Wymer 1

Katherine Wymer

Furuness

PCA

22 January 2024

Once upon a time, there were three college roommates who were the greatest of friends.

They knew each other inside and out and weren’t afraid to share their thoughts with each other,

no matter what they were. One day, the girls were sitting in their dorm room working on various

assignments. Maddie sat on a lawn chair, hunched over her textbook because she refused to wear

her glasses, while Lacy put away her laundry to avoid her computer science project. Lin, the

third roommate, sat on the orange patchwork quilt on top of Lacy’s bed and stared at an empty

page on her journal. She was supposed to be writing a short story, but after twenty minutes of

sitting there, she had yet to come up with anything she found worthy enough to write down.

“Did you guys ever get irrationally afraid of Bloody Mary when you were a kid?”

Maddie blurted out, apparently not as enraptured in her book as she looked.

Lin and Lacy, of course, agreed because what child wasn’t deathly afraid of Bloody

Mary? The idea of an evil spirit who would appear in your mirror if you chanted her name was

enough to give any kid nightmares.

Lacy claimed she had been deathly afraid she would somehow accidentally chant Bloody

Mary’s name in front of a mirror until one day, she just did it. She had decided to put an end to

her fears and see if the myth was true, and to her luck, it turned out to be just that: a myth.

Because she knew how much this alleviated her stress, she brought Maddie in front of the full

length mirrors by her closet and challenged her to chant Bloody Mary and to see that she had
 Wymer 2

been worried about nothing all this time. It took some time to convince her, but eventually

Maddie gave in.

“Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary.” Maddie held her breath. After a couple

seconds, she sighed with relief and started to laugh at herself, turning around to look at her

friends.

But as soon as she turned away from the mirror, her roommates screamed. There in the

mirror, a hand was reaching out to grab Maddie’s shoulder. Maddie quickly backed away and

turned back around to face the hand coming out of the mirror.

“Don’t kill me Bloody Ma-,” She started, but as she took a closer look at the spirit’s face,

she stopped in shock. This wasn’t the Bloody Mary of the myths she had heard about all her life.

No, this was something much, much worse.

“Hey Maddie, can you take out the trash?” In place of Bloody Mary, the girls’ dreaded

fourth roommate stepped out from the reflection in the mirror.