Claire Becomes A Captive

Chapter 1

Claire Becomes a Captive

 

Applause reached my ears.  I smiled my biggest and most dazzling smile and looked out into the audience. I was at my winter chorus concert, and had just finished singing a very hard solo. Even though I didn’t really like solos I had tried out for this one. I was sure I could do it well, well enough for my teacher to approve, and well enough that I wouldn’t embarrass myself. It actually made me look good.

But right now I was pissed. It was only because of two things, and they really weren’t that big of a deal. One was that I had missed a note in my solo. I could have done it perfectly, except I had to miss that one note. No one probably noticed except for the people who knew the song. In this case, the whole rest of the chorus heard my mistake, and that pissed me off. The other reason I was angry was because I really needed to pee. I took another bow as the rest of the chorus was dismissed and we walked over to the reserved seats for the performers. I had to waddle which made me angrier. Stupid chorus concert, why do we even have these things? It’s not like the rest of the kids enjoy them, or at least I don’t.  I needed to go. Reaaally badly. I had about five minutes before the Jazz band started to perform, since they had to reassemble the whole area, and then seven minutes until I needed to go back onto stage for our grand finale. I scuttled over to one of the chaperones and asked if I could go. The chaperone said one of the stupid old people things that went along the lines of this: “I’m sure you can go to the bathroom.”  I rephrased the question, and then slinked out of the huge gymnasium.

A couple minutes later I was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror. My wavy, brownish red hair (my friends refer to it as bringer because its not ginger but its not brown either) and blue eyes with green flecks gave me a not-so-average look, but a not too abnormal look either. Freckles dotted my face like someone splattered me with brown paint, and I had a permanent rosiness to my cheeks, probably because I blush a lot. I looked at my small nose, and small lips, and then feeling smaller, I peered at my skinny arms and legs.  If I weren’t an average height people would probably mistake me for a malnourished dwarf. I smoothed my hair down (as much as wavy hair could be smoothed) and started to walk back to the gym.

Right as I was about to reenter the musical minefield I noticed a doorway. It was bluish and just looked like a normal school door, but it was in a totally unconventional place. Actually it was right were the water fountain used to be. Was that there before…? And where did the water fountain go? I wanted to get a drink. I smacked myself a couple times and closed my eyes but when I opened them, the door was still there. It’s probably a janitors closet or something. But I could have sworn the water fountain was just there. Well…let’s go check it out. I could hear the Jazz band still playing one of their catchy songs, so I wasn’t worried about missing anything just yet. The door had a weird feel to it like… it wasn’t supposed to be there. I remembered the saying “Curiosity killed the cat,” but quickly put that out of my mind. The door is probably locked. But, whoa…hey… what’s that? On the doorknob was a little insignia of some sort. It was two spirals coiled together, and when they met up in the middle there was a star.

To my surprise the door was unlocked. It creaked open like a really old door would do, which was not supposed to happen in our brand new one year old school. When the surprisingly heavy door finally opened I got quite a shock. Instead of the normal things you find in a janitors closet, like brooms, mops, and cleaning solutions, there was nothing. The door opened up to the blackest black I had ever seen. So, I did the only thing a normal teenager could do, I took out my cell phone to create a light. The cell phone didn’t do anything. “Bizaa-aare,” I whispered. Ok so I talk to myself a little, doesn’t everybody? I heard applause coming from the gymnasium. Crap I better hurry up. I mean, I really wanted to know what was in the black nothingness. So I did the only other thing a normal teenager could do. I took a step. And I fell.

            I screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed. I hoped that someone had heard all my screaming, which you know is pretty high pitched since I’m a soprano and all, but I knew it was too late. But by the time that got through my head I had another thought. Wait. Shouldn’t I be dead by now? I should be on the ground freaking dead right now. But I’m not. Before you think this is like slow motion falling and all, its not. This was free falling. Like… skydiving without a parachute. Well, at least I thought I was falling, because you know it really felt like falling except for the fact that it was pitch black and I really didn’t know if I was moving or not. Oh well. Hey, this is kinda fun. Well I should enjoy my last moments before I die right? Cause obviously I was going to die when I hit the bottom of this… pit. And so, instead of screaming because I was scared. I started to scream because I was having fun. Mostly.

I was really getting into doing twirls and flips still freefalling I might add, when I started to see a tiny light at the bottom of the… well… blackness I was in. Well, this is it. This is the end. I’m going to die… hopefully it wont hurt too much. Then, I stopped falling, and I was in the arms of an insanely hot guy. Well I thought he was a hot guy, until he turned into an old man. And I thought he was an old man, until he morphed into a middle-aged guy with a skinny mustache. This guys face is morphing, its changing, was what I thought, but what I said was,

“Umm, can you put me down? And stop doing… whatever you are doing with your face. Its… weird.” He gently set me down, and then replied with a small smile, “What am I doing with my face that is so weird?” this time his face was a baby. Creeeeepy! Then his faced changed back into the first face I saw, the hot guy. He was really good looking. He had chestnut brown hair that was as long as a guy’s hair can be for it to be normal. It brushed the tops of his eyebrows, and every so often he would do a hair flip that was totally cute. He also had startlingly green eyes.  He was really tall too, around six feet. I felt as if his face was going to change again so I half yelled, “Ok stop! Don’t change your face again. This one is fine. Just… stay like that.”  I said to the strange (but good looking) morphing guy… thing standing next to me.

