I wake up to the sunlight coming from my window. I closed my eyes for a moment because I wanted to stay in bed a little longer. I finally got up from my bed. I heard my family eating and talking downstairs. I rushed downstairs to eat some cereal before my sister ate it all up. I remembered that I snuck out of the house to go clubbing with my friend Fire Lady Isis. She had changed her real name for that one. I decided to act like nothing happened to see maybe I can get away with it.



“Good morning everyone!” I said with a smile on my face. Nobody said anything. Uh-oh! They must have found out that I left last night. “Hello? Good morning!” Are they really that mad at me? “Why are you guys ignoring me? I didn’t do anything wrong.”



“E.g. can you please go and wake up your sister?” my mother said as she was making eggs with cheese and bacon.



“Oh come on mom she’s old enough to wake up by herself,” E.g. whined.



“E.g., listen to your mother.” my father said as he was sitting down at the kitchen table reading the daily newspaper as always.



“Can you guys please stop acting like I’m not here? Okay I admit that I snuck out of the house last night and went with Fire Lady Isis to the club. But I’m here, ok?”

They still weren’t saying anything. E.g. finally got up from her chair and started walking up the spiral stairs to “wake me up”. I was just about to ask my parents why they were ignoring me when we hear E.g. screaming from upstairs. We all rush upstairs to see what was going on. We found her crying her eyes out.



“What’s wrong E.g.? Talk to me!” my mother asked while she was holding on to her.



“What’s wrong? Tell us! Why are you crying?” I wanted to open the door as much as I was too scared to open it. What is in my room that scared E.g. to make her cry so much? My father finally got up and stood in front of my bedroom door. He finally pushes the door open and steps inside. My mom follows right behind him. That’s when heard my mom cry out, “Oh no, no, no! Not my baby! No, No, No!”

I run into my bedroom. At first I’m blinded by the light. When my eyes finally adjusted to the lighting I look at my bed and see myself. I see myself with my upper body on the floor and my lower body on the bed. My throat is slashed; the bed is all messed up and drenched in my blood.



“Becca, go call the police!” my father demanded. When my mom didn’t move he yelled, “Go now Becca! Please, and take E.g. with you.” My mother nodded her head and took E.g. downstairs to go and call the police. My father stayed in my room and started to cry.



“Dad, what’s going on? This isn’t happening. I’m right here. I’m alive. Don’t cry, I’ll wake up and this will all disappear. I’ll wake up soon,” he still can’t hear me. My mom comes back upstairs. “Kyle the police are on their way. They want us to be downstairs and to not touch anything else.” My parents leave my room and head downstairs.

I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe any of it. How could I be here while I see myself on the bed dead? This isn’t real. “I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming!” I yell to myself while hitting my head with my fists. I start to cry to myself when I finally here the sirens, I run downstairs to where my family is.

When the door bell rings my dad gets up and opens the door for the police and the ambulance people. The ambulance people come in with a stretcher and a long black bag. My mom starts to cry again but she keeps it low because we needed to hear what the cops were saying.



“Alright Mr. and Mrs. Star, when was the last time you saw your daughter?” asked the tall cop as his assistant was writing everything that he was saying.



“Last night. We had just had an argument because she wanted to go to a club with her friend.”



“And this friend, what is her name?”



“Her friend is name is Janine…’



“Her name is Fire Lady Isis, Dad,” interrupted my sister, “Her name was Janine but she went through some things and finally went to go change her name.”



“So this Fire Lady Isis, have you guys heard from her yet?” Just then the smaller cop’s phone starts to ring. She leaves and then comes back after five minutes.



“We just got a call reporting a missing girl,” she said when she returned.



“Let the other people deal with it.”



“Well the missing person goes by the name Fire Lady Isis.”



Oh no! Oh no, no, no! I can’t believe what I’m hearing. She can’t be missing! She’s like the toughest person I’ve ever known in my entire life. I can’t just stay here. I have to go find her. She would do the same thing for me, well if I was still alive that is.



Two detectives walk in. At first the cops stop them and ask for their Ida’s



“My name is Detective Becky and this is my partner Detective Cindy. We’re here because of the case of Anju Star and Janine…”



“Her name is Fire Lady Isis!” I was getting tired of them getting her name wrong.



“Oh I’m sorry, I mean Lady Fire Isis.”



