Surprisingly, it was shaping up to be the best week of your life. Immediately after you’d completed the task of lugging Friday’s gift back from the hotel to your home (seven trips, with two suitcases), you’d curled up on the sofa and set about penning your resignation email with some gusto. After five drafts with an increasingly pithy and resentful tone and about an hour basking in the glow of your screen, you deleted everything you’d written and settled on:
“Apologies for the short notice, but due to dire family circumstances I must resign effective immediately. Reviewing my latest signed contract, I am not obliged to give a notice period, though I would have preferred to do so. Best of luck in the future.”
Emotive and vague, perfect. You wanted a shot at going back if all of the money vanished as soon as sunlight touched it, or something. As soon as you hit send, you felt a grin spread across your face. Yes, so much as thinking about the dark creature haunting your nights filled you with cold terror, you’d been mildly drowned, and your shirt was wet from blood oozing out of the wounds it had left on your chest, but you were a pragmatist at heart and had just been given, by a rough count, enough cash to never have to work again. Living in comfort and ease for the sake of a few hours hysterical terror every week was probably the best paid part time job going, and you found it impossible not to be pleased as you envisioned a lifetime of not having to do much of anything except make sure you were in the house on Fridays unfold before you.
You did wish the bleeding would stop, though.
Over the course of your life, you’d spent a lot of time daydreaming about what you’d do with limitless wealth and had come up with some pretty grand schemes, but in reality you just found yourself buying slightly bigger candles for the bathroom and top-shelf cook at home pre-made lasagnes rather than middle-shelf cook at home pre-made lasagnes. You bought a fancy bagged magazine without checking the price. Truly, this was how the other half lived.
Over the next several days, whilst you were either languishing in front of the tv or changing the dressing on your still oozing chest with the trusty aid of your industrial size box of gauze, you kept an eye on the news for anything about money going missing from a vault or millionaires showing up drowned, but nothing appeared. You weren’t sure if you were relieved or not.
As Friday drew nearer, you started to feel the calm relief and acceptance which had pervaded your week so far ebb away and be replaced by a slow unease at the thought of another visit. By Wednesday, it could be called dread. On Thursday night, you were standing at the sink washing the plates from your day of stress eating, bare feet uncomfortably cold on the tile floor and dressing gown sleeves getting soggy from splash back, when you noticed with a strange detachment that you were silently crying. The memories of its cold white eyes staring indifferently down to you whilst you struggled against its strength to try to breathe were fresh in your minds eye. Remembering its whole face splitting in half was enough to make your breath catch, preventing you from getting a lung full of air. You did your utmost to suppress the panic rising in your belly, the feeling that the walls were closing in on you, that you were a sheep who had been convinced to stay put for the wolf’s convenience.
You had been rinsing the same plate for at least 10 minutes, lost down a rabbit hole of panic when the cool tile floor of the kitchen shifted and.. stroked you, gently caressing the arch of your right foot. You yelped and immediately withdrew from the touch as though burned, standing one one leg as you stared down at the floor with wide accusing eyes, but there was nothing there to see. You frantically checked the clock on the wall: still only 10pm. Was it.. checking in on you? Making sure you were home? With a trembling hand, you turned off the tap and then all but flew out of the kitchen with your feet barely touching the floor. You dove onto the sofa and wrapped yourself tightly in a blanket, making sure that every inch of your skin except your face were protected by a layer of wool and stared fixedly at the only doorway into the sitting room, dread settled heavily in your heart.
Hours passed in silence.
You’d decided against going to bed after the horror that was Friday’s last bedtime visit, but there was only so long you could be on red alert. You were scrolling tiredly through AskReddit when it happened: you heard the eerie creek of a heavy foot on the wooden floor of the dining room, just metres from where you were sitting. You gasped and dropped your phone to wrap your blanket more tightly around your shoulders, watching the open doorway separating the sitting and dining rooms with wide eyes, terror and dread twisting in your stomach. For a few seconds, you heard nothing but your own heartbeat thumping loudly in your ears.
Then, the sound of glass hitting the floor, making you flinch. You were trembling with fear as you cuddled the blanket against yourself and listened intently to the sound of something made of glass slowly rolling along the wooden floor towards the sitting room. You were hyperventilating. The noise went on and on.. gradually getting closer. Hot terrified tears were brimming in your eyes when it rounded the corner, and your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. It was… a bottle? It continued its slow roll across the floor towards your perch on the sofa, and you watched it come. It was the same brand of beer you usually bought, but the bottle was open, caked in mud, and was sploshing remnants of murky brown water out onto the floor as it traversed the room. It looked like it had been taken from the bottom of a river. It rolled to a halt in front of you and you stared at it with a mixture of fear and perplexment.
