It was a normal day, just like every other day.
Alice had eaten a normal breakfast, put on her school uniform like usual, ridden her bicycle to her high school, entered her classroom, and listened to the boring voice of her math teacher explaining the lesson.
As she walked through the hallway, she heard the commotion there. Wails, cries, laughter, and her best friend screaming.
"Lysa?" Alice ran toward the sound of her friend screaming, immediately alarmed. But when she got there, she couldn't quite understand what she was seeing at first. Lysa was crouched on the ground, looking at the thing in front of her as if she was about to faint from fear.
A red snake.
One of the boys at school came running over with a stick in his hand and started poking and shoving the snake. Blood stained the floor as the animal's skin tore open. "Stop." Alice whispered.
The snake looked so helpless, so pitiful, that Alice felt something inside her ache. Its only crime had been being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"What if it's venomous? Red snakes are usually venomous." One of the girls watching the chaos said.
"Stop pushing it with the stick. Hit its head!"
The boy raised the stick, but before he could bring it down, Alice's body moved automatically. She grabbed the stick and threw it aside, glaring at the boy with a deadly look.
"Back off!" she shouted, dragging Lysa away across the floor before kneeling in front of the cornered snake.
"Are you okay?" she asked with a small smile settling on her face. "I'm sorry about my friends. Let's get you outside."
As if it understood what she said, the snake slithered over her outstretched hand and wrapped itself around her wrist. Everyone screamed as though they had seen something horrifying, but Alice only rolled her eyes and calmly walked out of the school. Once she reached the yard, she crouched down and slowly, carefully released the snake onto the ground.
"Take care of yourself, okay? Don't enter school buildings again." Alice said warmly, then waved at the snake before returning to school.
The school day continued normally, just like always. She attended her classes, ate bland stew at lunch, laughed with Lysa. She listened to the girls gossiping about the rumors surrounding their new literature teacher's online relationship.
It was an ordinary day, and she forgot about the snake soon enough. But everything in life had two sides to its coin, and Alice had no idea the snake had not forgotten her. Everything was normal, just like always.
Alice had never realized just how abnormal everything really was.
-
"Your order is ready." Alice called out to the customers, her expression calm as always, perhaps even a little emotionless. That was the first thing the customer disliked. The second was that their order had been prepared incorrectly.
It didn't take long for them to start yelling at Alice and demanding to see her manager. Alice hadn't even been the one who prepared the order — the manager himself had. Alice heard she was fired, her uniform was taken back, and her final paycheck was shoved into her hands all in the same moment.
Alice rode her bicycle home calmly and entered the rundown building. "I'm home, dad." she said, setting down the grocery bags she had bought with her last bit of money.
She walked to the bed where her father lay. He greeted her with a warm smile, just like every day. But he said nothing — even if he wanted to, he couldn't. Alice lifted his head and fixed his pillow, then helped him turn onto his side so he wouldn't develop bedsores.
She prepared food and fed him with a spoon, then sat down at the table in their tiny living room, and the first tear fell onto the table. As Alice shoved another spoonful of food into her mouth and chewed, the taste of salty tears mixed with the food.
They didn't own a television, and Alice only had an old keypad phone. She couldn't find anything to distract herself with; she didn't even have money to buy books. After her father became bedridden, her mother had abandoned them, and Alice supported the entire household through the part-time jobs she worked.
This new job had paid quite well, and Alice had been genuinely happy to find it. But she had never been able to force the fake, customer-pleasing smile they wanted onto her face.
Alice crawled into bed miserably, petting the head of the cat that came to lie beside her. At this rate, it would become difficult to even buy cat food, and she might have to give Murfy away, the cat she had cared for since childhood.
That night, Alice made a decision. Tomorrow, she would wake up and look for a job, and she would take the first one she found. No matter what.
-
"I've been having weird dreams lately." Alice murmured while sitting in class with Lysa.
"Like what?"
"It's almost as if I'm seeing someone's memories, but it's in weird chunks and makes no sense."
"Girl, you are so stressed, it's normal. How's your dad these days?"
"Well, I don't know. He hasn't been able to see his doctor in two months."
"Fuck."
"Yeah."
Once school ended, the first thing Alice did was start searching for a new job. She went to every café and bar she could find, used the library computers to search for jobs online. It seemed like nobody in the city wanted part-time workers.
At this point, dropping out of school and getting a full-time job would probably make the most sense. She was eighteen years old. But there were only four months left until graduation. If she could just endure a little longer...
Like always, Alice went to bed feeling troubled. One of those strange dreams visited her again, but this time it was much clearer and more vivid than the others.
"Please," she heard someone begging. A woman with a captivating voice. "Don't go. I'll do anything for you to stay."
"If you were worthy, I would. You're nothing more than dirt." It was a woman with white hair, blue eyes, and a beautiful but cold smile.
"I've done everything for you." The captivating voice spoke again, but Alice couldn't see her face at all.
"And it was never enough."
Gasp.
She woke up with a gasp and tried to find her water bottle in the dark, only to touch dirt and wet soil. "What on earth?" She blinked a few times, gulped, and looked around. She was sitting somewhere outside, and she certainly wasn't in her bed anymore.
She got up and waddled around barefoot. Sticky mud clung to her feet. She was standing in front of some sort of gate, something magnificent and eerie. Fog covered the air, making it difficult to see anything, and every instinct in her body screamed at her to run.
She couldn't tell whether this was some strange nightmare or if she was truly experiencing it. She noticed a sign in front of the gate, written in a childish, strange way. She walked closer, looked at the crooked letters, and gulped.
"Spirit world. Humans stay away."
Oh hell no.
Every part of her body was fully awake and alarmed now, and she turned around, ready to run even though she had no idea where she was. That was until a small, childish voice startled her.
"Welcome, ma'am Alice." the childish voice said. Alice froze in place. "We've been awaiting you for a very long time."