Author's note: Boy, can you believe it took me this long to do a first-person perspective?

An Exercise in Style

First Person

It was 2 a.m.; my best friend Sean and I had just finished watching Dawn of the Dead in my living room. We had all the lights off, so it was really dark. We also had a bunch of Mountain Dew and Skittles, so we were jittery and we definitely weren't going to sleep.

"Sweet movie!" Sean said.

"Yeah, but it wasn't all that scary," I laughed, finishing off, like, my sixth Mountain Dew of the night.

"Right, you're probably totally scared, you just don't want to show it," Sean said back to me.

"Come on, that movie might have scared a first grader, but we're sixth graders, dude! No movie can scare us," I said right back, even though it wasn't really true. I was sort of scared, but don't tell!

"You got that right, dude. Hey, I gotta go use the john," Sean said and started to stand up.

All of a sudden, we heard huge thump on the floor of the hallway. We each froze, wondering what the sound could be. Another huge thump happened, this one coming closer to the living room.

"Oh my God, did you hear that?" Sean squeaked, collapsing into a ball on the ground.

"Shh! It'll hear you!" I warned him through a whisper.

"Why didn't you ever tell me your house was haunted?" Sean whispered back to me, like I was supposed to know.

Then, a soft crunching sound came from the top of the leather sofa across the room and we each gasped, because it was so sudden.

"Rob, turn on the lamp, maybe it's afraid of light!" Sean begged me.

"Shut up!" I told him, because I didn't want him to know how freaked out I was.

Then I heard a "Meow" from across the room. With a sigh of relief I stood up and walked over to the lamp. I turned it on, and we could see my cat Sammy sitting on top of the sofa.

"Dude, it was only your cat!" Sean laughed.