Dear Diary,

I am completely and utterly in shock as I write this. Today was our fifth move to a new house. I woke up this morning and everything seemed to have a gray hue, almost as if my mood was bouncing off of everything in view. My room was empty of all my possession. They were boxed and loaded into the moving truck yesterday. I felt incomplete. I wanted to look up to the ceiling and see all the posters that once populated that empty space, but, unfortunately, they weren’t there. I slipped out of my bed just as my mother knocked on the door and announced that I had a half an hour until we were to leave. Thirty minutes to say good-bye to a house that was way more than just a house to me. It was probably the only house I would really call home. I groaned and changed into clean clothes.

Down in the kitchen, my morbidly obese father was making some sort of super omelet that could give even the healthiest person a heart attack. Absolutely disgusting if you ask me. I opted for an apple after he offered to kill me with cholesterol. We all loaded into our outdated red Caravan for the worst car ride of my life. At first, it wasn’t that bad. We rolled through my neighborhood (or should I say old neighborhood) and it was as pretty as ever, with all the blooming plants that boarded the streets. Spring is probably the prettiest season in my opinion. It was about noon when we stopped for a short picnic in a forest preserve. My whale of a father had left over fried chicken from last night, my mother had a salad, and I refused to eat, being way to upset about the move. I lay in the sun, soaking it in and looking at all the brightly colored plants. After all the food was gone, thanks to dear old Dad, we piled back into the van.

Ten minutes after we started on the road again, the sky turned completely gray. I would have dismissed it if it was from storm clouds, but there were no clouds in sight. The once blue sky faded to gray. It seemed like every mile closer to our new house we got, the less color there was. It was silly thinking at the time so I turned my attention elsewhere. More miles went by and eventually we came upon a sign of a small town called Désespérée. I was beginning to realize that it wasn’t going to be a normal town like my old one. The sign had deep gashes across it which made me think; what made those gashes? My parents were oblivious as usual. Our van rolled into what seemed like another dimension. There was no color at all. Everything was shades of gray, and to make it even creepier, the town appeared vacant. We drove through the heart of town and I didn’t spot one single person. All the store fronts had ‘closed’ signs in their doors.

I was mindlessly staring at a florist shop when I heard a thud on the roof. Automatically I looked up at the inside roof of the car. There were three more thuds. I leaned forward and a bird hit the windshield. My parents didn’t blink or flinch. They almost looked brain-dead. The bird slowly slid to the bottom and instead of there being a blood streak, there was a gray streak. The bird was bleeding gray.

I leaned back in my seat and tried not to look at the bird. There were three more thuds so I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to think why or how the birds were just dropping from the sky. I opened my eyes after the thudding stopped. Without a moment’s hesitation, I grabbed my diary, slid the door open, and jumped out. Just in time too, because the van (now gray) containing my parents drove right off a cliff. Actually, I’m not even sure if you could call it a cliff. To me, it looked like some monstrous being took a bite right out of the road. It’s like the road just ends and beyond it is nothing but gray. I walked up to the edge and looked down. I could see the back of the van disappear into nothingness. Only then did I feel sympathy for my parents. I left the edge and walked into town. Some of the storefront windows were bashed and deep scratches lined the buildings. They definitely weren’t there when we drove by less than a minute ago. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a movement in the town’s bakery. I yelled and ran into the building trying to pursue whatever I saw. Tables and chairs were spewed all over with scratches all over them. The menu over the counter was scratched out with the phrase, “There’s No Returning.”

I dismissed it and proceeded behind the counter to try and open the door there. I thought that maybe whatever I saw went in there. No such luck. The door was locked. I left the bakery with a feeling like someone, or something, was watching me. Once outside, I noticed that the road was scratched up with big hunks of pavement pulled out and chucked at storefront windows. I was completely baffled. I didn’t hear a thing when I was in the bakery, yet there was hidden chaos happening.

“I have to get out of here,” I said to myself. All of a sudden, there was hysterical laughter coming from my right. When I looked, panicked, it stopped then came from my left. I ran over to the other side of town, trying to get away from the insane laughing. Just when I thought I was going to get out, there was another drop off, preventing me from getting away from that awful town. I was trapped like an animal, so I sat down with my feet dangling off the edge and took out my diary.

And, well, here I am, writing in my diary, sitting on the edge of town. I don’t know how I’m going to get out of here and I really don’t want to stay long enough to find out where the laughing it coming from or who messed up the whole town. The laughing is starting again. I know its coming for me because I keeping getting this feeling like someone is watc