The Other World In My House

Submitted into Contest #38 in response to: Write a story about someone who finds a magical portal in their home. ... view prompt

6 comments

Fantasy

Today is yet again a not so fun day at home. So far, quarantine hasn’t been the most fun. School has been canceled for the rest of the year, with only six weeks left till summer break. All I really can do is wait out the weeks and do my best to stay occupied. While doing my schooling online, the Wi-Fi goes down out of nowhere. The Wi-Fi box is up in the attic. The last time someone was up there was when the Wi-Fi was set up over ten years ago. Strangely, the man that came to set it up said he saw something up there but the next day before he could tell anyone he vanished. Not a single soul knows what happened to him, but ever since the incident, the house I just moved to over the weekend has been known as “the soul taker.” The stories I have heard about the house and its attic have kept me from going up there, but I have the biggest assignment of the year due in an hour and I don’t know how to fix the Wi-Fi. So I better get up there to fix it. As I approach the door, I am hesitant to open it, but I decide to put my fear aside and I open the door. As I step inside, I feel a cool, chilling breeze go right through me. This breeze knocks me off my feet to the floor. After gathering my senses, I find that I am really light headed. Once I get myself to my feet, I begin to make my way to the back of the attic since I still haven't found the Wi-Fi box. Getting through what the past owner left up here is going to be a challenge. I do not know who lived in this house before I moved in here with my mom, but they had a lot of stuff. When I say a lot of stuff I mean a lot a lot. The attic is stock piled with boxes upon boxes upon boxes of weird psychic and wizardry stuff. I am starting to get really curious about who lived here before me. I have made a good path so far and I think I can see part of the wall in the back of the room. I get excited because all I want to do right now is get out of this room. I start moving boxes out of my way faster and find myself in front of what looks like the wall to the back of the attic. I could jump for joy if it was not for the fact that I can not see the Wi-Fi box anywhere. In anger, I hit my fist against the wall, but when I do it sounds like I had just hit something hollow. This freaks me out because the person who sold my mom the house said all of the walls were solid. Apparently, the inspector of the house must have been to scared to come into the attic. I am exhausted from moving all of the boxes and still a bit light headed from earlier, so I rest my head on the wall for a minute. While resting my head I look at the floor and find that the floorboards are not in line with the others. My eyes drift slowly up the wall looking more closely than I did earlier and find that a whole part of the wall looks like someone cut it out and put it back. I start to think I am going crazy, so I sit down to clear my head. When I sit down, I sit to the right of where the walling looks suspicious and put my head back. Not a minute later I here a "click" and the wall that I thought was a wall slides open revealing a mini staircase a bit bigger than the size of a garden gnome. Now this scares me to death and I start running out of the attic, but then I spot the Wi-Fi box so I quickly fix it and run straight to my room. I fixed the Wi-Fi just in time to turn in my assignment. Later that night, I get a call from my mom saying she will not be home till tomorrow afternoon, and I do not like the sound of that due to the weird stuff I saw today.  As I finally start falling asleep, I hear a crashing sound coming from the kitchen that startles me awake. I know I am the only one that could be in the house because I locked all of the doors and windows before locking my bedroom door. I know I will not be able to sleep if I do not go and see what is down there, so I get up and start down the stairs. As I continue to make my way down the stairs, I see a portal appear before my eyes. The next thing I know, a creature comes out of it, but before I could take a picture of the portal, it disappears into thin air. I make sure the creature that just came out of the portal can not see me while I observe what it is doing. When I see it open the fridge, I think that it is hungry, and maybe if I give it some food it will go back where it came from. When I step out of where I am hiding, it notices me right away. I start walking cautiously towards the refrigerator to get out some food while I talk to the creature calmly. I feed it just about everything I had, and it still wanted more. Then it doubled! There are two creatures now, and I do not have anymore food. The creatures looked like they were going to attack me, but then I saw garden gnomes that were alive! They had these tiny little water guns that they had some liquid in. The gnomes shot the liquid at the creatures, and when the liquid hit them, they disappeared back into the portals that lead to the other world. The gnomes explained the little door that I found in the attic, and they told me how they have been in the house for longer than the gnomes could remember. They made me promise to help them get rid of the creatures. I agreed to help them for as long as I lived in the house. The gnomes then explained to me that the reason they were put into the house was to protect the outside world from destruction and devastation. After my encounter with the gnomes we worked together to destroy the world that the creatures came from. It took us, as a team, some time to successfully find a way to get rid of the creatures' portal forever, but after a long while of consulting and planning we found the perfect fail proof plan. We were absolutely confident  about our plan. We were certain it could never fail us. And so we took action and started phase one of the plan to forever get rid of the creatures who would destroy our world if they had the chance. After successfully destroying the world, the portals stopped randomly showing up and never did for the rest of time I lived there.

April 24, 2020 23:33

You must sign up or log in to submit a comment.

6 comments

Alton Rook
07:22 May 06, 2020

My dear, this was a nice story, but I am sure you can do better. Much better. You missed out on the number one thumb rule of writing 'Show no tell' the ending was very unsatisfactory.

Reply

Show 0 replies
Niveeidha Palani
23:22 May 04, 2020

Interesting and magical! <3

Reply

Emma Mason
18:33 May 17, 2020

thank you :)

Reply

Niveeidha Palani
22:57 May 17, 2020

No problem, personally, I feel that every one of us require some room for improvement, keep it up though, excellent try!

Reply

Emma Mason
14:49 May 18, 2020

I just put a new one up for the most recent contest and I think this one will show my improvement.

Reply

Show 0 replies
Show 1 reply
Show 1 reply
Show 1 reply
Emma Mason
05:33 May 03, 2020

I was inspired to do my first story by my little sibling who always play games with portals and different dimensions.

Reply

Show 0 replies
RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in Reedsy Studio. 100% free.