My family was on a bus. Father was driving, I was sitting near the front, and the rest were behind, along with many other people. It wasn’t my normal family, though. The father wasn’t my dad, the mother wasn’t my mom, I wasn’t me, and I had two younger siblings. I was the oldest of three children, and had a younger brother, and an even younger sister.
We were in the bus to drive the families to their new homes. A small fat child appeared out of nowhere, and introduced himself as Clout. We all shouted for Clout to get out, but he wouldn’t leave. We noticed around us that the world began to change. Clout was forcing us through different dimensions. The lands looked basically the same, but small details would be different.
He was doing this to all the buses. There were more of us, and dad was talking to them when they’d actually share dimension. He told them to keep going as planned, no matter where it is. It’ll all work out.
I got sick of Clout’s playtime, and attacked him. I strangled the little bastard, and he eventually vanished. We stopped switching dimensions.
Following the original plan lead us to a dead end. Instead of finding whatever it was we expected, we found something infinitely better. We quickly moved in to the new house. Mother was so excited at the new kitchen. Father loved the garage. Little sister, who was around 16, loved all the hiding places to stash things and herself. The cat loved the way every room was connected by tubing in the walls. Little brother, aged 10-12, and I loved the yard.
We were near the ocean, or a very large lake. The yard was concrete steps that went into the water, each step containing a large section for gardening. The top step had normal flowers planted in dirt. The next step down had swamp-like plants. The last step had seaweeds and water-lilies.
There was a mirror-image house attached to ours by the garden. The man who lived next door was a black military man, who had an eye for my little sister. It wasn’t my place to interfere, but I didn’t like him anyway. Little brother and I would often go down the the fourth step at low tide and swim in the pool.
One night, everything started to go crazy.
Little brother and I were in the garden, tending the flowers and watching a storm over the ocean. I looked up and noticed that the first two steps were covered by an overhang from the house, so we could stay out there so long as the wind didn’t blow the rain under it.
The skies became so dark that it was a black canvas before us. The only light was of the lightning, and the strange silver lining on the gigantic waves. The water rose, and covered the fourth step, as it usually does. It looked really neat, because the pool had lighting under it, and we could still see it on. The third step had even more lighting, and we could see the silhouettes of the lily-pads.
Soon, the waves lapped at the third step. The lilies shifted, making all sorts of pretty lighting on the ceiling above us. In time, step three was covered in water. The sound of rain was deafening now, surpassed only by the crash of waves.
Step two was much higher up than step three, so there was little chance of me getting taken in by the water. I walked down to see if it truly was safe down there, and told little brother to wait for me. I leaned on the railing between step two and step three, and felt the wind on my face.
I turned to call my little brother down, but something caught my eye. I screamed for brother to get mother, and I dropped to my knees. I reached down at the bloody, battered body of my little sister. I knew that man was no good, I had just known it. I told her she shouldn’t, I told her I didn’t want anything bad to happen.
I just knew in my heart, that this storm would never go away.
We carried my sister’s body inside and cleaned it up. It was too late for her, even when I found her. I told mother that the night will only get worse, and nothing will clear the storm.
I turned on the sink in the kitchen to get something to drink. I grabbed a cup, filled it, and took a sip. I turned off the water, but it wouldn’t turn off. The sink filled exactly to the edge, and then the water stopped. I stuck my cup in, and scooped out water. The spout turned on, filled in the missing, and then turned off.
I began to yawn. It was a big yawn. I tried to cut it off partway through, but I couldn’t close my mouth. I screamed, and my mother came to my side. She watched in horror as my mouth opened wider, wider than a normal mouth should open. I both heard and felt a snap, and my jaw went limp. Four teeth fell out. We started to clean my mouth in the sink, and put the teeth in a cup.
Father had gone missing. Sister is dead. Little brother is traumatized. Mother is strangely calm through all this, and I’ve got a dislocated/broken jaw.
I sat silently on the couch for some time, but then I ran outside. The storm was still going, no end in sight. I ran down the first step, then the second. I made a flying leap into the waters of the third, and batted off wreckage as I swam around. Mother darted out after me, but was more careful coming down. She made it to view step three just as I was dragging a body from the water. I had found father.
Mother shrieked in disbelief, but was cut short by a bolt to the windpipe. The bastard next door had assumed that we had just found sister, and was going to cover up any noise. I dropped father’s body in the water, and ran as fast as I could inside. Brother was in the doorway – he had seen it all. I grabbed him and the cat, and we hid as best we could in the house. We just wanted the torture to end.
It did. They found our bodies a few weeks later, after the flood waters dissipated. We were drowned in our hiding place, and no one knew our story.