TADA! my attempt to make a horror story... actually i'm not sure if you guys'll think what i wrote is a horror story. oh well... i kind of had fun writing it though.

New Year Festival of Lights

Mara excitedly opens the door and screams "Happy New Year, Mom!" Her excitement gets drained away when she finds an empty house. She tediously closes the door and goes to the living room to check for messages. After clicking the play button on their cordless phone, she hears a familiar voice. Her mom left her a message saying that she had to stay at the hospital until midnight. They apparently needed all the help they could get because they expect a lot of people to get into firecracker or fireworks accidents. She said she'd be back by 12:30 to celebrate New Year's Eve with her. To somehow boost Mara up, she further added that she'd bought a lot of food and a cake from Conti's, Mara's favorite bakeshop. That didn't cheer Mara up at all though. After hearing the message, Mara sighs then disappointedly says "Great... Happy New Year to you too, mom."

She deletes her mom's message then goes to their living room. She sits at their beat-up old couch and takes the cookies she bought from the food fair out of her bag. She stands up again leaving her bag there along with her house keys. After a few seconds of struggling to open the cookie container, she eats one cookie and turns on the computer. She hears noises from outside but, convinced that it was probably just the wind or a cat, she ignores it and continues on checking her mail and logging into yahoo messenger. While waiting for the websites to load, she clicks on her usual Winamp playlist. Since she didn't exactly feel very giddy, punk rock was her genre for the night.

After getting logged on, she reads her offline messages and replies to some of them. She then greets everyone in her buddy list a Happy New Year because, like everyone else, she thought their internet connection would probably go whacko by midnight. She receives a message from Gabriel, a boy she met in a chatroom she used to go to. She has only known Gabriel for a few days and they haven't exactly met him personally but, for some reason, she felt at ease with him. He greets her back and asks her what her plans were for New Year's Eve. Mara replies and says that she and her mom just plan to keep it simple with a nice and quiet dinner. They start their long conversation about the holiday at hand and after an hour or so Gabriel directs the conversation into talking about telephones. Mara found it a little odd to talk about telephones because well... they we're telephones. She found absolutely nothing interesting about them. When she attempted to direct the conversation to something else, Gabriel replies saying "Since we're already talking about phones, I was just wondering... I mean I know this is probably a long shot and stuff but... can I possibly get your number?"

When she read that message, she couldn't help but blush. She felt all tingly inside because it was the first time a boy had actually asked for her number. Mara wasn't exactly the most wanted girl in school. She was more of the pretty wallflower type whose beauty was still waiting to be discovered. She's the type of girl who wasn't invited to last year's prom or any other dance before that. So after a minute of basking in her happiness, she replies with a simple okay accompanied by her landline number.

He replies again asking if he could call her that very second. Mara, trying not to sound eager, sticks with a one-liner and says "Sure." Their conversation ended with Gabriel saying "Yes! My quirky charm works its magic again" with a smiley emoticon. As she read his message, her phone starts ringing and she excitedly answers.

They say their hellos then quickly enter into a conversation about their fondest New Year's Eve memories. At some instances, it was obvious that Gabriel was flirting with Mara. Mara, despite being new to the whole flirting scene, was definitely returning fire. Then out of nowhere Gabriel suddenly says "You're really beautiful". Upon hearing this, Mara laughs real hard then says "Really now? Do you even know what I look like?" She pops another cookie in her mouth as she wait for him to speak again. He says "Of course I know what you look like. I know your face as if I've seen it a million times before"

Their conversation gets interrupted when she hears another noise. She turns down her Winamp's volume to check where the noise was coming from. When she didn't hear anything she turns the volume up again and continues talking to Gabriel.

"Right... Honesly now, how'd you know how I look like? Did you like, Google me or something?" she starts giggling with the thought of someone actually putting in effort to see her.

Gabriel dismisses her questions and continues on saying that green really suited her. She was wearing green that day. She found kind of weird but she figured that maybe it just so happened that she was also wearing green in picture he saw of her. She jokes around saying "I'm actually wearing green right now." She giggles again and reaches for another cookie. "Are you like, stalking me or something?" She pauses to swallow the cookie inside her mouth and to tie her hair.

