Friends like These

Julie was afraid, alone, and about to die. On the fateful day, while on her morning run, a lady stopped as Julie went by.

“You!” the woman shouted at Julie as she came running along the sidewalk.

“Beg your pardon?” panted Julie as she skidded to a halt, catching her breath. She wondered what the bedraggled woman wanted.

“You!” the woman repeated, pointing a long, bony finger at her face.

Taking a step back, she decided that she needed to get as far away from the crazy lady as possible. She turned to run, but she was stopped by the woman’s shrill voice.

“Wait!” the lady said as her voice became less crazed and more worried. “You are going to die today!”

Julie almost tripped over her own feet when she head the woman tell her that. Doubting what she just heard, she asked, “What?”

“You heard me,” the woman responded. “Your friends will kill you!” After she said that, the woman ran back into her house before Julie could react.

Julie was rather shaken by everything that had just happened to her. She was superstitious, and knew that she had a party she was planning to attend that night. In fear for her life, she turned around ran straight home. Once there, she locked herself in, closed all the shades, and unplugged herself from the outside world by disconnecting her computer and phones. She even unplugged her television, as she knew someone who worked for the local news.

After some time, she slowly began to lose her mind from her constant state of panic. She began to move everything that was given to her by her friends into her garage, in a neat pile.

Once she had everything from her friends out of her house, she went around once again. This time, instead of gifts from friends, she was looking for the many pictures of her friends. She boxed them up and took them to the garage where she would put them on top of all the other scary items.

Unfortunately, for her, she was in such a panic she never bothered with proper stacking. When she placed the last box, the entire pile came crashing down. However, she managed to move out of the way of the tsunami of gifts.

She wasn’t, however, able to move out of the way of the box of photos. When it hit her, she was knocked backwards and into the window of her car.

The last thing that went through her head before the glass was to wonder if she would have been better off alone.