“Wait? You can hear?” She didn’t respond, “Hello? Can you hear me?” Well I guess not because she’s not saying anything. She just probably did just correct herself. I decided to walk into the kitchen while they talked.



“I have to find a way to save her. But where could she be? I can’t even remember what even happened last night before I died. Well I remember sneaking out of my room to…”



“And to answer to your question, yes we can hear you and we can also see you.”



I turned around to see that both Detective Becky and Detective Cindy were in the kitchen with me.



“Sorry but we couldn’t say anything while we were in the living room because telling people you can both see and hear the dead gives you a one way pass to the white padded room,” Cindy apologized as she came near me.



“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” Detective Becky said, “Oh and just call us Becky and Cindy. No need to call us with using ‘Detective’.”



“Umm, I’m sorry but I really have to go and find my friend. For all I know she’s missing and worst, dead!”



“Don’t think like that,” Cindy said as she sat down at the kitchen table, “We need to know what happened.”



“Well at least what you remember,” Becky said as she joined Cindy at the table. Since they were sitting down I might as well sit down too.



“The truth, I don’t remember what happened to me. I just remember sneaking out, meeting my friend at the club, I remember dancing with her and then, well, that’s it. That’s all I remember.”



“Hmm. What was the name of the club?” asked Becky. I had to think on that one. Nothing came to mind until finally I remembered what I was wearing. “It was at the Snake-eyed club in downtown by a hotel called The Heavens.”



“Oh I know where that is at. Well it looks like Becky and I need some changing to do.”



“Wait? What do you mean changing? Are you planning on going to the club?”



“Yup! What else are we suppose to do. How do you think we solve things?”


“But you can end up getting hurt.”



“It’s alright. We’ve through things like this before. Now come with us so then we can all go there together.”



“Together?”



“Yeah, you’re going to help us find out who killed you and find your dear friend.” With that I got into the same car as Becky and Cindy, even though I am a ghost I can still travel like a normal person. But there was really no use of a seatbelt. When we got to Becky’s house I helped them pick out the right clothes for the club so that they wouldn’t stand out.



We finally arrived to the club. When we finally got inside the club I took them to the place where Fire Lady Isis and I were at before I blanked out of everything. We talking or more like Becky and Cindy talking because nobody else was able to see me, when two guys came over to our table. They were like in there mid-twenty’s.



“What are two fine ladies like you doing here by yourselves?”



“Nothing much, just trying to have a good time.”



“Can we buy you ladies some drinks?” asked the smaller one.”



“Um, yeah sure, that’ll be great.”



“Ok, we’ll be back then.” As soon as they left it hit me. Those were the two guys that came up to me and Fire Lady Isis last night. “Hey you guys! Those are the guys that me and my friend we’re with last night. They had also bought us some drinks but I think they but drugs in them.”



“Really? Well, we’ll be ready for them when they get back.”



When the guys came back with the drinks, Becky and Cindy just decided to talk to them and tried to ignore their drinks. But they did raise it up to their lips just to pretend that they were drinking.





“How would you ladies like to go by our place to have some more fun? There’s going to be a great party.’



“Oh, well, we really have to be leaving back home, so I don’t think.”



“Oh come on. It’ll be fun,” said the smaller one who had said his name was Jason. The taller one’s name is Jagger.



“Yeah Becky let’s go have some fun!”



“I could give you a ride home if you’d like?” Jagger offered. This was the second time this thing hit me.

“This is the same conversation that my friend and I had with these two guys. Fire Lady Isis wanted to go party but I wanted to go home because I didn’t want to get into trouble if my parents came back and found me gone. Jagger took me home and he invited himself in. My parents were out at a party and E.g. was at a friend’s house. He came into my room. I told him to leave but he wouldn’t. That’s when he raped me and killed me, cleaning up the mess that he made. Fire Lady Isis must be at the house still!’

“On second thought, I don’t think going to a party would be such a bad idea.”

“Okay let’s go in my car,” Jason said as he got up from his chair.

“Oh no that’s ok. We’ll follow you guys.”

We made a strategy while we were in the car driving to their place. We were going to go along with this whole thing and then bust them. We called the cops and told them where we were going to go and to stand by for orders. When we arrived to their house, nobody was there.

“I thought you were having a party?” asked Cindy

“Oh we are,” Jason said as he gave a nod to Jagger. Both the girls started to move away but the guys were too quick for them. They grabbed them and started dragging them up into the house. Becky and Cindy were both screaming when they finally stuffed their mouths with socks. Jagger took Becky upstairs and Jason took Cindy down to the basement. Jagger came back upstairs after he locked Cindy in the basement. I ran up after him.

