Date: 10/4/2023
By Juliaaramini
I lived on del Playa drive in isla vista, California. It was a normal day, my house was adjoined with another one and we shared a backyard that looked out onto the cliff. Then, it started raining, and parts of the cliff started breaking off. The ocean started rising, and all of our phones went off to show an emergency alert. It didn’t tell us to evacuate, so me, my housemates, and my next door neighbors stayed where we were. There were also some guys over, one of them was really nice, and had a thing for one of the girls in that house. The others (I don’t remember how many there were) were just douchey frat guys. My dad immediately called me because he was worried, and tried to convince me to evacuate, and I said it was probably an earthquake that had caused the damage, and that it had passed and we were fine. Hours went by, more emergency alerts went off, but we didn’t realize the reality of the situation until we looked outside and saw that the ocean had risen all the way up the cliff and was flooding the streets of isla vista. I yelled “I’m gonna make a go bag!!” And ran upstairs to hop the window from their house to mine. I started frantically packing and had everything together in this odd looking mesh box that had two shelves in it. There was a dog carrier zipper entrance in the top shelf. I looked outside and saw with relief the ocean had retreated again, with just light rain pattering the pavement. Suddenly, my mom had been there the whole time with our dog. We put him in the dog carrier section. We started to leave, but realized there were more pets outside that had been swept here by the flood. We called animal control, and someone came and got all of them, despite me begging to take some. After this, we joined the neighbors and decided to evacuate. For no discernible reason, my mom was magically gone again like she’d never been there, along with my dog. There was an emergency safe house set up, which we all went to. Everyone had gone to bed, and we were waiting for our parents to arrive. I was still awake, along with the frat guys. One of them, a big stocky blonde, approached me. I don’t remember his name, so let’s call him Andrew (sorry in advance to any Andrews out there). I had never cared for Andrew, and asked what he wanted. He said “you” and slapped me. I started throwing punches at him and actually landed a lot, but he laughed and I was pretty certain none of them were landing very hard. He tried to spit in my face but I easily sidestepped him, I was a lot smaller and faster than he was. He grabbed hold of me and got in my face, and I saw white hot, blinding rage. I put my hands around his throat and started squeezing. I saw fear glimmer in his eyes, but only for a second, because I got nervous and thought to myself “I can’t kill a man, no matter how much I hate him. Is saving myself from being assaulted worth more than his life?” His other friends had come in and were laughing in a circle around us. He managed to pin me down and spit on me, and then we were wrestling on the ground. I got up and kicked him in the balls, and while he was down I stood on his face, slowly applying weight. This must be dream physics, but his cheekbone slowly started caving in. It should have hurt, but he looked at his friends and started laughing. This unsettled me enough to stop, which is when he knocked me down and stood up. He started yanking off my pajama pants while I struggled and his friends cheered. He then seemed to get some sense in him because he just gave my pants back, and his friends left. Somehow no one else in the house had heard that happen. Some time later my dad and my uncle arrived (for some reason my uncle and not my mom?). Him and my dad were sitting at the kitchen table discussing what was going on, and me, Andrew, and that one nice guy were sitting at the counter. We were doing something important but I don’t remember what. Andrew kept putting his arm around me, and I told him “stop”. This made my dad look up, but with Andrew’s arm already off me he didn’t see what I’d said stop to. This happened a few more times, and my dad finally stood up and asked what the hell was going on. My uncle took one look at Andrew’s shit eating grin and knew he’d done something, and hauled him out of his chair to sit at the kitchen table. I sat next to my dad and uncle, and the nice guy joined us too. My dad and uncle started interrogating him, but he only admitted to putting his arm around my shoulder, which was “no big deal”. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and said “he assaulted me and then took my pants off by force”. I managed to say it without even a hint of an urge to cry, which surprised me. I also immediately regretted it, thinking everyone would think I was exaggerating for attention. My dad and my uncle presumably got up to beat the shit out of Andrew. Then, the scene zoomed out to a crystal ball, and of all characters Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls was there. He said “you shouldn’t have done that pine tree, I had big things in store for that guy. Let’s see how you fare against this”. He snapped his fingers, and it zoomed back into the crystal ball where a girl who had not been there previously and my uncle’s eyes started glowing blue. Then, they merged to create a monster out of their own two bodies. Then I woke up.