Monday
"Well... sucks to be you, April!" smiled Yumi.
"I don't think so. I'm designated driver tonight, and Tess was last time. That means you'll be the lucky one who's gonna have to do it on Friday." She tossed the short straw she had drawn in Yumi's hands and high-fived her younger sister.
Yumi raised her eyebrows.
"What's up with Friday? Did I miss anything?"
April smiled coyly. "Oh... it's just that I got hold us on some VIP tickets to the New Year's Eve party at—"
"No way! At The Enclave? No one ever gets let inside, and you scored us some VIP tickets!?" Yumi was practically bouncing off her armchair.
"Yup." April said, beaming, and passed a sideward glance towards Tess. She smiled back shyly and brushed her auburn hair behind her ear.
"And... how?" asked Yumi "They don't exactly give them away on street corners."
"That's the weird thing about it, they were in the mail today, just like that. I first thought it was junk mail but they seem legit enough." April picked up an envelope from the end table and handed it to Yumi, who took out three large, black tickets and looked at them, almost in awe.
"It's not a mix-up either, look at the envelope", Tess said, hugging her knees.
Yumi flipped the blank white envelope and found April's address written by hand and with great care in narrow, delicate letters.
"Lucky us, I guess. I can't wait 'til Friday!"
"Neither can I," said April, rising from the couch, "but first things first. We have another, slightly less glamorous party to attend to. So bring out the booze, hide your children, it's time to have some fun!"
After they all got dressed ("Nice shoes Yumi, are the new?"), April grabbed the car key, smiled as if she had remembered an old joke and went after her sister and her friend. As they backed out of the driveway, no one noticed the black van down the street. Half an hour later, the front door opened again, but the one who entered was someone else entirely.
* * *
Tuesday
April entered the kitchen, still in her nightgown. Her blonde hair was bound in a short ponytail behind her head. She squinted. The sun was already high in the sky, shining through the window and reflecting from a hundred different surfaces.
"Good Morning, sleepyhead!" Tess was already up, making waffles by the smell of it.
"I need my beauty sleep. How late is it?" April yawned.
"You've done far worse, it's only eleven thirty. Syrup or powdered sugar?"
"Syrup. You're a darling, Tess. I'd long since starved without you. How come you're up so early?"
"I couldn't sleep. There was some weird noise keeping me up... couldn't find out where it came from. Dreamt really weird stuff, too."
"What exactly?" asked April as she took a bite of her breakfast.
"I don't remember much details, just that fuzzy feeling that it was weird."
April knew better than to try to coax more out of her sister. She was glad if Tess talked at all, mostly she resorted to monosyllabic communication. She liked to joke that Tess only wanted to talk if she had something world-changing to say. She thanked Tess again for the breakfast and excused herself to her room. She was in the final weeks of completing her bachelor thesis. She was glad that she found enough time to have some fun now and then, but as the deadline crept nearer and nearer, she got more and more anxious to get it done on time. She turned on her laptop, grabbed a book she had borrowed for her research and sat cross-legged on her bed, setting the laptop and book next to her.
After a couple of pages, she noticed the screen of her laptop flickering. She turned her head, but everything was back to normal again. She waited for a short time, then the screen flickered again. She thought she had seen words appearing on the screen, but they wer gone again too fast for her to read them. She leaned in closer, waiting for the words to appear again. A quiet noise seemed to come from the speakers, like static on a radio. There were the words again. She could almost make them out. Next time she would be able to read them. She really wanted to know what they said. She wondered what caused them to appear in the first place. There they were again! Almost. Probably a common error, she had already had more problems with the thing than she could count, but that wasn't so important right now. What was important was to look at the screen to find out what the words said.
* * *
Meanwhile, Tess had also returned to her room. Hers was larger than Aprils to accommodate for all the "junk" that she had to store. At least, that's what April called her stacks of paper, canvases and assorted brushes and pencils. They went to the same university, but April took history while Tess took liberal arts. She loved her sister, but April could be real pain in the ass when it came to that. "It's nice to know to have someone in the family who'll be working in a coffee shop. Discount lattes for everyone!" She was just teasing her of course, but Tess would have liked a little appreciation of her work from now and then.
Tess was exercising some drawing when she heard a dull thud from her sister's room next door.
"Everything alright?"
No Answer.
"April, what happened? Did you drop something?"
Still nothing. Tess dropped her pencil and paper, got up and went for April's room. She knocked on the door, getting no reply. When she entered the room, she had to stifle a scream. Her sister was sitting on the bed, slack-jawed and staring into the screen of her laptop, a thick open history book lying page-down on the floor next to the bed. April sat on the bed completely motionless, staring unblinkingly at the screen. There was a loud noise coming from the speakers of the laptop.
Jess stood in the doorway, eyes wide with surprise.
"Hey April, I thought I heard something. Must've been your book. Just wanted to see if you were alright. April? Hello? Earth to April..."
April didn't seem to have noticed Tess at all.
"April, answer me. APRIL!!" Now panic got hold of Tess. She grabbed her sister by the shoulders and shook her. April's head was flying back and forth, but her stare was fixed on the screen. Tess looked at it to and saw words rapidly flashing on the screen, each visible too shortly to be made out. She found herself intrigued by this. She wondered why it was doing that. Was she imagining the noise from the speakers getting louder? That wasn't all that normal, wasn't it? Maybe this was what's causing April's state...
She slapped the laptop shut. For a moment, nothing happen, then April blinked and looked around. "Tess, what are you doing in my room?" she said groggily.
"I heard a noise and came to check. What the fuck just happened? You were staring at the screen and you were totally phased out."
"I..., I don't know. Last thing I remember is going to my room after breakfast and sitting on the bed. The rest is... blurry. I remember some... no. I... what happened to me?" April was shivering, so Tess hugged her. "It's alright now, whatever that was. It's over," she said.
The doorbell rang.
"I'll go," said Tess after a moment.
"I'll come, too. I need to get out of this room," April said and followed her sister.
The doorbell rang again.
"Yeah, we're coming!" April said loudly.
