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The War Between Imagination and Reality

A young girl struggles to find herself in a large, vast world, but then realizes she has a place in the universe.

By Isabella SPublished 6 years ago 11 min read
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2 years ago today.

The day after my 10th birthday.

My family was driving back from going to Delaware for the week. It had happened so suddenly.

I looked to my left.

I saw a black smoosh of a car swerving into us. I screamed, “Watch out.” I remember hearing those words floating in the black space of my mind as all the colors, my mom’s pink dress, the blazing summer sun in the sky, all turned black.

The metallic smell woke me up. As I blinked my eyes, I reached for my phone to call 911.

As it turns out my mother and father, two minutes earlier smiling ear to ear, were now gone forever. My aunts and uncles all refused to take me in because I was “bad luck”. My grandmother and grandpa on my mom’s side were already gone. And, on my father’s side, my grandpa took me in but later needed to go to a long-term nursing home.

So, I was put into the foster care system as an orphan. It is all so hard to grasp at first, but it is my reality. If I am honest, the reality is the least of my problems. I spend most of my time having these visions. Call it what you want, okay? Some might say nightmares, dreams, or daydreams. Some of the past “families” I have had thought I was a “doomed child” just waiting to explode. Anyway, they seem so real. One minute I am sitting eating marshmallows, the next I am I am saying farewell and see you soon to my grandpa. My current family, however, is fully aware of all of this and ignores it. So, I guess it’s better?

Every night I have the same nightmare. I am traveling through some sort of green portal and it never finishes. It just leaves off with nothing. It may seem hard to believe, but I cope with it. I draw all the possible outcomes waiting to see if one day I get the right one. Last night, however, it felt like the end was near. It might be a sign, but I feel like it is going to happen tonight.

Slowly, my eyes closed and there I am again, as if I am actually going through it. I feel swishes of wind flowing through my straight black hair. The light feels warm.

VVOOOMM

Like closing a heavy door, I am still on my bed in my pajamas, but I'm cold. Not the cold like your mom just turned on the air conditioner cold. This cold was the brisk smell of fresh pine like you are sleeping under your living Christmas tree.

The smell of a forest.

I breathe in and breathe out.

I open my eyes and I’m in a forest. Not a normal looking forest that you would find in Maryland. It was like ten times that. It was something I had never experienced before. Quickly, I look around. I am sitting on my bed but the rest of my room seems to have disappeared. Then I get the realization that my bed and I were the things that disappeared. I have no shoes, no coat, just some three-year-old SpongeBob pajama pants that is at least three sizes less than the size it should be, considering it’s supposed to be at my ankles but it’s at my knees. I am desperate to find home. I don’t even know where I am. I could be in England. I thought I was lost, but...

I began to walk and find billowing smoke coming from a small cabin about five minutes from where I teleported. I smell fresh blueberry waffles. I see a fairly averaged height, eldered man that has a long beard. He sees me immediately. Not knowing what to do, I crouch under the window hoping to who knows what that he hadn’t seen me. Unfortunately, that wish of mine wasn’t granted. He opens the door and starts with the most unexpected sentence I have ever heard in my life, “I’ve been expecting you.” The strange man continues, “Only for about 70 years or so.”

“Excuse me? I think you got the wrong person, sir. I am Sarah and, uh, who are you exactly?” I felt my throat closing and my hands shook. All of my life I had been lost. Never feeling like I had any home, or even that the families I had been switched to even wanted an orphan. I found that most of the families wanted the “perfect” daughter. Some even wanted the perfect son, which were even more disappointed when they met me.

“My name is Walter Segriden, but you can call me Walt. I am one of the three reality keepers in this dimension. One of the Dimension Allegiance branches.”

I respond, “A…” I begin to stutter, “reality keeper?”

Walt looked down as to think of what he was saying, and to make sure nothing wrong came out. “Indeed, and you are one,” Walt took a pause, “us. We are your family.”

The word us is not a word in my vocabulary. I recognize that this might be sarcastic, but regardless I respond, “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t be. The last family I was a part of ended...” I could hear my voice severely crack. “...a long time ago.” An icy tear fell from my blue eyes.

Walt guides me into the cabin. “Well, it seems that isn’t the case because you have been a part of this family for far longer. Maybe you have thought that you are lost or drowning in the possibilities that you will never see your family again. You are made for this. I have a few things for you.” He begins to walk into his small wooden cabin. I soon see many things that I didn’t even know existed. Looking around the cabin, it had looked as if I daydreaming. A small cabin in a vast forest, hidden away from the rest of the world. Or the dimension. It’s confusing talking about quantum physics if you don’t even know the laws and forces of nature in the dimension that you are in. So, Walt was swiftly moving around the cabin. Sharp turns every which way. Half of the room looks like you took a trip into the future while the other half looks like a trip back to the 1800s. It was an escape from a world of the same-old-same-old, as my mother would say. A forest when every time you changed a direction, you saw the same exact scene.