They both had Becky up in a room. “Now we can have our party,” said Jagger as he started to take off his pants. Jason already had his off. Becky was at the far end of the room by a corner. She was holding on to her shirt because apparently Jason had tried to take it off but only succeeded in ripping it.

When Becky saw me she looked happy. The guys started towards her again. I saw that Jagger had pulled out a knife. I was filled with so much anger because I remembered that they did this to me as well. With all my might I was able to grab a vase near by and smashed it on Jagger’s head. He was knocked out instantly. Jason was shocked to see a vase rise up and attack his friend, only because he wasn’t able to see me.

“What did you do?” he said as he turned back to Becky, “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. I was over here the whole time.”

“Liar!” Jason grabbed the knife and ran to Becky and swung.

Becky was quick enough to dodge the knife’s blow. When she got down to the floor she kicked his legs and he fell. When we saw that he didn’t get back up, Becky got up to turn his body. When he fell he had accidentally stabbed himself in the neck.

“Are you okay Becky?” I asked since she was still looking at the body.

“Uh…yeah, I’m okay,” she looked at the body one more time then she looked at me, “Let’s go find Cindy.” I followed her out the door and into the basement door. When we opened the door it smelled like rotten corpses. It was dark and damp. When we reached the bottom there was a light switch on a wall. Becky turned it on.

When the lights came on we saw cages. A lot of cages and inside the cages there were people in some of the cages. But not just any people, the girls that had mysteriously disappeared. Becky found the keys on the wall and started opening the cages one by one. I ran to each girl using as much energy as I could so then I could check their pulse. Almost all of them were still alive. Three were dead. They had needles connected to their veins. The guys were drugging them, that’s why the other three died, they had too much drugs in their system.

Becky finally reached Cindy’s cage. She unlocked her door and ran inside to save her friend. “Cindy you’re all right, thank goodness!”

“I’m so happy to see you! How did you escape?”

“Well Anju here can apparently kick a**,” laughed Becky.

“Well I saw what they were going to do to you and I got so mad that I grabbed the vase and threw it at Jagger. I didn’t know I was able to do that.”

“That’s awesome!’

“Yeah lets get everybody out of here before Jagger wakes up,” said Becky.

“Just Jagger? What happened to Jason?” asked Cindy with a confused face.

“I accidentally killed him.” She said quietly. Cindy nodded her head as if she understood to not ask anymore questions. We had a few more cages to open and that’s when I saw Fire Lady Iris.

“Iris!” I yelled, but then I remember that she couldn’t hear me.

“Anju?” Iris responded in a whisper.

“Iris, you can hear me?”

“Yeah. What happened?”

“The guys that were at the club drugged our drinks and brought us here. And…” I became quiet because I didn’t want to tell her what happened. I was too scared to let her know.

“What Anju? You can tell me. What happened?”

I took a deep breath, “Iris, I’m dead. They killed me. They left you here and they for some reason took me home and killed me there.”

“How is that possible? You’re alive. You have to be. I’m right here talking to you face to face. Unless….”

“Unless what?” I asked.

“Unless you really are dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have a gift of seeing dead people. It’s always been in my family’s generation from grandmother to granddaughter. And I take it that these detectives can see you too.”

“Yeah that’s right,” said Cindy

“We need to get out of here now. I need to radio my backup,” said Becky.

We all got everybody out of the basement and Cindy went up to the room to but Jagger in cuffs before he woke up. Backup and the ambulance finally came and took the girls to the hospital and collected the bodies. I pulled Iris to the side so then I could talk to her but I made sure so it didn’t look like she was crazy and talking to herself.

“Iris…” I didn’t know how to say goodbye to a friend. I felt tears coming down my face.

"It's okay Anju. I know exactly what you're going to say. And it's okay. Don't cry. I'll miss you too."

"Thanks for being a great friend Iris."

"Sure, it's no problem."

"Take care Iris," I said as I gave her a hug good bye.

"Peace out! I'll see you soon. But not yet." She smiled.

A light came from behind Iris. "Guess what?"

"What?"

"There is a white light. And everybody is waiting for me to walk to it."

"Then go. Be at peace."

"I will." I walked towards the light and looked back. Iris, Becky, and Cindy were waving goodbye to me. I waved back and then continued onto the light.