It's a New Day | Teen Ink

It's a New Day

April 17, 2022
By EmmieWD BRONZE, Nashville, Tennessee
EmmieWD BRONZE, Nashville, Tennessee
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

The house looks different. This isn’t especially surprising. It is haunted, after all. But it looks drastically different.

The bushes don’t purr as I run my fingers over them. The house doesn’t shudder when I clang open the door. But most importantly, there’s a four-person family sitting in the living room. That’s certainly odd.

At first I think that the house is playing with me - it does that sometimes. So I let out a dry chuckle and pat the drywall softly.

That, of course, draws a member of the apparently-real-family’s attention.

“Who are you?” a little boy sneers, pompousness filling his voice that matches his upturned and snotty nose.

His parents don’t hear him and I bug out my eyes as if to say shut up!

Thankfully, he does and they continue watching some stupid action film. I take the opportunity to walk around my changed home.

It is a stereotypical house now. It has little signs detailing such ridiculous sentiments as Home Sweet Home. This house is a home, yes. It’s a home to me.

Hell, it used to be a home to the Devil Herself.

That’s how it really started being haunted. She disguised herself and then a small family moved in. They disappeared the very next day.

If I recall it all correctly, it was a family of three. It contained a mother, a father, and a little boy. Their mystery was never solved. How could it have been? No law officer in their right mind would claim the culprit to have red horns and a silvery, split tongue.

But then my family arrived.

The difference is, we beat her. We tamed the Devil and we tamed the house. But then my parents left.

And I was all alone.

So, I went for a walk. And then I came back to this… madness. 

Frustrated beyond belief by all of this, I walk back down the stairs. My sandals clack against the wood and the chipped paint makes me feel like I’m back at home. After all, this house is all I have left.

I enter the living room, fully prepared to roar at the family to leave.

But the boy points a shaky finger at me and whimpers, “Mummy, there’s someone here.”

“Darling,” the mother coos and stares right through me, “of course there isn’t. There’s no one else here.”


The author's comments:

This piece is centered around the story of a being returning to her haunted house. The implicit message is that times change at the blink of an eye.


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