The next morning, Linda awoke to the commotion of all her sisters scrambling to get ready for the day that lay ahead of them, as always. 'hey, at least it's Saturday now, and that means I can relax a little!' Linda reassured herself. Or so she thought…..
She lazily padded downstairs towards the bathroom, as she was in desperate need to relieve herself. As soon as she got there, she bumped into the 'scientist' of the sisters, Miss Mecca. She was already dressed in her smart navy blue blouse and burgundy skirt, which she wore under a long, flowing lab coat that drooped down to her ankles. She also had neatly-combed red hair with a green headband, and had glasses with yellow lenses that hung around her neck on a chain.
'back of the line, Linda. It's the rules.' She ordered sternly. 'but pleaaase can you let me off just this once? I'm desperate!' Protested Linda as she started kneeling down, as if to form a 'dam' between her bladder and area between her legs. 'she's right, you know!' Called out Fay Soff, who was busy applying some boysenberry-flavoured face cream while admiring herself in the sink's mirror. Fay was a kind of person to only buy cosmetics that had nice, fruity flavours and didn't contain any additional ingredients that might harm her skin.
She stepped out of the bathroom, wearing nothing but an oversized, baggy t shirt with a graphic of one of her favourite indie rock bands on it over a pair of black cycling shorts. 'also, I'm warning you, Lindy, please don't use the bathroom in me and Anne's room as that is MY territory and you will have to face serious consequences if you dare enter it!'. At this point, Linda couldn't hold in her urine anymore, so she pushed past her sisters-in-waiting, knocking them out like bowling pins as she went, and slammed the bathroom door behind her.
Later on, after she had washed and dressed herself, she sat at the kitchen table and ate her breakfast waffles. She could see her 1 year older sister, Samantha (who was somehow less mature then her), watching Blue's Clues in the living room and getting very involved in it. She had her large, plastic toy fish with the movable jaw and extremely long tail beside her, and was following on to every fourth wall break as if the characters were really addressing her.
Once Linda had eaten her waffles and drunken her apple juice, Spirit tapped her on the shoulder and simply said 'Linda, shopping. Now.' while holding up a lengthy list of all the beauty products she had to get for each and every sister.
Spirit was the eldest of the sisters, and she constantly believed and acted like she was in charge. She looked and dressed like a ghost, with pale, almost white skin and an old-fashioned blue, purple and pink ball gown complete with red velvet gloves and a veil that covered most of her face. As of now, she was reprimanding Cinder for attempting to burn Mirage's recently-completed model of The Valley Of The Kings.
Linda reluctantly took the shopping list and made her way towards the front door. As she reached for the key to unlock it, she said to herself 'I really wish a miracle would happen. I wish my sisters would face the consequences of being vain and start treating me right again!'. Little did she know, her wish was about to come true…
It was a 40 minutes' bus drive to Somerset Collection, which was the mall where Linda had to buy all her sisters' cosmetics. The arbitrary shopping trip have her some time to herself that she needed very much, so she tried to enjoy what time she had there greatly, before heading home just before lunch.
After arriving at the bus stop closest to her house, Linda heaved the many shopping bags she had to carry that made her look like a packhorse. They may have been heavy, but she didn't mind as she was looking forward to relaxing for the rest of the day. That was when she noticed a large truck driving along the road beside her at an alarming speed. It then roared past her, knocking the luggage out of her hands. As Linda recovered herself and stood up, she could just about see a strange logo of a grinning creature with a heart tied to its side as the truck made a beeline towards 474 Swan Place…..which was HER HOUSE!
Meanwhile, all the 12 sisters were becoming a bit fed up of waiting, and their patience was thinning.
'when's Linda coming back?' Asked cyan, who was unusually short due to her proportionate dwarfism and had one side of her hair dyed electric blue, cheap pink plastic ovular earrings, and a shirt with a square pattern on it that exposed her pierced navel. 'how should I know, Linda usually goes and mucks about on her own, remember?' Replied Jelly-Chan, who was as wide as a double bed (mostly because of her weight, gained from her insatiable appetite) and wore a matching bright green skirt and cardigan, over a black shirt with white text in all caps that read 'FOOD IS ALWAYS THE ANSWER, BUT WHAT WAS THE QUESTION?'. Cyan stood in front of the window and proclaimed 'that was a rhetorical question' to which Jelly answered 'that's not how you use rhetorical questions, Cy','. The small argument caused Fay Soff to look up from her kandi-making session and groan with irritation 'ugh, it sure would be great if you could stop arguing about your shopping being late…I mean, don't we all have better things to do right now?'