“Oh, here you are, young maiden. I think it is time I give you this. We cannot waste any time.” Walt walks into his home library which is way bigger than the outside shows as if it is an escape from a reality. He walks past a space decorated with a number of things that I don’t think have even been invented yet. In the library, he goes to a section, glides his hands over the books, and it opens.

A door, but not your regular hidden door. It was a portal. To where, I didn’t know. Walt says, “This is where you’ll be going.” He pauses for suspense, I assume. He walks back to the desk and grabs a book that was hidden in a drawer along with a bracelet that looks like the kind that you slap onto your wrist. “This is what will get you there and back with no fatal troubles.” He has to teach me all of the things that are in the book: what they do and how it’ll help me. When he puts the bracelet on, it sinks into my skin with no feeling at all. It is seamless and looks like something a spy would use. Walt walked to a vast room with at least 2 beds. And he is there, just sitting there. It had seemed that he didn’t feel obligated to say hi, but to just sit there looking into space—that, I would soon find out, was quite literal.

“And who are you?” I inquired, to break the silence.

“Hello, I am Leo Barry. I am another timekeeper,” he addressed.

Again I asked, “What exactly are we doing here anyway?”

And in another hour or so we started getting prepared to leave and enter the portal to the Thorn Harbour, as they told me.

Leo starts to say, “Today we are going to be saving the world from an abominable thief who steals from time, reality, and almost every dimension. The portal is going to take us.” I don’t really believe him but I go along with it anyway. He continues to declare, “We need you to stop him. He's only just begun. We think the universe has brought you here because you are destined to complete this task.”

It seems as if I am in a dream. It seems like all of those dreams that I’ve had since I can remember have all been leading up to this. It seems so relaxing and unsettling to learn that someone else has been going through the same things you have been going through. Leo’s parents also passed and he began having visions, or mental tunnels as he calls them, since he was 5-years-old. It’s relaxing because you realize you aren’t alone. However, it’s unsettling because you realize there could be so many other people who could be going through the same events as you but don’t know it yet. One day they could land somewhere and never find safety.

We go through the portal. I reach my hand through to the other side. Then the other. For me, it seems like a slow process, but for Leo and Walt, they jump right in as if it is second nature. The world is just as described.

Thorn Harbour

Misty seas with fish that I’ve never seen before. We find a chest of what I would call weapons, but Walt makes me call them resources. These resources are cube-shaped. You use the cube by thinking of what you want and then throwing it into the air to make it appear.

Walt starts to tell us that in order for me to be able to go home, we have to arrest the thief who goes by the name Fuse and turn him into the Dimension Allegiance. We saw a young man the same age as Leo who was 17. Fuse wore a black cloak. He had black hair and cold dark green eyes. He looked fed up as if he was unsatisfied with the job he had done.

In a sudden movement, Leo threw the cube into the air, which brought handcuffs into his hands. He ran over to Fuse and handcuffed him all within the blink of an eye.

“Hey!” Leo put the handcuffs around him and Fuse screamed.

“We are arresting you. You will serve for one year. What is your real name?”

Fuse replied, “Sarah?” He attempted to jump but Walt held him back and searched all of the “weapons” he had in his pockets. My ears rang as he said my name. Had I seen him before?

Leo doubted, “You know who she is?”

Fuse sputtered. “Uh, yeah, of course, I do. I’m Ruben Ripley. And she,” he said, pointing to me, “is my sister Sarah Ripley.”

How? How is this possible? My brother had been presumed dead as a missing person. That was the start of my bad luck. I had nightmares of him, mostly when I was younger, though. Now it was more of my parents passing.

Walt immediately broke in, “Sarah, do you know him?” All of them stared at me as if I was now the criminal. Was he, though? He looked about the age of 18. But, I remember his freckles, his crooked dimply smile that wasn’t visible anymore. However, I knew this was my brother, but I had no clue why or how he left.

I confirmed, “Yeah, he is my brother. I haven’t seen him since I was 7. He was reported missing and never came back.”

After watching Leo and Walt interrogating Ruben, I learned more than I could have ever imagined had happened to him. Just as I said earlier, other people who went through the same events I went through might not have found safety. In his defense, he stole most of those things just so he could find his way, but he never did. He has been stuck in between the dimensions for about nine years. HE never spawned in the forest, he spawned in a desert before he found an extra cube that made a portal that would bring him to all of the places and things he discovered. We did still have to turn him in because of it. But, he only had to do about a year in this dimension (three years in ours), which isn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Walt showed me how I could receive messages through the bracelet along with making a small portal directly to the cabin. He also gave me one to the entry of the jail in case I had any further questions for Ruben.

I don’t know the next time I will see him or the rest of the reality keepers, but at least I found another piece to the scattered puzzle of my life.

science fiction
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About the Creator

Isabella S

hi... hope you enjoy my writing pieces

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