{"id":2913,"date":"2015-10-28T22:55:48","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T22:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/?p=2913"},"modified":"2018-05-07T15:05:24","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T15:05:24","slug":"lyssa-by-heather-terry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/lyssa-by-heather-terry\/","title":{"rendered":"Lyssa by Heather Terry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pumpkin2\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

Lyssa<\/h1>\n

by Heather Terry<\/p>\n

I was sitting in my room when I first saw it. Or thought I saw it, I suppose. I can\u2019t say that I\u2019ve ever actually seen anything. But I knew it was there, nonetheless.<\/p>\n

I was working on my homework, and my doodles, when the resident feline, Sphinx, leapt from my lap and tore out of my room with a yowl. I jumped and whirled towards the window at my back in time to see- no, not see. Never seen. To feel a presence outside the window. To sense the inky, vacant eyes watching me unblinkingly and melting backwards into the deepening night as I strained my eyes trying to penetrate the shadows cloaking its form.<\/p>\n

Of course, I just shrugged it off initially, writing it off to twitchy nerves and a creaky, old, lonely house.<\/p>\n

My roommates, you see, were gone for the weekend, and I, finally, had the house, and the quietness of the night, to myself.<\/p>\n

I had almost convinced myself all was well when my pencil suddenly rolled off my desk and to the floor. A perfectly innocuous occurrence, if only it hadn\u2019t landed on its point and begun to slowly spin in place on the hardwood floor.<\/p>\n

I think it was at this point that I really began to feel it creeping in around the corners of my mind, just as it crept along and pressed in on the windows, in the same way a sickness prowls amongst the healthy seeking a victim to infect before taking others.<\/p>\n

I suppose I should have felt surprise and wonder, at the vision of this pencil, slowly, slowly rotating on my floor, but as I recoiled into a ball on my bed, I instead felt nothing but abject horror.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not crazy. I\u2019m not crazy. I\u2019m not crazy. I\u2019m not. I\u2019m not. I\u2019m not. I\u2014<\/p>\n

The pencil stopped, frozen in place for half of a second before falling. As it fell, so too did the floor, the house, the world. I was alone, in a chasm, staring out in the the inky abyss of the madness that welled up from within and from without.<\/p>\n

A soft, slithering voice whispered out of the dark. \u201cLyssa.\u201d It was almost a sing-song, the way it\u2019s tongue flicked around the name. My name.<\/p>\n

No. No. I clamp my hands over my ears, but the bed pitched violently and I fell, my mouth pried open in a silent scream as I feel its presence surge into me, through me and over take me.<\/p>\n

\u201cLyssssa. You are mine, Lyssa.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was sitting in my room when I first saw it. Or thought I saw it, I suppose. I can\u2019t say that I\u2019ve ever actually seen anything. But I knew it was there, nonetheless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[88,379],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror","category-scary-stories"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2915,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2913\/revisions\/2915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}