Wren was on her bed the next morning, her mind going through what happened the day before. She was not thinking about the man she met, she was more interested in the fact that someone had watched her being possessed. Collectively, that was the first time anyone had seen her dance and she was not sure if she was allowed to smile about it or be worried.
"Am not even the one dancing, why am I thinking about it?" she murmured to herself covering her face with both hands in frustration.
She let go of her face and for a minute she stared into nothing as different thoughts came to her, it was until then that what she said dawned on her.
"Am not the one dancing." she repeated and a idea came to her.
Wren looked at her phone as she kept processing what she wanted to do at the back of her mind.
After a moment, she shook her head imagining how stupid she'd look. She had never danced before -consciously, every move she could make only happened when she was possessed and surprisingly, she had never tried to dance herself.
Wren looked at her phone for a second time letting the thought of dancing to a song by herself feel less weird.
She stood up from her bed and picked up her phone, she went through her songs looking for the song that would be less embarrassing for her private debut.
When she thought she found the perfect song, Wren dropped her phone on the bed and stood in front of her mirror.
She stared at herself and took in deep breaths. She started with turning from side to side, she raised a hand, bent a leg, tilted her back and attempted making random movements that even she knew made he rlook like an unhealthy sight to look at.
"Is it the song?" she asked herself after she gave up on the move.
Wren picked up her phone again and tried switching to a kpop song, a song she knew had an original choreography.
She went back to her place in front of the mirror and tried dancing to the song the moves she could remember.
"What the- oh my God, Wren please stop!" a voice cried from Wren's room door stopping Wren immediately and making her turn a one-eighty to face the person.
"What are you doing in my room Emily?" Wren complained looking at her face-bloated cousin who was now walking towards the bed.
"No Wren, what were YOU doing?" Emily asked emphasising on the word 'you' as laughter followed.
Wren and Emily were cousins, almost like sisters. When Wren was eight and her parents died she moved in with the closest people she felt were family, her cousin Emily and her widowed aunty. Wren practically grew up with Emily, they had spent every holiday in the past together even before her parents died.
One of the major things she liked about the new family she had was that they respected how private she displayed her life to be, no one asked too many questions.
"Can you just leave." Wren complained when she switched off the music on her phone.
" Can you explain what possessed you think you could actually dance Wren." Emily stated as another fit of laughter rolled out of her mouth.
AN ACTUAL SPIRIT Wren wanted to scream, to say that she was possessed for real but she didn't instead she walked out of her room towards the living room while Emily followed her still laughing.
"Good morning mum." Emily greeted when she saw her mother making Wren aware of another woken presence in the house.
"Aunty good morning." she copied. Her aunt waved a hand to the two girls as her whole attention was focused on the pieces of paper that were randomly scattered on the table in front of her.
Emily cared less what her mother was doing while Wren's curiosity on the other hand was tampered with as always. She moved to where her aunty was sitting and stood behind her. They were mere pieces of printed paper with the highlights of blue and red inks her aunty had made, nothing too different from how she normally worked until Wren saw one word, a word that caused the air around her to tighten... a name.
"She had cancer and clearly had two years or around that much time left but..." her aunty declared trying to feed Wren with information since she seemed interested, she raised both eyebrows as she stacked two pieces of paper over another then continued "-she died two years earlier instead and now the doctors want us to go through her files because they think something went wrong with her medication."
"I pity whoever made mistakes with her drugs, see if you can't handle medicine why study it?" Emily commented after drinking a bottle of water she got from the fridge.
"I was the one responsible for her then." her mother stated flatly. Emily quieted immediately looking at Wren to fill in the stilled environment but Wren's eyes were on the papers her aunty was going through.
"Mrs Harrelson." Wren said not knowing when she spoke.
"You know her?" her aunty asked almost immediately.
"She's uhh..." Wren started now looking her aunty in the eye. "I met her once."
Emily stared at the both of them and quietly walked out not wanting to be in an environment she felt was too tense for her.
Wren's aunty was about to ask another question but Wren took it as her que to follow Emily out.
_ _
Hours later Wren was sitting in her class with her notebook open in front her but her mind was completely far from the lecture to the extent that she could not hear the lecturer's voice.
Her thoughts were circulating on the name she saw on the papers from the morning, a name that brought uncomfortable memories, a name that made her question her existence. She never forgot the names, none of them because they kept ringing in her ears even after the years rounded up, nothing changed because there was always a new name every year, this time it was Maria.
Wren jumped up when she felt a finger on the back of her shoulder, her eyes first noticing the writings she had unconsciously made of the word 'why' repeatedly at random parts of her notebook before looking up to see who had brought her out of her trance.
Defined facial features, black hair tied finely at the back of his head. In truth, she saw his shoulders before his face like she was already too familiar with how toned they were.
Speak of the devil's cousin.