I stepped back from him and looked around. The room I was in turned out to be a cave. It was cold, and moist, and smelled vaguely like dirt. There were bars surrounding us and above each bar was a symbol, a square, a circle, a triangle, you get the picture. Behind the hot guy and the bars there was a door, it looked exactly the same as the door back in my school, the one that got me into this mess. It was also really dark; the only source of illumination was a lone torch that looked like it was about to go out any minute. In the back of my mind I hoped that there were no rodents.

 You know, sometimes it takes a little while for a thought to get through my head. This time two were jostling around in the back of my mind. The first thought appeared right then. Wait a minute…  patted myself a couple times just to make sure, I’m still ALIVE!  Then I started to do a happy dance. I was cheerfully rejoicing until I remembered that I had company. Then the second came into my mind, but I said it out loud “Where am I…? And who… what are you?”

“Ouch… that hurt my feelings… obviously I’m a human being.” I gave him an incredulous look. “Ok so I’m not 100% human being, but I have some of the DNA. My name is Teo. Teodarius Sylvester Slider IV. Too flashy I know, so I shortened it to just Teo. In this land I’m called a Slider, hence the last name. In your dimension you would probably call me a…. what was it… oh yea! A shape shifter!” I stared at him, my mouth wide open, as he continued. “Right now you are in no-mans land or the chasm as we call it. It is the place between your dimension, which is the thirty-second dimension, and our dimension, the forty-fourth. In all there are about fifty different dimensions that exist on planet earth.” After his spiel, I was slightly dumbfounded so I said the first thing that came to mind, “That’s bull.” I then decided I was going to leave, and turned around…

and remembered that I was surrounded by bars.

“Crap.”

 

***

 

A half an hour later I was digging in a corner for a small gemstone. “I’m totally going to ruin my dress!” I looked down and sighed when I saw the small rips and dirt splotches on the front of my turquoise and black dress. My fingernails were ripped and torn, and my high heel shoes were discarded in a corner across the wide dark cavern. I was miserable. I stood up and looked around the cavern. At the same time Teo stood up too.

“I’ve been thinking, I’ve told you lots of information about myself and where you are, but you haven’t told me even your name. So…?” He asked.

I sighed, “My name’s Claire Ashworth. Why do I have to do this again…? What is a Lapis Lazulu anyway?”

“Its Lapis Lazuli, not Lazulu or whatever. It’s the blue gemstone that will grant your freedom. Everyone that falls into the chasm has to find it to get back home. I was told that you had to dig for it. It’s the most important gemstone in Titania.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…  most important…Titania, and all that s**t.” I spun around and threw my hands up, “WHY CAN’T I JUST GO HOME? I mean I‘m missing my entire chorus concert and my parents have probably called the police by now. Who gets lost going to the bathroom? Only losers obviously. That’s me, a loser. I’m the one person that gets lost going to the bathroom. I’m the one person that gets stuck DIGGING FOR A FREAKING LAPIS LALOOPOO WHEN I’M SUPPOSED TO BE HAVING A FUN TIME AT THE CHORUS CONCERT! Not that concerts are fun in the first place…” I stomped over to my shoes and slipped them on. I was walking towards the edge of the cell when Teo grabbed my arm.

“Sometimes I forget how loud humans can be, and dramatic. You really can’t leave without the Lazuli stone.”

“I’m leaving!” I pouted, “I don’t like caves. They make me smell like bat poo.”

“There are no bats in here,” he chuckled.

“Yeah ok whatever…” I turned around, “ and why can’t I leave without the Lazuli stone? I’m pretty skinny I can probably just fit in between the bars.”

“If you do that you’ll be electrocuted by the invisible barrier around this place.”

“Why do you even have so much defense set up? Its not like here is important.” I retorted.

“It’s the immigrant control center. I basically control the flow of beings coming in and out of our dimension and your dimension.”

“Mmm-hmm, surreee… I think you just like to watch people dying by electrocution. Or, you like to scare little girls because you’re actually a creepy old man not a hot guy�"“ I covered my mouth with my hands realizing what I had just said. I then turned a bright red, because redheads are suckers when it comes to blushing.

“Ooohhh, so you think I’m hot? Well that’s too bad because I actually am an old man,” he morphed into a really old guy with droopy skin, and a long white mustache. He looked kind of like Dumbledore. “Compared to human life spans I should be dead right now. But this is really what I look like.” He changed back into his normal face, “Sliders, no, even Titans age a lot slower than human beings. Actually people who live a really long time, like 120 years, have some Titan blood in their family.”

            As he was talking I ran to the edge of the cave and threw a rock between the bars. Turns out that Teo was right because as soon as the rock was a foot out of the bars there was a loud buzz and the rock fell to the ground slightly smoking.

