CHATPER 1:
One night, I was sleeping in my bedroom with my two brothers, rather uncomfortably, when I slowly woke up to the sound of whispering in my house’s living room. My parents and brothers were the only people in the house besides me, and they were asleep, which really freaked me out. I thought that I might be hearing things, but as I listened more carefully I was sure I could almost make out words. After a while of lying in bed, I finally built up the nerve to get up and see what was going on. I walked towards my door, opened it and slowly walked down the hallway, took a left and glanced into our living room.
I heard about fifteen seconds worth of stuff, like my name a few times, something about a few other people, and that was it. I also thought I saw silhouettes for a second, but then they seemed to fade into mist.
I glanced at my watch. It seemed to have dramatically slowed for the time that I was listening in on the mysterious people, or whatever they were. It was probably just my imagination, but still, creepy.
At this point I was extremely unnerved and dashed back into my room, jumped on my bed and pulled the covers over myself. I didn’t sleep a nanosecond that night. All I could think about was my visitation by what seemed to be ghosts. A flurry of questions stormed my mind, such as:
“Why did they come here?”
“What were they talking about?” and several other questions of the sort.
I lay awake in my bed until morning, which was a Saturday in the middle of June.
My brothers and I got ready for the day. After they were done eating breakfast, I was considering telling my brothers about last night, but they would probably just laugh at me. I decided to use my laptop to check the news, as I wasn’t sure what else to do. I scrolled through a page of stories, another, and another, until finally I saw an advertisement.
“Half price discount on trips to France. Two week trips!”
I checked it out. It seemed legit. My parents had been wanting to go on vacation for a while now, so I figured I should tell them about it.
“Oh, this is great! We were planning on going to France, and this is great honey! We’ll save so much money,” said my mom.
My dad was excited too, he was smiling and laughing.
“Hey kids, we’re going to France,” said my dad, who hurried to my brothers.
They were in the living room playing some fantasy game on the Wii.
“Really? When?” asked my oldest brother, Blake.
“Two days from now. You better get packing!”
Everyone went upstairs to their rooms and started to pack, all of us excited.
“Clothes, check. Cell phone, check..” Everybody in my family said something like that. Everyone in my family loved to think out loud (myself included, admittedly).
After we finished packing, my brothers and I came back to the living room, booted up the Wii up and started to played video games with my brothers for an hour or two.
I got bored of the game and went to read this new book I had recently checked out from the library. It was about a man who discovered he could control time completely. He could stop time for some and speed it up for others at the exact same time. He had such control over time that he could speed it up to the end of the earth, or go back to the very beginning of the universe in the blink of an eye. I thought it was very interesting, since I always had been fascinated with time, occasionally having some strange experiences with it. Like one day, it was a Saturday, and I was sleeping in. I woke up, glanced at my clock and decided to sleep in for a few more minutes. I ended up falling asleep again. The next time I woke up, it was still the exact same time.
Another time I was playing soccer at our school, and everyone took a break. We got some water, and I noticed that the water dispenser was running incredibly slowly. It wasn’t just the water dispenser, it seemed like the water was moving extremely slowly, as if it was moving through peanut butter. It seemed to splash into my cup a drop at a time. Moments later, time went back to normal again. I also had one especially strange one just a few months ago.
I was inside our school hallway, walking down to math class with some of my friends. As we were walking, everybody completely stopped in mid-walk. Everything went completely quiet. I waved my hand in front of them, but no response. I waited for a few more seconds, and they finally started walking normally again.
“What was that?” I asked them.
“What was what?” they replied.
“You just froze.”
They looked at me like I was a weirdo, and kept on walking.
I’ve had several experiences like that over my life time, all of them scaring me. I have no idea why they happen, or how, but I’ve always wanted to know.
I kept reading for a little more, until finally I heard that my parents said we were going to the mall in about ten minutes to pick up some stuff we might need in France.
My brothers and I got ready and we went into the car and drove off. I brought along my book to read, finding it more and more interesting as we drove. My brother Blake was reading something sorta similar, called the “The discovery of the Amorphous”. He seemed to be on the third book in the series.
Blake had recommended the series to me several times; I planned to read it as soon as I was done with my series.
We drove for some more time and finally arrived at the mall. We got out of the car and walked in.
This mall is huge. Seriously, it’s about the size of two Wal-Marts combined. It has several hundred stores. If you could think of a store, chances are, this mall would have it.
“Alright kids, we’re going to go to a few stores to buy some stuff for France, as you know. You can go exploring the mall, just meet us back here when you’re done at about five-thirty. That should give you about two hours.” said my mom, smiling.
We thanked her, and walked around. We found this giant book store with a Gamestop right next to it. Two of my brothers went into Gamestop and browsed the aisles for a new video game. Blake and I walked into the bookstore. It was about the size of a small library, and nobody except us and a cashier were inside. How on earth had I not noticed this before? Why weren’t there more people in this amazing bookstore?
The cashier greeted us and asked if we wanted anything in particular. I asked about the next book in my series.
“Wonderful! We have a special discount price on that. It’s only going to be three dollars!”
“Perfect!” I replied.
I couldn’t believe it was so cheap, I mean, these books were about five hundred pages. She led us to the back of the store and pulled out the book. It was in perfect condition. It looked as if it had just come out of the factory a few hours ago.
“Excuse me, but do you have the next book in “The discovery of the Amorphous” series?”
“Yes we do! It’s got a special discount price also. Two dollars and fifty cents.” replied the cashier.
“Great! I’ll take it,” said Blake.
We walked back to the cashier’s counter and I bought the book. Blake bought his too. We browsed around the bookstore for a little while, until I glanced at my watch.
It said five-forty on the nose. How did time fly so fast? It seemed like we had just arrived here about twenty minutes ago! Sometimes my perception of time can be messed up, but two whole hours? Now that is really weird. I mean, all of my previous experiences with time had slowed it down. Why would this one speed it up?
My questions aside, we got to the place where we were supposed to meet my parents. They were there, waiting with my two other brothers.
“Sorry we’re late,” I said.
“Where were you?” asked my mom.
“We were in the bookstore. We got wrapped up in it so much we weren’t paying attention to the time. Sorry.”
“It’s okay, just pay better attention next time.”
We walked out of the mall, hopped in our car and drove back home.
