The car lot shimmered like a pastel apparition, rows of soft pinks, mint greens, and baby blues stretching beneath a sky that felt too big for this world. Metallic balloons swayed at the dealership’s entrance, catching sunlight like tiny moons tethered to earth. My mom and I drifted behind the salesman, his oversized suit billowing around him like a sailboat caught in a gentle tide. He led us to a white two-door truck, gleaming like a pearl in a sea of color. He opened the door and gestured for me to climb inside.
I floated up into the driver’s seat, hands instinctively finding ten and two, eyes tracing the constellation of numbers and symbols scattered across the dashboard—mysterious, indecipherable, like a secret language meant for someone else. Behind me, Mom and the salesman’s voices blurred into a distant hum, their words dissolving into the warm air. My gaze fell to the radio console. It has a CD player. My heart panged in delight. I flipped down the visor, and there they were—my CDs, perfectly aligned in their little pockets like old friends waiting for me. I slid out my newest treasure: Complicated by Avril Lavigne. The disc caught the light like a rainbowed coin as I fed it into the player.
The moment it clicked into place, the world shifted. The truck began to move—not with a jolt but more like a tide pulling me out to sea. My fingers tightened on the wheel as the lot began to glide past, colors smearing into watercolor streaks. Behind me, a voice shattered the haze: “Stop!” I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw the salesman running, his suit flapping wildly like great wings. But the truck didn’t stop. It couldn’t. I wasn’t driving it—it was carrying me, pulling me forward into something vast and unknown. And I hadn’t even taken driver’s ed yet.
His arms reached for me, his mouth forming words that seemed to echo inside my head. Each time closer-clearer-louder: Help me. HELP ME!
I wake tangled in sheets that cling to my sweated skin, the air heavy, the room steeped in darkness except for the trace spill of moonlight through the window. My heart pounds, panic clawing at me—then loosening, softening into confusion. Just as understanding begins to edge in, I hear it again.
Help me.
The words slice through the silence, thin and trembling. But real.
I rise slowly, every movement weighted, and cross to the door. My hand hesitates on the knob. Fear hums low in my bones, but something is out there. Something is waiting for help.
I open the door.
She’s there.
Face down on the hallway floor, a long night gown pooling around her frail frame. Her short gray hair clings to her head in damp strands. She lifts herself enough to see me standing frozen in the doorway. Her voice cracks the stillness again:
Help me.
I’m not at a dealership. I’m not getting my first car. I’m here, in this house, in this moment that feels too heavy to hold. My body locks in place as my mom and stepdad rush from their room, their presence breaking the spell, taking control, guiding us both back into the shadows of our rooms.
My grandmother died when I was in seventh grade. She spent her last years with us, her final breaths woven into the walls of this house.
I wish I remembered more. The lunches she made, the movies we watched—those should be the memories that linger. But they don’t. What remains is a voice echoing down a dark hallway, an unanswered plea that loops endlessly in my mind.
Help me.
Katarina is a Los Angeles-based writer whose work spans stage and print. Her achievements include an off-Broadway play, features in Progenitor Art and Literary Journal, GreenPrints, Humans of The World, and ToGoZine. With imagination and heart, she continues to craft stories that resonate.
To learn move visit: https://createwithkatarina.my.canva.site/