Fay promptly abandoned her unfinished kandi bracelet and shuffled over to Jelly-Chan's side of the sofa. She wore a very striking outfit that made it so you could spot her from a million miles away- a purple and yellow hoodie with orange and green striped sleeves that was 2 sizes too big for her, a t shirt of a similar colour scheme that had an image of a cute-looking magenta cartoon bear on it, dark pink fishnets worn under ripped denim shorts and to top it all off, she had 5 gold heart-shaped piercings on each of her ears, light, white-ish hair with a washed out teal dye over it, and the most beautifully made up face you ever did see. She patted Jelly on the back and said 'but it doesn't matter, Linda should be about a minute away by now…' she was clearly one of the nicer sisters as well, and was always kind and caring to Linda in secret as she didn't want to suddenly get ostracised by the other sisters.
Just then, the truck that had passed Linda earlier pulled up outside the Rosaries' house, and an odd-looking delivery man, carrying a hefty box with the exact same logo of that strange creature on it, went up to ring the doorbell. Spirit was the one to open the door, and as the delivery man stood just shy of the doorframe, everyone was able to get a closer look at him. He had big, bulging eyes with equally big, black pupils, a long pointy nose, and a foreboding smile with unusually sharp teeth. 'I jusssst need you to ssssign thissss form, misssssussss…' his voice sounded like that of a fairy tale witch's, and his S's were elongated like a snake's hiss. Spirit, being quite intimidated by his appearance, hesitated for a bit before she felt herself being forced to sign the form. 'pleasssssure doing busssssinesssss with you, SSSSSISSSSTERSSSSS, nyahahahah haaaa!' That was the last thing the mysterious delivery man said before he rushed back to his truck and drove off into the horizon, never to be seen again.
Needless to say, the 12 sisters were left shocked, intrigued, and puzzled by the arrival of this package. Samantha, the 2nd youngest sister who had strawberry blonde hair and wore a pair of beige overalls over a pink and blue striped shirt, came out from a huge, leafy, potted plant that had been her hiding place and said with a worried tone in her voice 'that man scared Samantha so much! Samantha thinks she won't be able to sleep tonight!'
The sisters gathered round the parcel, all collectively wondering what could possibly be inside. 'ooh, maybe it's a deluxe boxset of Yankee Candles!' suggested Cinder (not nicknamed because she was related to or resembled Cinderella in some way or another), the explosive one of the family who had her trusty matchbox with her, as if to light a match from it and burn down the whole household 'because if it is, I'll be able to put them up all over the house, then light them all one by one, and sit back and watch as they all eventually burn out in complete and utter chaos! It'll smell lovely too!'.
Then Anne Droid V2.1 chimed in with 'perhaps it's a state-of-the-art, high resolution telescope! I've always wanted one of those!'. Despite being expectant, she still sounded quite monotonous and her facial expression still looked quite unmoving.
And then Demonica and Mirage came over to inspect the parcel more closely. 'I think it might be some long-forgotten macguffin from the ruins of Egypt that'll probably leave us all with a curse!' That was Mirage who was speaking. She was the quite stocky one who had lustrous, dark brown hair and wore a t shirt with something written in hieroglyphs on it, along with a dark yellow leather jacket and black pencil skirt. Demonica, on the other hand, was rather big and muscular, wore all-black clothing as if she were in mourning, and mostly spoke in grunts unless she had something particularly important to say. She simply replied with a 'hurrh!' of agreement.
Siren proceeded to glide towards the two of them and gently nudged them aside. 'everybody, since I am the second eldest, it is with great pleasure that I shall open this honorary gift, myself.' She was Spirit's, well, spiritual successor and a thought stuck in her mind that the parcel contained something to drive her further towards becoming a star-studded opera singer.
Suddenly, everyone got into an argument about who should open the box first. 'I should see what's inside!' 'no, me!' 'can we stop fighting?' 'I'd rather send this back!' 'I could've sworn that logo winked and smiled at me!'. But before they could get into a fight, the box started to quiver and shake, and maniacal voices could be heard from inside it, persuading 'come, join us, sisters!' 'your vision of perfect beauty awaits!' 'you can have all the luxuries you've ever wanted!'. The 12 sisters were entranced. They stopped thinking about everything in the current moment and started to dream about what they were being promised. The box's sides fell apart without any physical contact to reveal a lavishly decorated door, which in turn opened slowly, with a blinding white light shining from inside.
This made the sisters traipse towards the light one by one, like mindless zombies. As they went in, they were engulfed by that radiant, void-like glow, which seemed to grow stronger once all 12 of them had been consumed by it.
That was when Linda first took notice of this peculiar event, as she could see an explosion of light erupt from her house when she was about 1 block away from it. The first thing she thought when it happened was 'oh dear, my sisters are in grave danger! I would risk my life to save them from anything!'. She immediately forgot about all the shopping she was carrying and raced up the path to her porch. As soon as she opened the door, she could see the same door that she correctly assumed her sisters had entered. Before she knew it, Linda felt a gust of wind pulling her in, until she was suddenly hanging onto the ledge that separated her between her front hall and what lay beyond. No matter how hard she tried to cling onto this ledge, it eventually ended up in her tumbling down, down, down into the seemingly endless white void below.
'A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
H
H
H
H
!'
She screamed as she fell…