“Have you guys ever heard of Mama Hates You?” 
“What’s that?” Toby asked. 
“It’s one of those,” Lola made a weird face, “demon-summony-things?” 
“’Demon-summony-things,’” Bella repeated. 
“It’s hard to explain but have you heard of it?” 
Everyone in the room shook their heads. 
“Do you want to know how to play it?” 
“I thought it was a demon-summony-thing Lola?” Jonas said sarcastically. 
“Shut up.” 
“Just tell us how to play Lola,” Toby said. 
“You can say how you play it,” Bella put and earbud in one ear, “but I won’t be paying attention.” 
“I’m game,” Jonas said. 
“So, here’s what you need to play,” Lola started. “You’ll need any type of candle, an item of value of your mother, and the ability to count to 10.” 
Everyone snickered at the joke. 
“Once you have those things you’ll need to in a darkened room at night and light the candle (or turn it on) and say thing rhyme: 
Mama, Mama, cursed sage 
Mama, Mama, feel our rage 
Mama, Mama, show us mercy 
Mama, Mama, and chase us ‘til we draw our final breath.” 
“That rhyme is almost as stupid as putting mayonnaise on a burger,” Bella commented. 
“Thought you weren’t listening,” Lola said. “Anyway, after saying that rhyme, you’ll need to count to 10. After that, keep the candle lit (or on) until morning and do not sleep. The reason why this is such a tedious process is because of how dangerous Mama is. After summoning her properly, she’ll take two weeks to stalk you. You know, learn who you trust, who’s your family, who you dislike, etc. After that 2 weeks she’ll start hunting. She can’t actually harm you unless she has a vessel. She’ll possess someone who’s close to you and use them to kill you. And there is a way to keep her from killing you. You have to hug someone and tap them twice. This will send Mama to that person, and she’ll go back to the stalking phase.” 
“Couldn’t you just hypothetically keep her in the stalking phase forever?” Jonas asked. 
“I mean sure, but once you’ve had Mama attached to you, you can’t get her back, and eventually you’d lose track on who had her. And the only way to get Mama off you is for you to die. But once you die, she’ll go back to the person who transferred Mama to you, and kill them, then go back to the person who transferred it to them, all the way until she gets to the person who started it all. Now if you had Mama transferred to you, you get off easy, she kills you quickly. But if you started the game, she kills you slowly and painfully.” 
“Is there a way to get Mama out of someone when she possesses them?” Toby asked. 
“Nope.” Lola said. 
Right as she was saying that the bell rang. “Hey, my mom’s having me make Harry Potter themed stuff for next year, wanna see if you guys can miss your classes so you can come over and help?” 
“Hey, I’d do anything to get out of science,” Jonas said. 
 
The next afternoon at game club it was relatively empty with about 7 kids and Lola’s mom Mrs. Duggan, the Home-Ec teacher “making sure they don’t start the next Hunger Games.” After club ended at 5:00 PM, while everyone was packing up, Jonas was staying behind. “You coming?” David asked. 
“Nah, I gotta wait for Toby, his parents are giving me a ride,” he answered. Toby had left 5 minutes earlier to go to the bathroom and hadn’t come back yet. Jonas waited a little more and decided to go to the boy's bathroom to see what was up. Right as he was turning, Toby rammed into Jonas at full speed, knocking him to the floor like a ragdoll. Toby helped Jonas tapped his back twice and asked, “You alright Jonas, sorry I didn’t mean to crash into you like that.” 
“It’s fine Tob-what the heck?!” Toby looked as white as a ghost and a sprinkler of sweat. “Are you good?” 
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Toby said. “Just had a little too much Taco Bell yesterday. It never agrees with me, but I always go back there with this naïve hope that one day I can go there without getting a crunch wrap supreme with a side of diarrhea.” 
“Too much information.” Jonas said. He didn’t even want to ask Toby why he was racing his shadow back to the Home-Ec room. 
 
“Thanks Mrs. Cooper, “Jonas said as Toby and his parents drove away from my house. He walked inside to see his mom still working on the computer. “Hey mom,” he shouted at her as he walked into his room. He threw his stuff down and took a quick nap. 
 
After dinner Jonas couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching him. He tried shrugging it off, but it didn’t work. He figured some sleep might help, but no matter how hard he tried, he could fall asleep. When he finally felt like sleep was coming upon him, he heard a faint whisper, “Mama hates you.” 
He jerked up to see nothing but his dark room. “Jessica?” Jonas spoke into the dark room. “You there?” He didn’t see anything. He got up and went to her room across the hall. He carefully opened the door and walked in. He saw his sister Jessica fast asleep. His sister had pulled something like this before, so he grabbed the warm water glass by her bedstand and put 3 of her fingers in it. He whispered something under his breath and went back to sleep.  
 