            Cool. I’m going to starve. Alone. With this creepy and slightly good-looking shape shifter person. Sick. I turned around to face Teo, about to badmouth him again. But then I saw a blue flash out of the corner of my eye. It’s the blue gemstone that will grant your freedom.

 

Blue.

BLUE!

            I whipped around and looked intensely at the spot where I thought it was. I saw the glint and dove towards it, not caring about ripping my dress anymore, or skinning my knees or elbows. I just wanted to get out. I slid across the floor and grabbed the stone. Then still on my belly I stared at the rock, rubbing the dirt and mud off it. As the sediment fell off, a beautiful blue started to appear.

“Teo… Teo Teo Teo Teo Teo Teo Teo Teo Teo!!!!!!! I FOUND IT!!! I CAN GO HOME NOW!!!” I screamed. I was so excited to leave this dark and dank place.

Teo looked almost as surprised as I was excited.

“You found it that fast? That’s…. actually pretty amazing. Now all you need to do is find out what to do with it. I actually didn’t tell you everything. This is my first time meeting someone from any other dimension.” He grinned sheepishly.                       j                 “Frankly I don’t know what to do with the stone once you find it.” He turned a light red and started to scratch the back of his head, avoiding my gaze, which by this time was ice cold.

“Oh cool…” by this time I was so mad that I was past making a sarcastic remark. I looked at the blue stone intensely. Once I get out of here I’ll put this in a necklace or something, its really pretty. Then I noticed a tiny, tiny marking on the stone. Bringing the rock up close to my face and scrunching my eyes I was able to make out the swirls with the star in the middle that I saw on the doorknob.

“Teo, come here, I found something.” His boots crunched over the small stones on the floor, he stood next to me and squinted, looking hard at the Lazuli stone.

“See it?” I said, “I’ve seen that symbol before, it was on the doorknob to the janitors closet, I walked in and fell. That’s how I got here.”

“That symbol is Titania’s symbol, the swirls represent the chaos and the star represents us, and how we came out of the chaos.”

“Thanks for the history lesson,” I retorted, “but I’m gonna get out of here.” I walked to the door and touched the stone to the knob, immediately there was a low rumbling sound. The whole cell started to shake and small rocks started to fall from the ceiling. With wild eyes I turned to look at Teo, regretting what I had just done, wondering what I had done wrong in the first place, and fearing for my life for the second time today. Then the bars started to move; some sank into the ground, while others rose into the ceiling. Once they disappeared the rumbling stopped and the room got a lot brighter.

At least six torches had lit on their own, revealing another door, and this one was a lot grander than my janitor’s closet door. This door was actually a set of wooden double doors; they were at least ten feet tall and were meticulously decorated. The doors must have been hand carved; there were cherubs, centaurs, fairies, griffins, and many more mysterious animals that I didn’t even know existed.  A person with a peacock’s tail and a tiger’s head stood right next to what looked like a hippopotamus with a lion’s mane and chicken feet. I turned to look at Teo, only to find out that he had been replaced by one of the tiger/peacock men. I gave a little yelp, and took a few steps back.

“Is that you Teo? Cause if it is you it is most definitely not funny what you just did.” I was a little out of breath and my heart was pounding so fast that my chest hurt. The mutant thing looked at me with amber eyes and then turned back to Teo. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Teo! That was so not funny!” I yelled, “I thought you were one of those weird creature things!”

“Sorry, sorry, but I must say the look on your face was priceless!” he burst out laughing as I turned a bright crimson, damn my paleness.

To change the subject I asked, “So what do those lead to?” I raised my eyebrows and pointed at the doors.

“Titania.” His green eyes flashed, “Do you want to see?” I nodded and followed him as we walked to the huge doors. He stopped just within pushing reach and leaned forward and whispered something right in the crack of the doors. With a loud creak the doors swung open and I was met with a warm breeze and the smell of flowers. The doors opened to a field, but it was no ordinary field. This field had pink grass and green flowers, the sky was a dark purple and was dotted with orange spheres.

“Welcome to Titania, the world born from chaos.”

Reviews

[Mars Samuel]

I'm not sure if it was on purpose, but Loved the way you paced this. The way it starts slow, draws you in, and introduces you to this girls world... It's almost like being strapped into some kind a ride just before it launches you forward. Once the door is introduced the pace speeds up and the change (in my mind) made me feel disoriented like she probably felt as well.
I loved it, but some of it seems just a little bit choppy. Some words (Pissed,crap) don't seem to fit the style of your writing or the flow it makes.
By the way, I loved some of the descriptions you used. (Bringer, Lol...)

[Susanna F]

This is really fun and fast-paced. It leaves me wanting to read more, good job!

[Sarah J. Mendonca]

For a first post this is a really good length. I like strong opens, and yours draws me in. I normally have lots of things to critique, but your work is rather good. I am excited to read the next portion.

[DeletedUser]

Very intriguing story. It pulled me in from the start, and kept my attention until I finished. I can't wait until the next chapter.