Day 15: May 17

Challenge: the story takes place at midnight exactly.

It's the time I was born, and the time when everything significant happens in my life. It was the time my mother succumbed to the tumor in her brain when I was 10. It was the time my father left for the bar the night he never returned; I still don't know what happened to him.

Tonight is my 18th birthday, and something in my gut is telling me it'll be a night to remember.

The house is dark when I pull up, just as I left it. I press the button and the garage door opens. The mortgage was paid off two years after mom, and two years before dad started his nightly bar hopping. I was 15 then and already had my first job as a hostess at the family restaurant down the street. I'm still there 3 years later.

I unlock the door to the house, a precaution I've kept since dad disappeared. I close the garage door the lock the one leading inside. I flick on the light to the hallway, toeing off my shoes. I glance at the clock hanging by the door; five minutes.

I hang my coat and purse on the hook under the clock before heading towards the living room at the end of the hall. I grab the remote I left on the arm of the couch and switch on the TV. I head to the left and up the few stairs to the kitchen. I grab a coca-cola from the fridge before going back to the couch and stretching out on it.

As the grandfather clock mom had bought years ago chimes from the front room, my temples start pounding. I close my eyes and images start to dance in my mind. Whispers follow and I try to hear the words but they don't make sense. Snippets of sentences come through but I can't piece them together. The images start moving faster and I might have groaned as the pounding increases. I press my palms to my temple, rubbing circles into my flesh. It doesn't help. My entire head starts to throb and I move my hands to my eyes, pressing them hard. A rush of sound echoes in my ears before the darkness reins.

*A short one today, but this idea has been swimming in my head for a while and I thought I'd play with an idea that would be the start to this story. It's not bad. *