I stared up at the whitewashed ceiling as I lounged back on the couch, thoroughly tired and inattentive after getting through the day. One speck of white was paler than the other parts of the ceiling, and as I squinted at it, I made out the distinct design of a snowflake. I stood on one of the arms of the couch and poked at it with one chewed up pencil, it didn’t melt or even just fall off.

My aunt, ever the actress, gasped at the scene, “I-I-it’s not melting.”

“Brilliant observation.” I replied nonchalantly.

“Could it be--” Her eyes grew wider and her tones hushed, “the end of the world?”

Thanks to my aunt, my attention was on the snowflake, again. I sighed, my hair getting in my face in the annoying way that made me want to just not have bangs.

“A-A-Alanna….” My aunt began from behind me, sounding a bit unsure of herself.

I smirked, I couldn’t help it, she sounded like a scared little kid, “Y-y-yes?” I mimicked her frightened stutter, which I thought sounded pretty accurate.

But then, her voice cracked in a way that almost made me want to look up, “Whatever you do, do not look up at the ceiling. Alanna, please.”

I thought she was joking, I really did. But, tell a teen not to do something, and we go in the other direction, so I brought my head up from the words swimming on the next page of my book. I’d been reading for about an hour now, so the effect on my vision made everything appear blurred.

After the world finally came into focus, I studied the scene, oh dear. Just ahead of me, but inches from my face were my parents, their gazes fixated on the ceiling. I dared look up, the ceiling was covered in a thin sheet of ice, and scratched into the surface of the frost was a message out of a nightmare. The pattern of the snowflake was now etched across the vast expanse of the living room ceiling, and there stood my aunt, dressed all in white, but her skin was as pale as death itself. I looked frantically at both of my parents, they were frozen in the ice, then back up at the ceiling. I caught the lurking grin of my aunt right before I too succumbed to the frost, permanently staring up at that accursed message on the ceiling.

T-t-told you not to look up.