep blue. Karisa felt wetness well up in her eyes. She shook it out rebelliously, Kari didn’t cry, ever. Shiny black hair spread as it popped out of its constricting ponytail. Groaning, Karisa pulled another band into her hair.
“ Karisa!”
Her aunt was an unpleasant specimen by Karisa’s standards, even less pleasant by mine. Gee! She, the aunt I mean, wears less than the monkey at that circus that visited last year! Or was it that Karisa wore too much. Her mother had always said she should have been born a century earlier, or maybe she did, her aunt certainly said so.
Mother, tears again! Two times in a night! How embarrassing, but wait, there’s no one here to witness it. Karisa’s lamp shone brightly. “ Car- crash” her brain whispered. Where!? Oh, yes “ The Car- Crash” where her parents had died and she had forgotten. Not everything, just the parent part of the morbid tale of her 14 years of life. Confused? Me too. Who’s me? There’s one of my kind in every one of yours. ( Clue, I want you to guess)
“ Dinner!”
“Studying!” Karisa yelled, her voice hoarse from a day of doing so.
A hideous cat slinked through the open door. It purred at me. Cats are one of the few things that can sense me. They seem to “feel” where I am instead of see me. Guess who, or what I am yet? Give up? Ok, I’m a conscience. (Not kidding). I’m one of those dudes (or chicks) that whisper into your ear, pull on your heart, and make you feel bad. No! That’s not your self.
The cat, Junki, came to rub against me but fell through my misty ectoplasm and rubbed Karisa instead. Kari kicked him.
“ Shouldn’t do that,” I whispered.
“ Sorry Junki,”
Ha! See how much power I have.
Karisa blinked, she’d said sorry to Junki? Must’ve been her stupid conscience. (Hey!) I am completely appalled at what people say about their consciences. It’s a really hard job you know! Being a conscience. For starters I use to have a life.
My name was Stianis (Stian). I was a well- respected young lad in our village, of course this was long before the word “ dude” existed and “chick” meant only young fowl. I had a wife-to-be and my own cottage, then came the fateful day when the heavens assigned the job of a conscience. They didn’t even ask me! Ok, it was a punishment… this is my story… ( of how I came to be)…
“ Stian!” Mother shrieked, “ It’s dark, it’s dark!”
I ignored her and sprinted deeper into the woods. Finally, when Mother’s voice was faint, I stopped, just in time to keep myself from stumbling into the clearing at the base of the colossal mountain that shadowed our village. The somber mouth of Spring Caverns loomed in front of me.
No living person came anywhere close to here anymore. Villagers use to come here every day, collecting the sweet, clean water that pooled in the little bowls of rock; the liquid had healing properties and tasted better than anything we could get from the muddy river we used now. This sweet water was now unreachable… for one day my brother had gone and had never returned. We got his body of course… well, bits and pieces. His blood could be seen seeping out of Spring Caverns for days. There had been so much red that it couldn’t have been only his. The one who witnessed it first returned sobbing, he was a full-grown man too, Old Jobs. There was a vampist haunting our village.
(For those who don’t know, who are very few, what a vampist is, it’s a very powerful ghost that haunts village after village. Unlike the usual ghost that we often see, instead of politely asking for help it revenges itself. Vampists are often very old ghosts who start of polite but after years of rejection become angered. My advice, you should always help a ghost in need. Unlike the vampire, however, it does not consume blood but rather spills it in such a fashion that makes the village that it is haunting frightened; it then preys on the fear for strength. By the ways in which my brother and others had died, this vampist was strong, and probably very old. )
I shivered; a hair-raising sensation that I was being observed made me re-consider the dare. It was stupid really, and the dumbest thing was that I was the one who’d suggested it. We would all sit it out at the entrance of Spring Caverns for a night. Mainly to impress a few dames back in the village, I had dared every lad (including myself). But where were my pals and why did I still feel an unwelcome presence lurking just beyond the darkness? I started to get up off the loamy soil I had seated my self on, it was difficult because my legs had been starting to numb and I was trying not to make noise. Notice the word trying, the ferns and grasses around me swished, “ Shi…”
To be continued.