“GIFT.”
The familiar voice echoed inside your mind and you flinched, then yelped as you looked up from the bottle and saw that you were no longer alone in the room. Friday stood before you, staring at you with its blank white eyes. Seeing it at a slight distance with the lights on, you had a moment to take it in through your haze of surprise and horror. Its four arms were longer than they should be, the lower set ending in claws and the top set in what seemed to be long, thin fingers. Its light absorption meant it was still almost impossible to make out details, but you could tell that its mane and horns were a different texture to its flat nearly featureless face.
“Thank you.” You replied as close to earnestly as you could, hurrying to pick up the bottle from the floor and absorb it into your blanket, holding the cold glass against your stomach. You did your best to smile at the creature. “It’s.. very thoughtful of you to remember what kind of bottle I like.”
It stared at you in silence, bright lidless eyes fixed on your face. It was completely motionless. Hot fear was bubbling in your stomach as you watched it watch you, and after a few moments you tried again, smiling fixedly.
“Thanks, ghost.”
Friday split its face in a grin and upon seeing its sharp teeth you swallowed nervously, which was a considerable improvement on the first time you saw them. The hand holding the bottle against your stomach started to feel warm and damp as the blood oozing from your chest finally permeated its dressing. The creature was still completely motionless, flat face split completely in half by its bright white teeth.
“Um..” You began, looking anywhere but its faintly glowing white eyes. You knew you had to do something about the wound sooner rather than later, and you really didn’t fancy a doctor’s chances at being able to fix it. But it was still… difficult. “…I have a question.”
It was staring at you, motionless, silent. Fixed grin still splitting its face.
“Um.. my chest .. is still bleeding. Where you touched me.”
You searched its face for any reaction, but found nothing. Somehow its complete stillness made the creature even more unnerving.
“How do I stop the bleeding?”
Friday straightened up at once and announced with something you could only parse as glee. “KISS.”
You felt the blood drain out of your face and you were half way through a petrified “What?” when it plunged a hand under your blanket to grab your ankle and easily dragged you off the sofa with one motion, banging first your hip then the back of your head heavily on the wooden floor and making you cry out in surprise and pain. You heard your bottle clonk to the floor. Before you had time to understand what was happening, you were laying on your back on the cold floor with Friday’s face inches from yours. The cackle you heard inside your mind was shrill and piercing and then it repeated. “KISS. KISS.” You let out a petrified squeal and pushed against its chest but it scooped your wrists together and held them out of the way with one clawed hand, its face completely unchanged. You heard your shirt rip and tears of fear started to fall quickly from your face. Then it split its face again and you saw its tongue: white and long and pointed at the end. It easily ripped the wet partially stuck gauze from your chest, revealing a raw bloody wounds beneath: seven puncture wounds in the shape of its claws slowly oozing fresh blood. Friday’s mane bristled.. it seemed excited.
You were so terrified that you couldn’t form coherent thoughts, you just watched it as it lapped up the blood on your chest and poked the tip of its long pointed tongue into each puncture wound in turn, streaks of red against the long white appendage. As you watched it clean your chest, your inner thighs started to feel hot. You writhed against the creature more as a show of displeasure than an honest attempt at escape. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the tongue vanished into Friday’s flat dark face and it grinned down at you. “BETTER NOW.”
Taking quick shallow breaths, you glanced down to your chest, where your torn skin had knitted back together leaving ugly red gouges and cold streaks of saliva where the open wounds had been. Then you looked back to Friday’s bright lidless eyes, staring inscrutably down at you. “Better now.” You agreed. “Thank you.”
It was still holding your wrists and ankle fast. You really wished it blinked. “You .. can let me go now.”
“CAN.” It agreed, but didn’t move.
Its mane was still bristled in excitement, and as you looked up at its bright eyes, something started to overtake your terror…. annoyance. You scowled. “Friday, you let go of me right this second, you’re scaring me.” You were surprised by the steel in your own voice. With your only free limb, you kicked it in the approximation of its belly, and it laughed. Cold and high, it laughed inside your mind and a new panic gripped you. But then, to your surprise, it released its grip on your wrists and ankle. You laid there beneath it, panting and covered in a cold sweat, frozen.
“YOU NAMED FRIDAY.” It stated with something like triumph, then tilted its head almost imperceptibly to one side. “WHAT SHOULD FRIDAY DO NOW?”
“..Go away?” You ventured with a faint glimmer of hope that this nightmare might be over at last. It laughed, wrapping two arms around your waist and rubbing its flat face into your exposed stomach, its mane tickling you as its pointed horns swayed dangerously close to your face.
“NO.”