The next morning, Jonas was awakened to the same whisper he heard the night before, “Mama hates you.” 
Jonas was awakened with the same fear he felt last night even though he knew it was sister messing with him. It was his sister, right? He couldn’t really discern what gender the voice belonged to but who else could it be? There was nobody in the house beside him, his mother, and Jessica, right? Jonas decided he would catch his sister in the act.  
 
That night before he went to sleep, he placed hidden cameras in all the corners of his room so he would see Jessica walk right in and try to scare him again. He was so excited to set his plan in motion that he couldn’t fall asleep. While he was awake, he asked himself some questions. Why was he doing this? Couldn’t he have just confronted his sister that morning and asked her to stop? Then he knew why he was really doing it. He was scared. The other day Toby had crashed into him Toby had been terrified. He had seen something horrible. He turned to face the mirror on his door and put his hand against his mouth to cover the silent scream that was trying to escape his mouth. In the mirror he saw a horrible figure. It had grey skin, red eyes, and dark messy hair and wore a dress that looked like it had seen better days. Way better days. Right as it disappeared, he heard a faint whisper, “Mama hates you.” 
 
“Jonas did you forget to set your alarm again?” 
Jonas sat up to find his mother patting his back and an uneasy feeling. When his mother patted his back, he had the worse feeling. The feeling that a stranger was touching him instead of his mother. “Yeah, sorry mom.” Jonas said still groggy from what seemed like only 3 hours of sleep. When his mother left his room and closed the door to give him some privacy, when she turned around to face him, he could’ve sworn that he saw red eyes on her face. 
 
“I’m going crazy guys I don’t know what to do,” Jonas confided in his friends. 
“I think Mama might hate you,” Bella laughed at her own joke. 
“Hey Bella, take this seriously.” Toby said. 
“When did this all start Jonas?” Lola asked. 
“I wanna say about a week ago when Toby crashed into me,” then it him. “When Toby crashed into me,” he repeated softly. Realization then hit him like a baseball bat. He turned to Toby. “You started the game didn’t you.” 
Toby had the same look on his face when he accidentally broke his mother's vase.  
“Did you start the fricking game?!” Jonas repeated. 
Toby slowly nodded his head. 
“Why you little,” Jonas jumped onto Toby and started choking him. Bella and Lola pulled him off Toby and he gasped for breath. 
“When Lola told me about the game, I tried to forget about it, reminding myself it was just fiction, but you know me, I’m easily scared. I started the game so I could convince myself it wasn’t real. But that feeling of unease never left. In fact, it got worse. I kept hearing whispers and then when I went to the bathroom, I tried leaving and the door locked. I tried desperately to open it, but it refused to open. I looked in the mirror and saw a terrifying creature holding the door handle. It looked at me, smiled, and let go of the handle. It flew open and I ran back to Mrs. Duggan’s room. When I crashed into Jonas, I must’ve accidentally transferred Mama to him.” 
“Great, thanks Toby.” Jonas said. “Now we have a problem.” Jonas eyed the knife Lola had used to cut her apple. “I have a quick and easy way to solve it.” He grabbed the knife, and everyone started shouting at once. Jonas held the knife to his throat and said, “We all know the legend, the only way to end the game is if Toby dies. I’m killing myself so Mama gets to Toby faster.” He tried to slice his neck open, but he couldn’t go through with it. It wasn’t him having second thoughts. It was the knife. It wasn’t moving. He tried two hands instead of one, but it still wouldn’t budge. Mama apparently wanted the satisfaction of killing Jonas herself. He sat on the floor and cried. 
 
That afternoon was when she finally confronted Jonas. He walked out of science class and blocked the doorway. She had possessed a random person in the hallway. How did Jonas know she was possessed? Well, you don’t exactly crawl on the walls and ceiling without a minion of Satan inhabiting your body. Jonas could feel his heart pounding out of his chest, his lungs trying to breathe as Jonas ran faster than he ever had before. When he thought he had lost the blood lusting demon, he found a classroom with an open door and Bella inside, folding pieces of cloth. He ran in and hugged Bella. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but he double tapped her anyway. But as soon as he did, Bella hugged him back and whispered in his ear, “Mama hates you.”