"I didn't want to sleep tonight anyway."
Aria sat on the couch with a bag of chips. She was chomping away without a thought in her mind as she texted on her phone and watched TV. A commercial came up that managed to catch her attention as the sound of footsteps filled the room. She could hear someone calling out a name left and right, as the sound only picked up in speed.
"Daniel, are you there?" A girl with a flash light and a winter coat looked around, but stopped at the creaking sound of a door in pitch black darkness. "Huh? Who's that?"
As the sound of footsteps only got closer and louder, she panicked and looked left and right even faster with panting breaths. "Guys? If that's you this isn't funny."
The girl only shivered more and more as her heart began pounding louder and louder, before a stitched hand was placed over her mouth. "It's play time..."
The screen went black as the sound of lightning competed with maniacal laughter and things finally calmed down as the screen came back with a hand holding a doll in a fluffy winter coat. In bold, the words formed above it in red.
The Doll House
In Theaters Now
25% off 9pm showings
"It's Play Time..."
Aria heard a chime on her phone and picked it up to read the text from Rainbow Dash. They had been talking about the new movie for about 10 minutes now and were weighing in on going to see it. Most of the Rainbooms and Adagio went out on a friendly trip out of town just to connect, but since Aria, Rainbow Dash, and Sonata were behind in a math class, they needed to be in town to finish their homework. Aria actually wasn't so bad at math, she just hardly cared enough to do it and turn it in.
"Wanna catch the 9pm show?" Rainbow Dash texted Aria.
"Beats sitting at home, but there's a catch. I can't leave Sonata alone." Aria texted Rainbow Dash back.
"Why?" Rainbow texted her about 45 seconds later.
Aria flashed back to all the times where she left Sonata home alone and came back to find one problem or another. When she left and there were rumors of burglars on crime sprees around their half of town and Aria left her keys at home, she had to answer around 20 questions just to convince Sonata she was who she said she was. When Sonata found $40 dollars on her way home from school and Aria went out that night, Sonata had gotten so much food that when she was done eating, she was asleep and couldn't hear Aria banging on the door. Then when Aria carried her keys with her on one night where Sonata was watching a show about home repair, Sonata had somehow changed the lock and left Aria out again. No matter what, she Sonata proved too crafty to leave alone.
"Let's just say I don't want to sleep outside tonight. Besides, this usually happens anytime Adagio is on a trip." Aria texted Rainbow.
Needless to say, Aria went to Sonata's room and found her playing a game on her phone. She asked if Sonata wanted to come with them or swear to keep her shenanigans down and allow her access back in the house. Sonata looked at her and thought about it for a second.
"I'm just gonna make some food and stuff while your gone. No biggies." Sonata smiled at her.
Aria stopped to think about it and saw Sonata stand up but managed to slip on an empty cup from a fast food restaurant. Aria realized that Sonata's intentions may have been innocent, but that past week, she had dropped several plates in the kitchen, tripped down the stairs twice, and fell in the lunch line, sending a domino effect in the cafeteria. So it was reasonable to assume the worst, even if Sonata was the best one for cooking in the group.
"Nah. You should come on. I don't want you to burn the house down." Aria said.
"It's not a scary movie is it?" She asked.
"Pfft. It's about as scary as dropping your phone on the sidewalk." Aria rolled her eyes.
"Then I'm in." Sonata smiled.
Obviously, Aria forgot the ratings barrier between her and Sonata. Aria had once sat through a weeks worth of scary movies and went to sleep easy and unafraid like it was nothing. It was nothing to her. But to Sonata, one bad horror movie could set her on the defense for a whole month. She remembered when she saw a zombie movie on TV and the next day, when Lyra Heartstrings was battling the flu, she clobbered her with textbook.
Never the less, Sonata, Aria, and Rainbow met at the movie theater and purchased tickets for The Doll House and Sonata seemed perfectly calm on the outside as right behind her, two hunky jocks were bragging about how they had seen a bunch of horror movies and this was the last on their list.
Everyone went inside for the movie and many came out with wide eyes. Aria looked a little surprised and Rainbow Dash looked the same as her, but Sonata came out as if she didn't have eyelids and couldn't blink.
"Well that was a good one." Aria said nervously as she finished her popcorn. "How about you, Dash?"
