The Cursed Journal

“No beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage”

- Plutarch

  Rosalind has always been somewhat of an outcast at school.  Because of her thin frame and quiet nature, kids were afraid of her.  Most of her classmates just avoided her completely.  But there were four girls in particular who loved to pick on her.  Vivian, Sophia, Lola, and Hannah.  They would call her “FREAK”, “demon girl”, “Here comes the witch, be careful she might put a spell on you”.  When Rosalind told a teacher what was going on, the girls cornered her in the library and beat her up.

  Rosalind and her family had just moved to a new house.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t far enough for Rosalind to switch schools.  But the move did excite her, because there was a creepy graveyard nearby and rumor had it that there was an abandoned cottage where a witch had once lived.  So one night, Rosalind decided to visit the house alone.  Led by nothing more than the light of her flashlight, she walked down the rocky path in the graveyard and stood before the deserted, dilapidated cottage.  There were no lights or sounds coming from inside.  Rosalind reached for the door and pushed it open.  Everything was in a state of disrepair.  The wallpaper was peeling, broken shards of glass littered the floor, and the unmistakable stench of mold and mildew permeated the air.  It looked as if no one had stepped a foot in there for decades.  Rosalind wandered around the dark shack in fascination, but couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t completely alone.  Then something caught her eye.  On the table was a black leather journal.  It was the only thing in the house that wasn’t covered in dust.  Rosalind picked it up and inspected it.  She flipped through the journal and saw that the majority of the pages were filled.  However, it still had a lot of blank pages, so she put it in her knapsack and went back home.

  The next morning, Rosalind got ready for school like every other day, but when she came downstairs to eat breakfast, her mom shot her a puzzled look.  “Did you dye your hair?”, she asked.  “No.”  Her mother shrugged and said, “Well, something’s different”.  Rosalind ignored her mom’s comment and ate her breakfast.  When she went to the bathroom after her meal, she realized her mom was right.  Her hair was darker.  Her braids used to be a medium brown, but now they were almost black and a small white streak had started to grow.  Over the next month her hair got even darker and her skin even paler.  Her eyes were almost black as well.  And then came the shadow.  Every now and then, in the corner of her eye, Rosalind would see someone watching her.  When she turned to look at it, it’d be gone.  And every night, she would dream that she was watching herself sleep.  As if she was watching from someone else’s point of view.

  One day, Sabrina was trying to get to her next class without one of her bullies noticing, but failed.  Vivian headed straight towards her and immediately began throwing rude words in her face and slammed her head into one of the lockers.  Pain exploded in her head as tears of embarrassment threatened to spill over.  As Vivian walked away to her next class, Rosalind muttered under her breath, “I wish she would be out of my life forever”.  When Rosalind got to her next class, she pulled out the journal and flipped through its contents.  The sketches that the previous owner left behind were…disturbing to say the least.  Drawings of a group of dismembered women and a man with his eyes plucked out of their sockets illustrated the pages.  No matter how macabre they seemed, Rosalind found that observing the pictures always made her feel…calmer.  Rosalind was both relieved and surprised when none of the girls bothered her for the rest of the day.

  The next day, Vivian didn’t show up to school.  Rumor had it that her parents had a last-minute move back to Madrid, but during the flight, the plane exploded mid-air.  “What a horrible coincidence”, Rosalind thought.  As she idly flipped through the book, she noticed something odd.  There was a new sketch.  It was of Vivian, except she was barely recognizable.  Her body was twisted in an unnatural way and was burnt black.  The next day, Sophia was hit by a car in a hit-and-run and ended up in a coma.  Then Lola had gone missing.  Each time, a new drawing appeared in the book.  These girls had always given Rosalind trouble, but she had never wished this on them.  She tried to burn it, but it emerged unscathed.  Eventually, everyone who had given Rosalind trouble had had something unpleasant happen to them.  There was now one last page in the journal.

  “You’re a demon, Rosalind.  I don’t know how you’re doing this, but it needs to stop.  Do you understand?”, Hannah spat.  With a venom she didn’t know she had, Rosalind responded, “I have put up with you and your awful friends for years.  After all that you’ve done to me, you dare to ask for my mercy?  I wish you were dead”.  The next day, Hannah was found in the woods near her home.  She had been devoured by an aggressive grizzly bear.  When Rosalind heard the news, she knew that she had gone too far.  She needed to destroy the journal.  That night, Rosalind went back to the graveyard near her house to the cottage.  She threw the cursed object on the table and set the house ablaze.

  The very next day, Sophia awoke from her coma.  Lola had been found and reunited with her family.  Even Rosalind’s skin and hair were returning to their natural colors.  The curse was broken and things had gone back to the way they were.  Well, maybe not quite.  Everyone at school was talking about how Rosalind had somehow put a curse on everyone who had wronged her. 

 

And no one dared mess with her again.

 

Michaela “Accursed Fury” ®