“I don’t think we should do this,” I said feeling more afraid as the sky got darker outside.

“Come on,” my older cousin Patricia said, “what can happen?”

“We can get killed,” my other cousin Emilio expressed the thoughts I was too afraid to say out loud.

“We’re not going to get killed,” Patricia reassured us. She was older than us so she should know, but I really didn’t want to risk it. I didn’t want to die and I sure didn’t want to die a horrible death that I knew was to come to us if we went through our plans..

“I have a bad feeling about this.” I said, looking out the window as night began to fall.

Night came all too quickly and it was time. It had started as a double dare and now I couldn’t even remember who had dared who, but there was no turning back now. We would have to go through this and we’d have to go through it together. We all crowded into the small restroom at my grandmother’s house.

“maybe we shouldn’t do this.” Emilio said with a voice that betrayed his fear.

“noting is going to happen.” Patricia reached over and turned the lights off.

It was dark, the only light that came in the room was a small sliver of yellow light from under the door and the strange light of the moon as it passed through the opaque glass from the window behind us. The moonlight made our reflection in the mirror look a grayish blue. It gave me the feeling that we were looking at our spirits, our souls that would surely be damned to hell after what we were about to do. I couldn’t help but think that the reflection was us alive, but not fully alive, we were without color.

We stared at the reflection for a long time before my cousin Patricia stepped forward and began by saying the first words, “Bloody Mary”

I stepped up and looked into the cold dark eyes of my reflection, my voice quivered as I said the words, “Bloody Mary.” I could feel my body go cold. I wanted to double over, not really in pain but with fear. I also felt like I had to piss really bad, but even though we were in the restroom I held it in.

Finally my cousin Emilio stepped up to the mirror. He looked at Patricia with a look that said, “do I really have to say it?” She told him to say the words and he did. I’m not typing them for the third here, not because I’m superstitious but because after he said the words all hell slowly started to break lose.

My cousin Emilio let out a blood curdling yell, “Something touched me.”

“Shut up!” I yelled back, “Stop trying to scare us!?

“It did” he started crying. “I think it was the cold, dead hand of you-know-who.”

With those words the hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I felt it too. It was the cold hand of death. We all started yelling and Patricia tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t open. It would open a little bit and then slam shut. She banned on the door so someone from the outside might hear and save us, but no one came. It was then that we heard the moaning. It was a high pitched moaning that could only come from someone who was undead. At this time I think we were all crying because we knew we were going to die.

“Turn on the light!” I yelled

“It’s not working!” Patricia yelled back at me and it was then that the shower curtain started to move.

We all huddled on the floor in front of the door as the shower curtain blew toward us. We were screaming at the top of our lungs. I could feel my heart beating so fast that I thought I was going to die of a heart attack right then and there on the floor of my grandma‘s bathroom.

I’m too young to die I thought to myself and besides I didn’t even throw out the trash this morning like my mom asked me to. She was going to be mad when she found out I had died in my grandma’s restroom and had forgotten to take the trash out.

We yelled and hugged each other as the shower curtain slowly opened and a dead hand appeared as if out of nowhere. “whoooo are you?” a high pitched voice called out as the shower curtain pulled back to reveal the decaying form of “you-know-who” She pointed at us and asked, “Why do you disturb me?” She walked toward us and reached out her hand. “You’ll all pay for waking me up…” and then she threw her head back and laughed an evil laugh that to this day, as I write this, gives me the chills to think about.

Just as she was about to grab us and make us into some sort of brain eating zombies the restroom lights come on and my cousin Patricia and her older sister, Sara are standing there laughing at me and Emilio.

“what the hell is wrong with you!” I yelled as I got up My heart was still beating very fast but at the same time I’m glad it was just a joke played on us by my two loving cousins that I could kill at that moment. “I could’ve died from a freakin’ heart attack. Would you have liked that? Would you have liked if I had died right here and now? I bet you would have liked it! How would you explain that to grandma?” I went on and on until the loud knock on the other side of the restroom door startled me into silence.

“what are you all doing in there?” My grandfather asked. “You better not be making a mess or I will call your parents to come pick you all up and take you to your own homes.” As he walked away I thought I heard my grandfather laugh and say something like, “kids and their imaginations."