In Our Beginning

She knew there was something extremely wrong when she heard the noise coming from downstairs that night, what it was she couldn’t quiet put her finger on it. Cassie knew that her only hope would be to call out to someone, anyone, but she remembered she was all alone. Being alone was the worst feeling in the world. “Calling out downstairs has got to be the most ridiculous thing I could ever think of” she whispered silently to herself as she crept around the enormous empty house searching for the thing that made the noise instead of running away with her life intact.

Cassie was house sitting for her extremely wealthy best friend Alexis Winters.

Alexis had gone traveling to see her parents for winter break.

Cassie told Alexis of her plans over the holidays, how she was content on just staying around her apartment on her own, intern some more hours at work (not that she needed to), catch up on some light reading and maybe even get ahead on the next Semesters reading schedule. (Yes, cassie was that kind of girl), straight A student, valedictorian, voted most likely to succeed in their high school yearbook. Oh, if only they saw her now cowering in a big empty mansion type house with a slipper in her hand for protection searching for a noise in the dark, HA! she was every horror movie main lead, typical….

“Why did I agree to this?” she asked herself “I couldn’t have just said no when Alexis asked me could I? Now, I’m all alone in this creepy house following a strange noise wondering where the hell it’s coming from”. Cassie had exhausted all options looking for this mysterious noise when suddenly ‘BANG’ out of nowhere the trash had fallen on the ground, she looked around to see what could have caused it to topple over the way it did, she peered inside, outran Alexis’s cat Tabitha. “Stupid thing” she screamed whilst hauling the trash upright.

Charging back to the bedroom she was sleeping in, “I should have taken Jericho up on his offer and intern more at the publishing house, stupid, stupid Cassie”.

She reached the bedroom and closed the door with a bang still cursing Tabitha the cat under her breath when she realised her phone was lit up. That could only mean one of two things, 1. Alexis was ringing her for the 1,000 th time to check and make sure that she was ok, and not too spooked out with being in this ginormous yet glamorous house all by herself or, 2. It was Jericho asking when she was next going to be in to go over these manuscripts with him. She could just hear him now, “By the way Miss Knox it is your job as my intern to be here regardless of plans or promises to other people, his second favourite saying to Cassie was always “Do you know how many people would have killed for an opportunity like you have right now?”. It was always Jericho’s job to make Cassie feel like she was in the wrong area of expertise.

She makes a quick dart towards her phone as if it is Jericho, she had no clue how long ago he sent the message, and she certainly didn’t want to keep his majesty waiting for a reply. Lucky enough, it was only Alexis, she had sent Cassie 4 messages from the time it had taken her to start following the noise, which had belonged to Alexis’s monstrous cat, to now. Cassie replies with a simple but direct message “All good here how’s the fam?” hopefully that will make her realise cassie was indeed still alive and breathing, and maybe even back off a little, but we all know that was never going to happen, so she dives into the most comfortable bed she had ever slept in, with the most thread count sheets she ever knew existed, and waited for sleep to take a hold of her, and within a few moments it did.

Ok so let me introduce myself before I start my story. My name is Cassandra Amelia Knox, Cassie for short if you don’t mind.

I am 19 years old, and an English lit major at Berkley. I intern at one of the most prestigious publishing houses in the world which is owned by the wealthiest man of our century, and my boss, the biggest douc bag ever. Jericho Théodore Dean. My best friends name is Alexis Winters, she’s rich, like ridiculously rich, like daddy Warbucks meets the Kardashians rich. Wait! I think she might know the Kardashians; I’ll have to check that one. Anyway, lose my train of thought, she’s rich. She’s majoring in woman studies, not that she needs to work. I guess everyone needs a hobby, right. And of course, money to fund such a hobby, or else, how would she have got into Berkley in the first place? No that’s not me bitching about her behind her back! She lets everybody know that she wouldn’t have been here, if it wasn’t for her rich daddy of course, making a call to the dean about his darling daughter. Yes, you guessed it Alexis’s daddy is an Alumni of Berkley. Which means, he puts Mulla into the school. Oh, and did I mention he’s also got a seat on the board of directors. ‘Ding Ding, Ding’. You got it right again, Little Miss Daddy’s Princess didn’t have to do anything but show up on the first day, amazing, I know. Don’t get me wrong, Alexis is smart. ‘Don’t tell her I told you that though, she’ll kill me’.

I wish it was that easy for me, I had to get all A’s and above in every class my senior year and on top of that I had to remain a 3.0 GPA student or higher for Berkley to even consider me, then after all that stress, I then had to figure out how I was going to pay for my three years here, I couldn’t rely on scholarships to give me a full ride so I ended working 3 dead end jobs as a waitress just to make enough for my first year, so add that on top of studying all the time, you could probably imagine what my senior year looked like, “Boriiiinnngg.” No end of Senior year parties for this one. No sir, but I wouldn’t change it for where I am now. I love it here. The whole college experience has changed my view on life, and right now it’s not that bleak. Well ok, if you want to add the workload, the lecturing schedule, then yeah, from an outsider’s perspective it would seem that way. “Why would you bother?”, that’s what you’re thinking right? But to me, this is all I’ve ever wanted, and I’ve worked damn hard to get here. Anyway, that’s enough about me and my boring tale of how I got here. Oh, about Alexis as well. How about, I fast forward through my whole sordid tale, and get back to the story. You’re probably dying to know what’s going to happen? I know I am.