A Floating Ladle and a Hole in the Wall

They may be incredibly inattentive, especially when it comes to authority figures, but moderate sensibility was one trait Elliot did not lack. With two strikes on their back and the eye of the police looking to plant a third, Elliot didn’t take off the next night. Instead, they stayed home, tending to little Rosie while their mom worked the third late night in a row. This was not the optimal situation to be in on a Thursday night, and their freerunning friends would probably be moderately irritated to hear of their inability to attend. However, with a brief explanatory text sent to the group, they would probably understand why Elliot couldn’t attend.

Leaning against the counter, playing with the ladle they were using to stir the soup, Elliot was very bored. Rather than just twiddling the oversized spoon, they decided to try using some energy manipulation to hold it afloat for longer than the few seconds it takes to fall back to their hands normally.

Energy manipulation was a common skill, and most children were able to learn it fairly easily if taught from a young age. It had countless uses, and numerous forms of it were practised throughout the country. It had to do simply with focusing on particles in the air or in things and making them do what one wanted. Since children have a more active imagination, it was a lot easier for them to work with things too small to actually see, and this enables them to work on it much more easily. Elliot, however, did not go to a large school that had energy manipulation classes, instead attending a local school in the farming colony they lived in as a child. So rather than learning it properly, they learned it a lot later, on their own, in the basement. Their father collected books, and a lot of them got packed up and thrown into the cellar when he died. While digging through all the old books he owned, Elliot stumbled across a small how-to guide on energy manipulation, which taught them almost nothing except for how to do it at all. Seeing as they learned nothing more than the basics, Elliot knew almost no proper skills to it. So doing something as simple as telekinetically lifting a ladle could turn out to be quite a struggle.

That being said, lifting the ladle went much better than originally thought, and it now resided permanently stuck, floating in the air in the middle of the kitchen. The real trick was getting it down. Rather than actually trying to get it down, Elliot simply pulled a second ladle out of the drawer, and went back to stirring the soup. Judging by the noise of the TV in the other room, Rosie was still watching whatever it is that she was watching. However, if one were to actually look around the room, they would find the head of a small girl peeking around the corner of the kitchen, watching Elliot stir the soup. Elliot, however, did not look around the room, and did not discover the tiny glare coming in from the living room. Instead, they almost tripped and whacked their head off the oven when they were startled by an unexpected voice coming from across the room.

“Elliot?” Rosie asked, unapologetic upon seeing Elliot almost hit their head.

“Don’t you know how to give a person some warning?” Elliot burst out, catching themself on the edge of the oven and pushing themselves back into a standing position, “I could have actually hurt myself, you knucklehead!”

Rosie just laughed, ignoring Elliot’s frustration, “Can I ask a question?”

“I don’t know, can you? Have you completed the question qualification test? It’s very important in our society.”

“No one ever told me about a qualification test. I’m pretty sure you just made that up. So I’m going to ask a question, whether or not it’s okay with you.”

“Alright fine, you caught me. There isn’t a question qualification test. Not for nine year olds, anyway, so you’ll be taking it when you’re older,” Elliot tries to move themself into a position where they’re blocking Rosie’s view of the floating ladle, hoping that isn’t what the question is about. “What’s your question?”

“Where did Marian go?” Elliot was somewhat taken aback by her question. No one talked about Marian, and at the age Rosie had been when she left, it’s amazing she even knows who Marian is.

Marian had left a few months after their father had been killed by the rebellion soldiers, six years ago. Elliot was only eleven, and Marian had just turned twenty three. Rosie would have been only three years old. Elliot knew very little about where Marian was planning to go, and their mother hadn’t the slightest clue either. Six years later, neither are even certain if Marian is still alive, let alone where she is now. It was impossible to know if she would ever come back.

“I don’t know.” This was a hard one to talk their way out of. Honesty was the best policy, after all. The answer wasn’t satisfying to either of them, and Elliot had heavy suspicion that Rosie wouldn’t believe them. An interrogation would be underway, because to Rosie, there was always the chance someone knew something they didn’t say.

“I’m sure you know something,” Rosie pressed further, unaware that Elliot was telling the truth. “She couldn’t have just left without telling you and mom anything. What did she say before she left?”

“Well, it was six years ago. It may have been a fairly memorable time in my life, but I still don’t remember every single thing that was said to me in the months that it happened,” Elliot was beginning to wonder if Marian actually had said something to them before she left. “If she did say something about it, I honestly don’t remember what it was. I don’t know where she went, and I don’t think mom does either.”

“Do you think that she left to find the people who killed dad?”

“She could have. It’s also possible she just couldn’t stand to live in the house where dad died. If that was the case, though, you would think she would’ve at least sent us something saying she was alright.”

“What if she… y’know. Died?”

“Rosie,” Elliot tried to find the words to continue the conversation. But there was no way of proving that Marian couldn’t have died. In an effort to distract Rosie to prevent the continuing of the conversation, they swept their hair out in front of their face, making themself look somewhat like a mop, which successfully made them look ridiculous and hid their face at the same time.

