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18/12/2024 Dear diary, An unexpected gift from a secret Santa arrived. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the secret Santa part was very much expected. I had been planning for the event ever since Mrs. Jones announced that we would have a Secret Santa exchange again this year despite last year’s shenanigans. I baked some gingerbread cookies, got myself an Elf outfit with my allowance and I found the perfect gift for Chris (an authentic Metallica T-shirt from a second hand store which I wrapped carefully with reindeer wrapping). The unexpected part was the gift itself, or to be more exact gifts. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, I have to tell you about Princess Isabella of the Seven Kingdoms. When I was about six or seven, my whole world revolved around cats. I had cats on my pajamas, cats on my notebooks, my favorite movies where Puss in Boots and The Aristocats and I would have my mother read to me Catwings every night before bed. But cats were messy, expensive to feed and a huge responsibility according to my mother. So I got myself an invisible one, Princess Isabella of the Seven Kingdoms. She used to follow me around everywhere. She came with me at school and sat by my side, played with me during the break, and after school, when the other kids were running up and down at our local park, she and I would sit by the lake and exchange stories. I told her about my life before I met her and she told me all about her kingdom. About the high towers covered in catnip, the rivers filled with fish and fields of red dots where one could chase little red lights to their hearts delight. At night, after feeding her some well earned fairy dust cookies she would climb on my bed and I would brush her white fur until I fell asleep. The only one who knew about her was James, my other invisible friend. James appeared one night in my room, sitting on my bed, right after the doctors came to take father away. He was just sitting there at first, smiling, saying nothing at all. For a whole week, I slept on the floor until I found the courage to tell him to sit on the chair instead. He got up silently, always looking at me right in the eyes, and sat on my desk. After a while, he started pacing around and muttering unsavory comments under his breath about the way I looked, my grades, and the books I liked to read. Although James never got out of the house, he became quite talkative and mischievous over time. At first, it was small things. He would misplace my pens and pencils or make my socks disappear for example. Or when my mother had friends over for tea, James would swap the jars of salt and sugar and start running his fingers along the back of their chairs, just enough to make them shiver, or tap their tea cups so they’d wobble precariously on the saucers. I tried to ignore it, biting my tongue while the women glanced at my mother nervously. It wasn’t just the guests though. He soon turned his attention to my family as well. He ripped pages from my brother’s sketchbook and messed with his guitar, snapping strings again and again. When I asked James why he was doing this, he just said “I don’t like the way he looks at me.” And my mother, always exhausted from work, started finding her slippers soaked in water or her laundry ruined by black smudges that smelled faintly of ash. She’d rub her temples and mutter about mice or faulty pipes, but her patience wore thinner by the day. Then James’ pranks started getting worse. He locked my brother in the bathroom for hours while I pounded on the door, trying to get him out. The lock wasn’t jammed—it opened perfectly when James decided to let go. My brother didn’t speak to me for days after, and when he told my mother what had happened, she just looked at me, saying nothing at all. James started targeting me more directly after that. One morning, I woke to find long scratches on my arms and legs. “You’re clumsy,” he said, smirking as I wrapped my wounds. Another time, he tipped my bedside lamp over while I was reading, the glass shattering at my feet. And then came the raccoon. One morning I woke up to my mother screaming her lungs out. When I got downstairs to the kitchen I found her standing in there with a dead raccoon in front of her. Its fur was matted with blood, its neck snapped. “Where did this come from Sophia?” she was furious. “I don’t know” I said&nbsp;“It wasn’t me, I swear” The knots in my throat got bigger because I knew she didn’t believe me but I couldn’t tell her about James. Not after threatening to put all of the pillows on fire if anyone ever found out about him. That night I didn’t sleep and for the first time since his appearance he didn’t come in my room. The next morning he has nowhere to be found and he never appeared again. Which would have delighted me of course if it weren’t for the simultaneous disappearance of Princess Isabella of the Seven Kingdoms. Which worried me immensely because James never liked the cat. He would always glare at her when she rubbed against my legs for example or throwing stuff in her direction. One evening, as I sat reading, she hissed at something behind me. When I turned I saw James crouching, his fingers twitching like claws. “She’s too smug” he muttered, lunging forward. And another time, I found her limping with her left paw swollen. James was leaning in the doorway, shrugging his shoulders. “She shouldn’t climb where she doesn’t belong” James's torment of Princess Isabella grew more insidious alongside his torment of my family. The worst example of his actions was when I came home one day to find her fur singed on one side and her trembling in a corner. James was leaning against the wall with a matchbook in his hand. “Cats are supposed to like warmth, don’t they?” he said, tossing it in the air and catching it again. She refused to eat from her bowl after that, as if she feared he had tampered with it. She grew skittish, bolting at the slightest sound and she stopped jumping around or talking about her kingdom. At night, she refused to sleep in her usual spots, opting instead for the tight space under my bed or the high shelf in the pantry. And of course she avoided James completely, moving like a ghost through the house, silent and wary until she disappeared along with him. I was really hoping she had gone back to her kingdom but deep down I knew James was to blame for her disappearance. It remained of course just a guess for almost eight years, up until the whole secret Santa affair. The first weird thing was that I got two presents instead of one. My classmates started looking at me sideways, whispering and laughing amongst themselves and for a moment I worried that they were pranking me. Mrs Jones made a comment about how we weren’t supposed to give ourselves gifts&nbsp;at which point the whispers around me became louder. The first gift was a book about vampires. I suspect from Emily who is going through her Twilight phase. I put it in my backpack thanking my secret Santa No 1 and started unwrapping my second gift. Under the reindeer wrapping, a cardboard box. Light enough to be considered empty. The whispering stopped for a while, my classmates looking at me, still smiling. And that’s how their faces remained, frozen, when I opened the box to find a bloody white tail of a cat inside. Touching her mouth, Mrs. Jones ordered everyone but me outside and then she had me sit in a corner while she made some phone calls. After half an hour or so, my mother and Principal Jackson entered the room and started questioning me about the tail. I didn’t know what to tell them, honestly, so I started telling them the truth. About Princess, James and everything that was happening when I was little. My mother was yelling saying “One crazy person in the family is more than enough” but I am not like dad. I am not crazy! I was trying to tell her but the more I tried the less she believed me. Principal Jackson stepped in then and tried to calm her down. He offered to take us home. I’m sitting at my desk now. Waiting. Dr. Phillip will be arriving soon. I guess this means I’ll be going to the hospital too, since that’s where dad goes every time the doctor comes around. Oh, well. At least I’ll get to see my dad. I haven’t seen him in months!&nbsp;

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Princess Isabella of the Seven Kingdoms

SophieC

Sofia Ch

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Princess Isabella of the Seven Kingdoms

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