Dream World

Quinn loved to hang out in the attic. Out of all the places in the world, the attic was the only place she would give anything to go to. Others wanted to go to big amusement parks or travel the world but Quinn, she just wanted to sit in the attic and write her novels. When she was younger, she felt like she was trapped in her own crazy mind. She thought that she had built herself a prison she couldn’t get out of, but as time went on, she embraced it. She found most of her inspiration came from memories of the past, from her life and others left behind in what used to be a dusty old attic. Quinn had eventually convinced her parents to clean it up and turn it into her own space. She cleaned the room, inspected and tidied up every inch of this top floor of the house. She built her own desk, made a comfy corner for those days she was lazy, and filled the walls with inspiring words and colors that kept her going. Within weeks the whole attic had been transformed to her parents pleasant surprise. Quinn spent most of her time up there, but she was never really lazy, she almost always got an incredible amount of work done, whether it be research or actual writing. Today, Quinn decided it would be a research day. She wanted to be inspired by something new, she didn't want to write a typical novel, she wanted to find a love story with a twist, maybe something from one of the boxes. There had been a lot of old boxes when Quinn first discovered the attic, when her parents had asked her to put some more boxes up there when they first moved in. Little by little when she was bored she would sneak up there and look at the boxes, eventually finding out it wasn’t just one family's treasured items left behind, it was many, and looking at what was in those old boxes is what always sparked her creativity the brightest. Quinn headed to the tower of boxes she had stacked on the back wall. She had mostly tried to sort out the boxes to fit which family had left which boxes behind. She did her best, hoping eventually they would be sorted out by family and she could piece together her own version of each of their lives. Quinn shook off the thought and pulled a box from the stack which hadn’t been opened too many times. She emptied the contents to find a very old looking diary, a couple paints, a compas, and a couple rocks with words carved into them among other things. She reached for the book, maybe it would have an interesting story starter. She flipped through the pages, nothing seeming too interesting until she reached the middle of the diary. A huge gust of wind blew her back,knocking her over. The pages started flipping randomly until all of a sudden, a circular, portal looking thing appeared. It was a fiery red circle spinning with a clear inside, when she tried looking through it, she could see what was behind it, but it looked like there was a huge wall of water, clear but rippled. It looked so magical, just like all the books Quinn loved reading. A part of her was drawn to go through the portal, she could live her fantasy life, go through the portal and live a few magical moments, but she couldn’t shake the feeling to stay because it could lead to danger. She could be walking into a trap, she could get stuck there, she could be walking back in time or into the future, and seeing either of those could mess everything up. The book might close, she might not know how to get back. There were too many cons, Quinn decided not even a magical adventure wasn’t worth the danger. She crawled as close as she could to the side of the book without getting sucked in like the other little trinkets of the box had. She leaned forward, trying to grab the bottom of the cover to flip the book shut but she started to feel like she was getting pushed into the portal. “Oh no. No No No this can’t be real. How will I get back?-” Quinn opened her eyes which she had squeezed shut when she got sucked in. She was floating in something that looked like space. It was mostly black, there seemed to be stars surrounding her, and she saw all the other things that the portal had sucked in from the box. Quinn tried to grab ahold of the items, hoping maybe they were magical like the diary and they would be able to take her out of whatever this was. She managed to grab one thing, but she flipped around too many times trying to grab the others, so eventually she stopped, she was dizzy as it was. She looked at the one thing she had caught, the compass. The direction arrow was spinning like crazy, it was an old rustic looking compass, it looked like something Quinn would pick up from an antique pawn shop for herself. She focused her attention back at the direction arrow which had finally stopped spinning. Everything was frozen. “AHHHHH!” She screamed as she just dropped. She held the compass tight and shut her eyes again, hoping the landing would be soft- it was bouncy, Quinn slowly opened her eyes and she was still bouncing a little, and when she turned her head to one side, she was in a happy place, all of her happiest dreams seemed to be taking place, things that cheered her up were there, it seemed to be a dream world. She turned her head to the other side, wondering what else there could possibly be to make this world even better, but when she glanced over at the left side, she saw all of the things she was afraid of, her worst nightmares, everything that could make her fall into her depression again, the road she never wanted to go down again. When Quinn looked up, the portal was still open, a spinning fiery circle, and all she had to do was jump up to go through. Quinn paused before jumping back up, This was her chance to finally live her story.