A bright, high pitched alarm awoke Cara from her nap. Groaning and barely awake, she blindly felt around her nightstand for her cellphone. She shut off the alarm, and attempted to coax herself back to bed, before remembering she had class in less than an hour. She shot up, now regretting how late she'd stayed out last night. The party had been fun, but she had stayed much too late, thinking she would be plenty rested before her first class. It was a quarter past nine, and Cara's first mandatory course started at ten. Still groggy, she decided it wouldn't hurt to forgo a shower and watch an episode of Steven Universe before heading off to class
So one episode might have turned into three, or ten. It really wasn't anything Cara saw helping her with her degree, and it wasn't anything she had trouble with, so she decided to have fun. She had the weekend and all, but she spent most of that with others, or worrying about schoolwork. Cara decided that today would be just for her, and everything she enjoyed. She decided to just take a day to have a marathon of her favorite episodes. At least until Emily called to see if she was free. This is one of the few things capable of pulling Cara away from her general likes and hobbies. She's been crushing on Emily for weeks. Cara would be fine with going across the country for her, but thankfully Emily just wanted to meet up at a bar a few minutes away. Cara stopped the episode running on her computer, then went to the mirror a few feet away to check herself out. Her face was clean, eyes bright, and her hair was alright but not nearly good enough to face her crush. She decided to pause the episode she was watching, and go straight into the shower. While she was washing her hair Cara thought of what she should wear, and what reaction Emily might have to her outfits. She began humming a song from her favorite show to calm down. When she got out of the shower, she could hear music in the background. It wasn't a song she recognized, but Cara assumed the videos on her laptop had looped over to some other songs, so she hummed along to it, not knowing what would follow.
She stepped back into her less than spacious room, still humming and drying her hair with a towel. Curious to know the name of the song she turned to her laptop, which was glowing progressively brighter. Oh. That's new. After a few seconds of shock, Cara decided the laptop was just malfunctioning, and she needed a way to fix it. Her assignments were on that hard drive, and she sure as hell wasn't planning on letting it fry. Without as much as an inkling of an idea, she settled for unplugging it and holding down the power button. She knew it was bad for the machine, but it couldn't be much worse than the current situation. She pressed down on the power button for ten full seconds without any results. The screen wasn't getting any darker, the damn song was still playing. She was just about to grab her phone to google the phenomena, when a hand reached out of the screen, latching onto her wrist. Cara screamed, and tugged against the protruding appendage, but it refused to let go. It was pulling her closer towards the screen. She had gone from pulling to simply trying to stand her ground, while screaming at the top of her lungs, hoping one of her neighbors was home. As her hand came closer to the now nearly blinding screen, she was still trying to stay back, to reason that she didn't need her left hand all that much. But as it touched the screen, it seemed to shutter out of existence, before changing into the same bright light as the hand gripping onto her. As if that wasn't enough of a shock, the light began to slowly spread, first snuffing out any color before, then burning. Panicked, she looked for anything withing arms reach she could use to fight off the attacker, or maybe beat her laptop to death. She still had time before finals, rewriting a project, or even a few, didn't sound so bad now. The light was spreading faster now, as if feeding off of her, stronger with every inch it took. There were only two things near enough to grab, both on her dresser. Her jewelry box, an antique too fragile to do any damage, and her cell phone. Score. Before almost using it as a blunt weapon, she realized it might be of better use calling for help. She had no idea what to report it as, but hurriedly dialed 911. She'd barely pressed the last digit when the rest of her body turned to light, and the hand yanked her forward into the screen.