He laughs and says "Maybe." He pauses for a second and continues on saying "You look better with your hair down"

Mara starts getting creeped out. She makes up some lame excuse about her mom needing her help in the kitchen and tells him that she needed to hang up already. Without waiting for him to say goodbye, she immediately puts down the phone. A minute or so later, the phone starts ringing again and at the same time, a personal message from Gabriel suddenly pops up.

The message read "Hey. Talk to me please. I just want to be your friend" But at that point, Mara was too creeped out to answer the phone or reply to his instant message so she decides to ignore him. The phone still keeps on ringing. She goes to her room to change into her pajamas. When she gets back to living room, she sees another instant message from Gabriel. "Please Mara. I know you lied about your mom needing your help. She's not even home. Please don't ignore me"

She was fed up with him. She hated the fact that he seemed to know her every move. She sends him a message hoping that it would make him stop.

"How'd you know all of those things? If this is your sick attempt to make a joke? It's not funny you know! You know what, don't answer that. Just stop messaging me and stop calling my house you freak."

She meant every word she said with every fiber of her being. After she sent the message, the ringing stopped. Mara was sort of relieved thinking that Gabriel had finally given up. "God! That dude seriously needs to get his screws checked. What a freaking psycho!" She goes on checking website pretending as though nothing ever happened. When she was finally starts calming down, something happens again.

Her heart skips a beat when she hears another noise. This time, she's sure that the noise was coming from the direction of the kitchen. She slowly checks it out grabbing anything she thought could be used as a weapon. Her heart beats faster and faster as she approached the kitchen entrance. She enters the kitchen and sees that the backdoor was closed but not locked. She was still a little scared but not as alarmed as she was as she approached the kitchen. She figured that her careless mother probably forgot to lock it again. She puts down her weapon and immediately goes to lock the door. She then grabs a snack and pours a glass of Coke from the fridge.

She reads the nutrition facts of the Cheetos Puffs she was munching on as she made her way into the living room. When she lifted her eyes from what she was reading, she saw a guy standing near the portion of the living room with all their pictures.

In a mix of an irritated and scared tone she says "Who are you? How'd you get in here?"

The guy introduced himself saying "Hello Mara. I'm Gabriel" as he approached her.

Mara didn't want to hear anything he had to say. She plainly said "Get out" repeatedly in ascending volumes.

He tries to explain saying "No see… I just want to talk to you." He tries to plead to be given time to talk to her but, Mara dismisses everything he says and in a very loud tone, says "I don't want to talk to you! Now get out!" he tries to hold her but she avoids him. She screams "Don't you dare touch me!" then throws the glass Coke directly aimed for his eyes then kicks him near his crotch. Gabriel screams with agonizing pain. From then on, a chase ensues.

Completely confused and not knowing what else to do, she goes inside her room. She was scared. She knew she couldn't fight back because she didn't know how to so she chose the cowardly path of hiding inside the closet and hoping that whoever was out there would just disappear.

After a few minutes of painstaking silence, she starts hearing footsteps. At first, the footsteps sounded like they were coming from another room. But as time passed, the footsteps seemed to be getting closer and closer. Her heart races more and more as she hears every step. The footsteps stop and she hears someone begging "Mara, come out. I just want to talk to you... and see your pretty little face up close again. Please?"

He receives no reply. He impatiently speaks again sounding as though he has shifted from being the kind person he usual sounded like to an insane person. "Come on Mara. Come out, come out wherever you are." He pauses to take a deep breath. "You're really not making me happy right now, Mara. I just wanted to talk, you know. I wasn't gonna hurt you but you don’t want to listen." He starts to walk again. She knew he was drawing closer because his shadow was starting to cover the small amount of light being reflected by crack under the door.

The shadow finally reached the door. The closet door opened.

Gabrielle, with a sinister smile painted on his face enthusiastically said "Peek-a-boo. I see you."

The clock strikes 12 and as fireworks lit up the night sky, Mara's screams get drowned by the noise outside.