fyeahcreepyshit:

Who is Sara?

I was crying. What is odd is I never cry, but here I am, quietly sobbing, sitting in an uncomfortable pleather chair with my parents looking at me like I was insane. The hand picked “evidence” sprawled over the guidance counselor’s desk, highlighted scraps of paper and printouts didn’t help my case either, and everyone has that same look in their eyes…sort of how you look at a 3 leg dog…the look of pity.

The silence was finally broken by my counselor, a sweet and caring twenty-something young woman named Ms. Evans…come to think of it I wonder why she wasn’t married. I mean, she is very pretty, nice, and I’m sure she’s had plenty of boyfriends so…

“So David, I think you know why we wanted to meet with everyone today. Why don’t we start from the beginning. Do you remember what this is?” she said, passing me a paper. The handwriting was poor, chicken scratches at best, but I knew it.

“Um… ” I had to break out of my sidetracked thought process, “Yes. It is an old journal entry of mine.” I said, fighting back the sound of tears. “It was from when I started writing about Sara, to try to not forget anything.”

“Dammit, Son!” my Father broke in furiously, “They’ve told you a half dozen times, there is no Sara. Why can’t you understand that, why do you keep writing these things…this nonsense has to sto-“

“Why can’t you let me finish…” I pertruded.

“Who is Sara, David?” Ms. Evans asked softly looking down at the paper she was showing me, her eyes looked puzzled that against all the handwriting there was a different set that read ‘Sara’ everywhere someone was referred to.

I sighed a bit and sat back in my chair, ran my hands through my hair bit and started the arduous task of convincing the room I wasn’t crazy. “Sara was a girl I met in the First Grade…”

“Was?” Ms. Evans asked.

“It will make sense in a bit. Sara was a girl I met in the First Grade, we were immediately friends, always had classes together…I guess because of last name sorting or whatever. Last year she moved away with her father, but we kept in touch via IM, and about that time is when the library got that new typing game…her school had it too and we would always compete to see who had the best score.”

“Typing game…” my Mother broke in. I labored in explanation, “Uh, yea it was some rip off of Mario Teaches Typing…you did some excersize and after completing enough of them you’d progress through enough of the “pegs” of that world to get to the boss, and do a boss battle…the game was pretty long for what it was, something like 9 worlds of 8 exercises each…they kept getting harder too.”

“Well, we always would play the same world and then tell each other our scores on the various pegs and the boss. She always won. Then she got sick and couldn’t play for a week. I decided I was going to finish the other 5 or so worlds and surprise her with what the ending was, no one in school had gotten there…I figured she’d love to know, just the two of us. I played every day during lunch, P.E., and in the mornings before class. I also found out that it was hosted on some website online and you could play with your profile there too, I didn’t think who would have hosted it or how our saves were stored out there…I figured the school did it.” I paused and studied everyone’s faces. It didn’t look good.

“It makes sense how no one had beaten this game yet, the last few pegs of the last world were insane and the boss battle was even worse…you had to maintain such a high accuracy and WPM score that unless you lucked out and got lots of easy words, I don’t see how it would happen…but I got there barely, I beat it, only there was no ending. The game just turned off. I thought it had crashed and I lost my save place because when I loaded it back up I was back on the first level, I was so upset.”

My father was impatiently tapping his foot, “David, what does this have to do with anything…”

“I’m getting there Dad, hold on. I started getting weird emails after that. Blank mails with a scrambled From address, one’s that told me ‘not to destroy what others love’, that ‘they’ would fix things, just weird in general…I figured it was a virus or a wrong email…I never replied.” At this point everyone’s face had turned to concern.

“Sara never came back online. After two weeks I started to worry, that was way longer than any sickness should last, and I figured she would want to check in or gloat about a new score or something…then I got last email.”

Ms. Evans handed my parents a piece of paper printed out with some highlights on it. “This is what he is referring to, right David?” The paper had a blank From, and the body only said, “How does it feel to lose something you loved?”

“I called Sara’s house, there was no answer. I called her school and they wouldn’t tell me anything. I was worried, but then weirder things started happening. Her IM account was no longer on my friends list and when I tried to re-add it, it wasn’t a valid name.

I called her house again and some woman answered and told me a girl named Sara didn’t live there…I thought I dialed it wrong but after she picked up the 3rd time in a row I just gave up. Her school kept telling me a Sara, matching her description, never attended there…I felt like I was going crazy…how could everyone just forget a person?

So that’s when I started writing everything down, and then the emails started again. “We can make you forget too, you’ll see.”

That look came back to everyone’s face…the pity, mixed with concern, mixed with fear. Ms. Evans looked over everything she had collected from my folders and locker: Journal entries, Email printouts, scraps of paper with times and dates, “David, I told you when you first came to me to ask for help finding your friend that I’d do what I could, but I didn’t find anything about her.” she said shifting back in her seat slightly.

“I know, but there is more to the story…after they told me they’d make me forget and I started writing everything down…I kept getting major cases of Deja Vu. It was small at first, a cat would walk by and be a different color than what I remembered from earlier but in a similar way, some one would say something to me and the sentence would be a bit different…just small things. Then it got worse, soon whole days seemed similar yet different, weeks, etc. Would you believe me if I told you this wasn’t our first meeting? That I’ve told you three all of this before…only that Sara wasn’t her name then…I can’t remember what her name actually was, or even how many times it has changed. They keep changing small details and no one remembers…I tell you this everytime and after I finish telling you about Sara and this situation you always say…”

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Ms. Evans broke in, “David…who is Sara? Do you recognize this paper?” She handed me my same journal entry, every name where I wrote ‘Sara’ was gone. “David, tell me about Alexis? Who is she?” The handwriting was different than before, and from the rest of the paper, but the paper now said ‘Alexis’ everywhere. Tears came to my eyes.