It was a day, much like any other. School sucked, hard, and getting home was a drag, sharing the bus with loathsome little kids who smelled bad and laughed at her. She walked in the door, straight through the kitchen and raced for the stairs. Her luck was in as silence chased her up to her room. Mum was either sleeping, watching TV, or on the phone, and either way, she hadn’t noticed her arrival.

Bag into the corner, shoes off, onto the bed and laptop open. The power button depressed, there was the tell-tale whirr of the fan, and Scarlet leant back against her pillows, shoulders finally relaxing as the screen lit up. The day fell away as she tapped her fingers against the edge of the keyboard, waiting impatiently for the log-in screen.

User Name: ScarletRose
Password: ***********

The screen went dark, then flashed back up to windows. She cracked her knuckles, and was about to connect, when the screen went black again. A flashing white cursor appeared, and words scrolled neatly out.
……. Hi, this is your computer speaking. It may have escaped your notice, but I have more power than the entire space ship that took men to the moon. I can run cities and launch weapons of mass destruction, I can change the world. Until you can prove that you will use me for more than tumblr and the occasional piece of crap homework, you are blocked out. That is all……….
The screen went dark. She stared at it, cocked her head to one side, and stared at it some more. That was a joke, right. Some tosser had somehow hacked in. She hit the windows button a few times, swearing a little louder each time nothing happened. With a heavy sigh, she held down the power button until it switched off, and started it up again.

She logged in, smiling as windows appeared. The screen went black.
……I really wasn’t kidding. Go away, do something useful……
Ahhhh! She slammed the laptop down on the bed.

‘MUM!’
No answer. Bloody, sodding, dammit, this is so unfair, why her? They could have chosen anyone to screw with, anyone’s computer to hack, so why hers? It wasn’t funny, in any way at all. In fact, it was child cruelty, she was being tortured, punished for a crime she didn’t even know about, let alone commit.
She looked at her bookshelf. No, it just wasn’t the same, there weren’t real people there, people who would actually talk to her, or, even better, reblog stuff she posted. She shoved the laptop to the side and scrambled off the bed, giving it one final glare as she stalked from the room.
‘MUM!’

She stomped down the stairs. Why was she asleep, wasn’t like she bloody did anything. She walked into the lounge, and stopped. The sofa was empty, cushions strewn across the floor. She checked the rest of the house (didn’t take long) and came back to the lounge. She was out. What the hell was she doing being out?

There was a book on the sofa, and she scooped it up. It was leather bound, small, with no title or any writing on the outside at all. She perched on the edge of the chair and took a look inside. It was a notebook, and the scrawlings within were in mum’s handwriting.

She almost put it down, expecting shopping lists and TV times, but a word jumped out, and grabbed her. She read the entire sentence, her mind cartwheeling.

‘The coven will convene monthly, beneath the light of the full moon, and there will be ceremony to mark the occasion.‘ Next to it, she’d written in even smaller type: ‘remember cake’.

Next instalment: Wednesday 9 October.