Honestly, one of the most repetitive things I have to deal with every morning was my mum's gleeful voice calling up to me so I could wake up and head to school and not be late. Now, I worded it in a way that I resented my mother but the truth is, I'm always relaxed and in a safe place when I hear my mum's voice. Something about the sweetness of her godly voice always gets me relaxing in the mornings where most teenagers would react negatively because they have to go to school, something every single kind of teenager hates. While I was playing on my gaming computer, being competitive on an RPG-based game with multiplayer, staying awake all night. It happened.

"Aaron! Breakfast is ready!" Mum called out from the bottom of the stairs, upon reaction, I scurried my eye over to the tiny gap of my door revealing a string of the hallway outside my room, pulling me out of my addictive habit; that was being too close to the screen as I ferociously lick my lips because I was being too serious. The piercing light blinded me at first but I grew on it and turned off my computer by the natural way, not by switching off the plug way, and stood outside my room to begin walking down the stairs of framed pictures descending the wall of family memories. Nobody was at the bottom to greet me, so I exhaustively made my way over to the kitchen to be greeted by a laid-back slick father, crossing his leg over his other leg, reading a newspaper in a black and white polished suit as his black oiled up hair that had a struggle to not keep on receiving due to loss of hair. My mum, on the other hand, was about to place down my buttered ham sandwich on the dining table. She was wearing a pink flowery apron with a pink cotton textured t-shirt and blue jeans with black slippers. When I stepped inside the kitchen, I was acknowledged by a nod by my father and a wide smile by my mum.

"I'm surprised you're going on this camp trip. You'd always deny any opportunity to explore with your class," Dad snorted. And in that statement, I will reveal where I plan on going today; normally, I would never explore with my class even if it involved earning money by helping out elderlies. Not today though, today is the day that I have a likelihood of finding my missing sister and the clues of where she went missing, in the Kielder Forest. A forest that I and my sister named Althea grew up with and enjoyed every last moment of it. It's the only reason why I'm going on this multi-school camp trip in the first place. After eating my sandwich, I placed my shoes on my feet in the hallway and opened the door to look upon the horizon of my circle neighbourhood that walled around an enormous tree right in the middle of the neighbourhood - the way I get to college was by the bus and it was just down the street, but getting on the bus is a struggle because it is always cramped with old people that are slow on their feet, so I am mostly late to school and I still haven't told that to my parents who all had black hair while mine was an ugly brown.

The school I go to at least takes me a whole hour just to arrive, then two hours back home from the traffic jams that always happen where I live. It didn't matter to me though as I always wanted to explore my little country to its lowest and its highest; my college had a few one hundred students inside and was considered a small community due to many schools having around nine hundred students at best. I don't have that many friends and a lot of the students in my class avoid me for the reason that I am a muted student. By choice, I chose this path when my sister disappeared. She was the only light I only saw, not to worry, only one student stayed by my side and he was a chubby man named George Summer, had short black hair and was of average height - he was the only one who was stubborn enough to converse with me for a month and didn't leave my side even though I suppressed my voice and had troubles communicating with him.

George's personality was a one-hit topic, you either like him or hate him, I liked him and want to remain as his best friend. The thing is when I told him why I rarely spoke and mentioned my sister, he promised me that he'll locate my sister and hear my voice once for all, and end this dragged mystery that I kept locked away. My parents weren't the best with it for the few months when I became speechless, they tried therapy but that ended real early from me not speaking at all. They got used to it and respected my boundaries a year in. George was rather smart and that caused most of his friendships to be masks that only used him for 100% score sheets, I was of the rarest where I didn't use him for his brain.

Sitting on a bus packed with teenagers that are in their last stages of puberty, searching for any kinds of sex partners, I focused my attention on the roads, following the dashes of white clay lines absorbing into one as the camping bus sped up its velocity. The engine hummed peacefully and showed no signs of rustiness that would have made the engine sound like it was having a difficult cough due to a cold. While being comprehended with my choppy thoughts, I was startled when I felt a shrug down my back as an unnatural force of heaviness pressed down on me and fused me to the window, making me feel the vibration and feel my face get squashed. A deep panting met the silence as I struggled to get this feeling off me and struggled to turn myself around which made me panic.

"Can...you not sit right at the back...please?" George puffed, wheezing into exhaustion as I felt him drift around to sit perfectly in the middle.

Feeling the sense of trouble and lack of oxygen being lifted off my chest, I turned around to get a good glance at George, he was wearing a white V-neck shirt and black joggers instead of school clothes. The V-neck grew out sweat stains around George's neck and extended its gloaming stains down George's back and shoulders. I sighed first before I started forming words out of my hands, "It's more peaceful than at the bottom." George rolled his eyes and snipped his widened eyes of disbelief to exchange a glare.

"Peaceful? How is that peaceful?" George shoved his arms wide and pointed at the chaos in front of us both, "You're nowhere near quietness, you are right at the doorstep of disarray," George uttered.

"At least they sound more muffled when you focus more on the outside than the outside,"

"My insides are my outside, you cunt."

His response had me laughing for a long time, it felt like an hour but only three minutes passed. My laughs should have a sound to them but I lost that capability to laugh loudly a long time ago. George carried on making me laugh until I felt my eyelids yank my eyes shut and pass out on the windows from the broken pressure of destroyed sleeping patterns; I didn't remember that much afterwards but just before I could get a good nap, George nudged me and woke me up from my nap. The surroundings of where I was didn't appear familiar but felt familiar. I was looking around, seeing a blurry vision of George mouthing something I couldn't quite hear from the ringing noises that played a long thin line of misery through and out of my eardrums. Eventually, I got well adjusted to the scenario and figured out I was on the road leading into The Kielder Forest.

Not long before finding out where I was, George wasted no time and dragged me out of the bus, activating the muscles in my leg and shocking me wide awake. I stumbled out of the bus, catching my balance by leaning on George and found hundreds of students from other schools standing in a line, listening to their teacher's rant about safety. Nostalgia hit me hard when I looked up and saw trees spreading out their leaves, roofing the pathway that was full of people, birds tweeted and ruffled their wings before clambering into the clay blue sky.

I wish I could say I was grateful to come back, but no, I felt something else. Something very eerie, maybe it was paranoia, but I felt like someone, some beast, some entity, was watching me from inside the forest. My stomach twisted and twirled every step I took to close in on the planned campsite area.

It felt too eerie and for some reason, I was the only one feeling this way...