January 20XX
People say I have problems. My parents say I got problems. My brothers say I got problems. My boyfriend says I got problems. My shrink says I got problems. Even my dog thinks I got problems.
My cousin thought it’d be good if I wrote whatever is bothering me in a monthly journal. Just jot down everything that had happened to me throughout the entire month. I thought I’d give it a try.
You see, I have a tendency to have supernatural encounters. Supernatural stuff often happen around me since I was a kid, but no one ever believes my stories, and that’s where all that “Steph, you got problems” came in. Just this month alone, we started a trend on playing Ouija and our class trend setter Abigail was of no exception. She introduced us to a Japanese Ouija called the Coin Spirit which is said to be harmless fun.
All you have to do is hand around a quiet place, write the alphabets A-Z and numbers 0-9 on a piece of paper in a way that they shape like a heart and the YES and NO in the middle of the heart, and all we need is a simple coin as the bridge between us and the spirit world.
So we did just that. We chose to play it after school behind the toilet and we used Abigail's 20 cent coin. She chanted a few words that sounded funny and began summoning the spirit to come. I didn't know if it was my imagination or not, but I suddenly felt a cold draft blowing at my ear. Next thing we know the coin began to move inside the heart. Abigail told us not to panic and ask questions in turns. I saw Abigail grinned silently at the scared look on my other friends Emmy and Caroline and suspected foul play, but I didn't want to spoil her fun, so I kept quiet.
We started asking the spirit's name. It was a long one and seemed foreign, but I recall it started with an 'E'. We asked many girly silly questions like who's our future husband or what will we be when we finish college, stuff like that. We were so engrossed that we didn't realize it was getting late. By the time the bell rang noting the end of the class, we then knew we were playing the Coin Spirit for the whole day. Hastily, Abigail chanted some verses to send the spirit 'home' and again, I felt the cold draft. As Abigail and I walked home together, she completed the 'sending home' ritual by tearing the paper to 48 pieces, dumping them into an unused well beside the toilet and spending the money on an ice-cream. She claimed that doing this, she made sure that the spirit won't be able to return through the bridge again. I remembered the draft and hoped that she would be alright.
A few weeks later, just like fashion statement, Ouija wasn't in season anymore. I just so happen to go to the loo one day when suddenly I saw a crowd standing around the first cubicle of the toilet. I asked what was going on and one of them told me someone got locked in and couldn't get out.
It was Abigail. Apparently the lock suddenly got stuck and she was trapped. She was crying and raving like a lost girl and wanted out. We tried to calm her down as one of them went to call the Discipline Teacher. She calmed down for a while when suddenly she started screaming again. This time, it wasn't just fear. It was total panic and terror. We heard her pounding at the door frantically and screaming at the top of her lungs. We began to panic as we wondered what was it that made her suddenly react so violently.
Then there was silence. We heard a slight gurgling sound and the pounding and screaming stopped abruptly. I called Abigail over and over again but there was no reply. When the Discipline Teacher finally came and banged the door open, he stopped us from coming any closer, took off his coat and covered Abigail, carrying her quickly out of the cubicle before anyone got to see what happened to her. The teacher drove her to the hospital himself.
It was from word of mouth that I found out that when the Discipline Teacher opened the door, he saw Abigail on the floor, staring at space with her throat slashed, struggling to breathe. The doctors couldn't figure out what kind of object that could leave such fine cut that almost led her close to death. She suffered a massive trauma that sent her mind somewhere else altogether. I heard that she's admitted to the mental hospital and is there till today.
Even before the throat incident, her family had said about her complaining that a 20 cent coin kept returning to her. She remembered spending it on ice-cream and could've sworn she had no more money, but her mother found the exact 20 cent in her pocket when she washed her pinafore. She tried to spend it on calling her friend, but when she hung up it fell out into the money slot even though she had got through the line! She tried other ways like buying sweets, paying the bus fare, donating it to charity, playing video games in the arcade but the coin kept reappearing in her pocket.
It was the same coin that we used to play the Ouija game.
She never dared to tell us as she was afraid she might get us into hot soup for playing Ouija. And because she was slashed so badly that her vocal chord was damaged, she couldn't tell her poor family what happened and what she saw in the cubicle.
No one ever knew the truth. The school kept the issue very hush-hush and convinced us that the cubicle will be sealed due to a faulty lock and that her tragedy was due traumatic hysteria. But I knew better. I bet my other friends involved in the game knew that too.
So far, you’re the only one I’ve ever told about my tales, and I have a feeling I’m gonna be telling you more. Glad I got this off my chest.
I guess you can say this is the beginning of a very beautiful secret friendship.
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