=When I was younger, I lived with my family in the southern part of California. I remember a safe home and a close family, but recently I have been having these flashes of memories. These memories depict a few odd incidents and situations that I thought were just childhood nightmares reemerging, but upon further reflection, I’ve begun to suspect that these are real events. I will try to mirror these memories into a comprehensible story, that will allow anyone who reads this to understand what I am feeling now.

The first house I remember living in was a small, two-storied, cul-de-sac home. It was at the circle end of our neighborhood, on the direct left side when you stood in the center of the road. It was a very modest home, with a black tar driveway leading to a one car garage. In the front yard, there was an apple tree, too young to bear any fruit. Behind the tree was a small garden, where my mother liked to keep a variety of colorful plants. It was hemmed in with a rusty red brick path leading around its borders.

The house itself was the traditional white stucco of Californian suburbs, and had a simple gray thatched roof, slowly becoming more lustrous due to the harsh rays of sunlight beating down on it every day. Where the driveway met the house, there was a paved sidewalk leading up to the paper white front door. The inside of the house contained a small living room, immediately following the entry way. Stairs leading up to the bedrooms were behind the couch in the living room. Next to the stairs, on the ground floor, was a dining room which preceded a small but efficient kitchen. There was a glass sliding door right behind the dinner table, which led to the patio and backyard.

The backyard is where I spent most of my time during the day. It was a very small backyard, with less than an acre of space to play, but it held all sorts of things for me to entertain myself with. I had a swing set right in front of a pool that had a balcony that my father had built around it. To the left of this swing set was a small sand garden, bordered by landscaped rocks, where my father had set a stump from a tree, so that we could play marbles. On the back patio, there were two dog houses, for our pets. Mattsu and Kapu, both pure-bred huskies, resided within these small huts, and would often play with me.

Everyday, I would play in the backyard; either swinging, swimming, or rough housing with my dogs. At my age, probably around four years old, I didn’t have many friends, as there were none in our neighborhood, and I wasn’t able to travel very far without my parents. So it went by that I spent the days in my backyard shielded from human interaction of similar age.

One year, however, I remember a little girl moving into the house at the beginning of the cul-de-sac. We immediately became friends, and I learned that her name was Cassidy. Our friendship was very strong and...safe. We had the kind of bond that allowed us to spend nights at each others house without parents worrying of any trouble. This led to us spending many nights in my backyard. This went on for a few months without any issues.

A few months after our foreseen friendship, I had finally learned how to ride a bike. So I decided to ride down to Cassidy’s house, and show her how awesome it was. After I got there, we decided to go out into the street and bike around. After this had gone on for a few hours, we finally noticed an old black car, parked about two houses from us. It had been sitting there for about an hour and a half, but we took no notice before then. The car had tinted windows, but it was easy to make out the silhouette of a human sitting in the drivers seat. We were a bit spooked, but we were also ignorant children, so we just journeyed back to my house, not informing anyone of the suspicious vehicle only a few houses away.
It was getting close to night, as the sun was at the low point where it only allowed the beautiful pink and orange glows of sunset. We begged my parents to let her stay over, and they obliged. After that, we brought them the idea that they should let us camp out in the backyard because the weather was perfect. Once again, they submitted, and we rushed off to set up our tent. We decided we were going to pull an allnighter, and watch the stars and try to guess which ones had aliens. After an hour, we were dozing pleasantly.
We were woken up by a muffled thud and creak of the wooden fence. Both Mattsu and Kapu faced where the noise had come from, and began to emit a low guttural growl, simultaneously raising their hackles. Both Cassidy and I were very alarmed and confused. I raised myself to a crouching position, as I attempted to locate the heavy, black flashlight that I brought out with me. As soon as I found it and turned it on, the disturbing noises ceased to reverberate through the fence. I called out, in my innocent toddler way, asking if anyone was there. After there was no reply, I switched off the light and prepared to go back to sleep. The crunching snap of a foot breaking the surface of dead leaves cracked through the silence. At this point, Cassidy and I were becoming very frightened, and we grabbed a few things and bolted into the house, locking the door behind us.
We woke up the next morning, relatively early, and just laughed because we thought that our fear was so unjustified and ridiculous. We decided to head outside to grab the few things that we had left behind and clean up before my parents woke up. I was retrieving my sleeping bag and pillow, when a small plastic square fluttered out of the pillowcase and fell onto the barren earth. I picked it up, and observed that it was a photo. Not the kind of photos that you take into Wal-Mart to get them printed, but from one of those old cameras that printed it out right away, and you had to shake to make sure the ink spread. When I studied the photo, I was puzzled and a bit shaken at what I saw.
The photograph was a picture of me. I was riding my bike, while Cassidy ran next to me. The edges were blurry, as if the photographer was taking the picture through a window. Then it dawned on me, the angle confirmed the nagging idea that had been growing in my mind. Fear gnawed at my stomach as I realized that the photo was taken from the stationary car that had been parked two houses away from us, only just yesterday. I turned the photo over in my hands, to see if there was any other distinguishable markings. There were three words on the back. My heart was a pin being dropped on concrete.
“See you soon.”