Just before Rosie could ask another question, disaster fell. Disaster being the ladle. Instead of staying in the air for a few hours, which Elliot expected it to, it fell to the floor with a louder bang than one would think a falling ladle could release. Elliot, being as easily startled as they were, fell over forwards, barely missing Rosie in favour of hitting the wall. The wall did not take the blow very well, and the drywall over the it broke into pieces, sending the bricks beneath flying inwards. The only thing not to fall into the opening was Elliot, who instead landed lying halfway through the newly formed hole in the wall.

The fact that a hole could be punched through the wall at all is incredible. The bottom floor of the house, as with all buildings in the city, had been frozen in time for thousands of years. The freezing, an event which nobody is entirely sure of the cause, simultaneously destroyed and froze everything across the world almost instantly. If it wasn’t in the process of falling when everything happened, gravity can no longer pull it down. Or up, or anywhere at all. It is all completely stuck where it was. Which meant that although the falling rubble from the destruction was left unfrozen and able to be taken away, standing buildings were now impossible to tear down or damage at all. At least, they should be. Evidently whatever energy manipulation was used to freeze the world was coming unraveled. Which could prove to be disastrous, considering every building in D’nor was built on one of the destroyed buildings, with the idea in mind that it would provide a permanently steady foundation.

Although a citywide collapse could very possibly happen, that wasn’t what was at the front of Elliot’s mind right now. What was important for Elliot right now were two questions. Question one was: Why is there a staircase here that the Schaeffer family was completely unaware of? They seem to have fallen through the left-side wall of the staircase, and to their right was a door, lacking a doorknob. The other side of the door was obviously sealed off somehow, likely by the original constructors of the building, because Elliot was very much unaware of it being there. To the left were stairs leading down to a basement, another feature of the house the family didn’t know the existence of. This would be confusing enough on its own, except for one additional question:

Why is there faint music coming up the stairs? Elliot was about to question how something could be playing music when everything is supposed to be frozen, but obviously some things have started to come unfrozen. But music coming up the stairs would mean electrically powered devices are coming unfrozen too, and that started Elliot on the question of where else the magic could be coming unraveled.

Lying in a hole in the wall was obviously not the most comfortable position, so pushing themself up and out of the hole, they turned around to Rosie to tell her what’s happening.

“Listen,” Elliot stayed quiet and let Rosie pay attention, “Do you hear that? There’s music coming from down there.”

Rosie listened closely, brow furrowed. The music was quite unlike anything she had ever heard, but it was definitely not just a shared hallucination. Even if this was nothing more than folie à deux, it was still almost a bit mystifying.

“Want to go investigate?” Elliot started again towards the hole in the wall. “There has to be something down there. Might as well go check it out before mom gets home and grounds me for punching a hole through the wall.”

“Of course I want to!” Her voice cracked, giving away the smidge of unwillingness to go downstairs.

“You sure? I could go down on my own and report back with the info, if you want.”

“And have all the adventure to yourself? I don’t think so. We’re going down together. But… uh, maybe we should get a flashlight first?”

“Alright, fine, I’ll grab one.” Elliot scooped up the ladle as they went to the drawers. Dumping the ladle in the sink and grabbing the flashlight at the same time, they swivel on their heel and shine the light on Rosie, “I found her, officer! The escaped convict! We should detain her and check downstairs for any accomplices.”

“Oh, no. I’ve been caught! How am I going to tell my family? Oh wait, you are my family...how could my family have betrayed me like this?”

Instead of continuing the conversation, Elliot ducked through the hole and went downstairs, not paying attention to whether or not Rosie was following. The fact that it was a fully furnished living room at the bottom of the stairs was unimportant in light of the stereo in the corner, obviously the source of the music. The music being played was a kind the two had never heard before, and that just layered confusion on. Of course, it would make sense that they didn’t know what it was, considering the song is more than two thousand years old. Elliot hit the off switch on the radio and turned around, looking for more objects of interest. Almost immediately, the beam of light hit a second doorway.

Strolling through the doorway, Elliot was confident in looking around this second room. At least, until they actually did it. What they found in the room was something completely unexpected, but somehow expected at the same time. Of course this would happen, but both Elliot and Rosie were surprised to find it.

There was a family in the corner, huddling together, frozen in time.

Rosie had trailed a little bit behind Elliot, and she let out a horrified scream when she saw the time-corpses. Although, it doesn’t particularly fit to call them corpses. They aren’t dead, only frozen, and if they were unfrozen, they would likely be fully capable of walking around and generally being alive once again. They may be confused to wake up two thousand years in their future, though. Rosie wasn’t stilled by her fear, and immediately darted back through the hole. Elliot, however, wasn’t quite so quick to leave. They walked a little bit closer to the family.

The terror on their faces was obvious. There were six of them in the family. Identical twin brothers, one girl about Elliot’s age, the apparent parents of the girl and the twins, and an old lady who appeared to be the grandmother of the group. Even though they weren’t dead, they couldn’t help but feel a little bit sad. The family was imprisoned in time by whatever happened, and to wake up now would be to lose everything they had in life before it happened. Elliot looked around the room one more time. There didn’t appear to be much else in the basement. No more exploring for the night, inside or out.

As Elliot backed away from the family, they could have sworn they saw someone’s finger twitch.

Author's Note

Two authors, remember! This one took a lot longer than the prologue. -Connor