"Oh, uhhh...It was cool." Rainbow put her drink in the trash. "What about Sonata?"
"Sonata?" Aria waved a hand over Sonata with a blank stare. "Sonata? Sonata?!"
Sonata opened her mouth to let out a shriek, but it was drowned out by two deeper voices shouting and running out of the theater. The two burly guys from earlier almost looked as pale as ghosts and quickly ran off as Sonata shivered in her boots.
"For once, I might have to admit up front. This probably wasn't a good idea." Aria said to herself as she rubbed her head.
"What? Are you scared Aria?" Rainbow teased her with a smile on her face and a hand touched her on her back as she jumped off the ground. "Yipe!"
"You had some fuzz on your back?" Sonata said as she removed it.
"Oh...hehehehe." Rainbow Dash wiped sweat off of her head.
"Who comes up with these movies? I'd hate to see the inside of their heads." A teenager guy with black hair and a black shirt came out eating popcorn with their brown haired sister came out. "Wait..."
Sonata and Aria made it back home and Aria immediately began reflecting on her options as she weighed being locked out over dealing with a jumpy Sonata for the night, but all seemed fine at first. Her main concern was the ending of the movie, after seeing so many other the characters getting taken down by human sized dolls and other things and turned into dolls themselves from the green rays from the scary girl, she found it was on a bit of a cliffhanger. In the movie, a lot of the characters were captured and trapped in mirrors the main villain could travel through. It only made matters worse with the final scene after a voice cried out no and showed a doll sitting on a chair in their image right in front of a mirror. Then the mirror had some writing on it coming from the inside saying "!ouy teg lliw ehs."
Right before things ended, lighting struck and the girl appeared holding the doll out to the viewer, the person who it was representing has their ghostly spirit stuck in the mirror pounding and screaming, and the writing was in red and turn out to be a warning written backwards.
If Aria felt a bit of hesitation in her mind, she could only fear what Sonata would do. She hopped in the shower and began washing behind the curtain as Sonata entered the bathroom to brush her hair. Aria closed her eyes and tried to get past it, but then she heard a shriek and a loud smashing sound and stuck her head out.
Sonata was standing in front of a broken mirror that she hit with a hairbrush and panted as if her heart was gonna jump out of her and run away.
"What the heck happened?" Aria asked her.
"I thought I saw the doll girl in the mirror looking at me and I could have sworn she was gonna reach her hand out and doll me!" Sonata was panting.
Aria sighed. "Sonata, your mind is playing tricks on you. She's not real, so you're safe from harm...at least until Adagio finds out she needs to get another mirror for the bathroom."
Sonata believed her and went to the couch to find something to watch when she heard a knock on the door and answered it she found a stitched hand holding a pizza behind it and opened with wide eyes to see a mask of the girl from the movie and a doll on top of the pizza box.
"AAAAH!!!" Sonata grabbed a golf club from a bin and whacked at the figure on pure instinct.
Pow!!!
She heard a mail voice scream as he fell on his back and the pizza landed on the floor in the box. She opened her eyes to see the mask bent and a regular hand rubbing the back of their heads as the stitched hand rubbed their eye.
"Geez! What the heck is wrong with you?!" The pizza guy shouted.
"Aria, my mind is getting realistic!!" Sonata wind up for another smack at the guy as he put his hands up to protect himself, but Aria, in a towel managed to grab the golf club.
"Easy, Sonata." Aria said as she removed the club and looked at the guy. "Wait...Why the heck are you dressed like that?!"
"Promotional Orders. I have to do it for deliveries. This is 123 Evergreen Street, right?" The guy sounded angry.
"That's 15 miles in the other direction! Fix your GPS!" Aria smacked the door shut and locked the guy out as he got back up with a black eye and made it to the delivery car.
He quickly stopped as he looked in his hands and got behind the wheel. "Hey, The Pizza!"
Aria and Sonata both sat down to have some of the pizza they just got for a free price as Aria struggled to find a solution to her problem and was busy mentally kicking herself for this scenario, then she got a text.
"Hey, Aria. I forgot to give you the change from the snack bar, I'll swing by and give it." Aria said as she read the text was from 5 minutes ago. Given how Rainbow Dash was as fast in her car as she was with her wings, she saw no point in telling her to turn back now.
