There was a monster in place of my best friend. I knew it was not her, its hair was not the same color, its eyes were shaped differently and it did not wear the friendship bracelet that I made her. Most of all I knew it was a monster because my best friend would have never called me by my full name, Annabelle, like the monster that is posing as my best friend had. I remember the phone call from yesterday word for word.

“Bell, there is something weird under my bed,” Lily’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“Are you sure it isn’t Buddy?” I asked, doubtful. Buddy was her old, semi-deranged tabby cat.

“I’m pretty sure, it is saying stuff in like, another language or something,” she was panicked.

“Well, get out of your room and I’ll be over there in a bit,” She was starting to scare me.

“Okay....um.....Bell? I can see it!” She screamed, loud enough to draw the attention of the person sitting next to me at the bus stop.

“Wait, what’s going on?!” I said over and over again.

Silence. Nothing. The call was still going but there was not a word to be heard on the other side.

She was at school today but I had only seen her long enough for her to say “Hi, Annabelle,” In between classes...

Her voice was flat and empty.

Now I sit in the mess that is her room while the monster is still at school. Scraps of memorabilia that have accumulated over the years were misplaced and set out in an odd assortment. Everything was off, her there was clothing where her books should be and underneath her bed was completely bare. On my hands and knees, I reached for a small black box that was under her bed and when I brought the light to it, it was a foundation compact. The monster was wearing her makeup today, so how did it get here?

The lid snapped open on its own and in the mirror I saw myself except it wasn’t my reflection. It was me standing in a dark room with light illuminating the rectangle outline of a door. I tapped the glass to see if it was really a screen and my hand went through it as if there wasn’t anything there. I was transported to the room as soon as my hand was all the way through. I could see the other me open the door and walk into the light with the door closing quickly behind her. The room was pitch black until it started to glow colorful shades in all the corners. There were empty picture frames on every inch of the walls with varying shapes and sizes and the door that the other me escaped out of had vanished.

It was like some twisted funhouse because every once in a while my reflection would appear in the glass of a picture frame. The walls started moving in on my and what was once a room with about twenty square feet in it, became a narrow coffin. The picture frames disappeared and I had the horrible feeling that I was buried underground. I felt the lack of oxygen and I used all my force to break open the wooden death trap. It splintered and broke apart at the hinges and I was falling in empty space.

When I hit solid ground, I saw Lily sitting in the center of an empty circular room without doors. Light filtered in through a round window on the ceiling that was at least fifteen feet high.

“Lily?”

She turned her head and said, “I don’t know how to get out, I’ve been here for so long and I can’t figure it out.”

“It’s okay,” I said, but nothing was okay.

Something fell from the hole in the ceiling; we both looked at it with caution before I snatched it up. It was a piece of yellowed paper with a stone tied to it. I unfolded it carefully and it read: “JUST WISH FOR IT”. I showed it to Lily.

“What does it mean?” She asked.

“Try just wishing that we were home,” I suggested.

“Okay,” she closed her eyes and nothing happened.

“Alright, that didn’t work,” I looked around and thought of what we could use to get out of the room. “I wish we had a ladder.”

Something blocked the light from coming in through the window and a ladder landed right between us. We looked at it with wide eyes and silently decided it was time to go. I climbed up first and when I reached the last rung, I had to jump a little to pull myself through the window. I was blinded by the light and when I went halfway through, gravity seemed to pull me sideways instead of down. My eyes adjusted and I was back in my own house, halfway through the bathroom mirror. I helped Lily through the mirror and after we confirmed that we were really in my house, she left to go home.

The next week was back to normal as if nothing changed and all the monsters disappeared. The one thing that did change was that Lily never wore makeup again.