It was getting late and Aria came to a conclusion around Sonata's fear. She wouldn't be scared if she didn't remember what she was scared of. All she had to do was get the wild girl to think of something else and she'd likely forget. She thought it would be easy because often times, Sonata can get distracted.
"Hey, what's the name of that song you had as your ringtone that one month?" Aria asked her. She hated thinking of this song, but she didn't have many options. "Something like...It's raining tacos..."
"Pfft. I got sick of that ringtone, when we had that group assignment and I got a call every 10 minutes." Sonata bit into her pizza and Aria rolled her eyes.
"Remember the day we went to that skateboard contest for Rainbow Dash's little scooter friend?" Aria tried again. "She was pretty good."
"All I remember is that she did some good tricks, but I caught food poisoning with a few others from that food truck. I never wanted to eat again." Sonata rubbed her head. "The nurse who came to help everyone was nice though with the lawyers."
Aria made one final attempt. "Wanna tell me how you feel about your day?" In reality, Aria couldn't care less, but she needed to do something.
"I woke up, I had a pretty quiet day and finally finished my math work, after lunch and watched some people getting chased by a dumpster racoon. Then I went to the movie theater and saw this movie that-" Aria put a hand over her mouth. This wasn't working and she saw no point in wasting time.
"Ok, Sonata. I'm going to sleep, but I want you to know that you're safe here. The girl isn't real, she's not coming out to get you, the scariest thing you'll meet in life is Adagio when she's mad." Aria said.
"But with all the magic in the world, what if she is lose?" Sonata said as she looked left and right again.
"You're just scared and tired. Magic may cause bad luck spirits to come out and all the other things that have happened, but this won't happen. I'm sure. I need to leave the door unlocked for Rainbow is a few minutes, but don't worry about it." Aria said. "Ok?"
"Ok." Sonata said as Aria went to bed and she was alone. "Pfft. Won't happen? This coming from the magical siren girl." She unfurled a role of tape.
The next morning, Aria exited her room and stepped on some spiked carpets and hopped to a safe spot with a taco under a rope trap. She looked at it and rolled her eyes and stepped over it, but she fell because she accidentally slipped on a skateboard causing her to fall back and trigger the trap, ensnaring her hand.
"Ugh! Sonata!" Aria called out as pulled out a knife from her hair and cut it as she fell on the floor and fell down. She got up in the darkness with it hard to see and heard muffled sounds.
She made her way to the kitchen mirror and found Rainbow Dash tied up and hanging inside the mirror. She rubbed her eyes. "I must be dreaming."
Aria then turned around and found Rainbow tied up in a rope sleeping like she had been there all night. Aria quickly untied her and let her down. "That girl has this place like Fort Knox."
Aria believed and when she helped her up, both of them set off another trap that tied them in another rope. Aria was at a loss for words as she realized the situation. Sonata must have looked up more ways to trap a human in her spare time in the night.
About 3 minutes later, Adagio came through the door and found the two wrapped up in their mess and looked tired. She walked past them and peaked into Sonata's room and found her sleeping with a bat in her hands and closed the door. "You took her to another movie didn't you?"
"I thought she could handle it." Aria said.
"This is Sonata, Aria. You never know what she's gonna do next." She rubbed her head.
"Cut the lecture for later. Can you free us out of here?" Aria said. "I've got to go to the bathroom."
"Sure. Whatever, but I'm going first." Adagio cut them both down and watched out for more traps. "I'm too tired to yell about the mirror and my golf club, but I'll let you know that you're gonna be the one to spend the week trying to fix this mess."
"Ugh. Fine." Aria said.
"Guess I'll help out to. Besides, how long can she be scared of The Doll House." Rainbow said.
"Doll House?" Adagio widened her eyes. "Aria, don't let Sonata hear the news. Goodnight."
"News?" Rainbow Dash said as both of them looked into what she was talking about and found an article online.
PSA: Be On the lookout for the real life villain of the movie "The Doll House."
Suspects say she seems to have come into reality almost like magic.
Citizens are advised to avoid mirrors and walking alone.
"Son of a-!!" Aria shouted to herself. "Next time I need to go somewhere and leave Sonata, I'll just camp outside."
Author's Note
Based off of a personal story I've written.
Any grammar mistakes are greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading.
