The Beginning

A shadow fell darkly on the person’s face. I couldn’t make it out. However, I had a feeling that it was a guy. He leaned over me and I could smell his cologne.

“Where am I?” The room was pitch-black besides for the moon glowing brightly in a window. A red moon.

“Chelsea…” A chill ran through my veins. I didn’t like how he said it. A cold sweat broke out down my back. “Bye…Chelsea.” My throat closed.

Something slammed into my neck.

I couldn’t breathe.

I felt… I felt like I was dying. A screamed ripped through me…a hungry grin showed on his face…

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! I woke up with a start nearly jumping a foot in the air. I breathed heavily. Slowing my breath, I started to calm myself. “It was just a dream, just a dream. I was okay, I’m not dying.” I touched my neck, it was smooth, no puncture marks were visible, but I could still feel as though something was there.

Looking into the mirror over my dresser, I saw my face. It was pale and scared stricken. My normally light brown eyes were wide and black. My curly hair was wet with perspiration. A cold sweat was all over my body. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

A warm shower washed away my visible fear. Looking in the mirror nothing looked wrong. My parents wouldn’t suspect anything. Twisting my blonde hair around my finger, I sighed.

I had to get out of the house. I could not spend another day watching mindless television as I had done for the past three days. It’s a rainy spring break, one where my parents had planed nothing, yet all my friends had gone away. I put on my favorite pair of jeans and a dark brown shirt that matched my light brown eyes. I brushed my long twisted dirty blond hair into curly long strands.

Finishing up, I walked back to my bedroom there was a sticky note on my door.

Clean your room

-Love Mom

I slammed the door as I shut it. At my bed, I suffocated the pillows with my brown and blue spotted comforter. I dumped my dirty clothes into the hamper and threw schoolbooks into my bag. My room wasn’t exactly clean, but it was better than before. I grabbed a little black bag and dumped money along with other random things I might possible need to go out with which includes gum and Band-Aids, hey, you never know what could happen.

On the way out, I grabbed a necklace that I had found. It was a silver circle with a symbol of two vines like things, which twisted together. It was the same thing on the other side. The necklace looked like it mimicked the other side. In the middle was a diamond shaped cut out that went all the way through to the other side.

I found it when I was six or seven. It was strange. I had found it on a sandy beach that laid on Long Island. I remember that when I found it I was so happy. I was just lying in the sand, watching the waves wash in and sweep over my legs and then it just washed up, like a shell, and I well, took it. It probably was one of the happiness times of my life. I had always loved it. It felt comforting.

I tipped toed down the hall. I wanted to leave quickly without distraction, and so that mom wouldn’t hear me. If she did, I would have to talk to her and she talks for hours. I really didn’t want to have my ear chewed off. I wasn’t in the mood. One thing you need to know about my mother is that she doesn’t stop talking, and I mean never. If there isn’t a person around, she’ll talk to herself, I’ve caught her doing it. Even though I thought I was quiet, I wasn’t quiet enough.

“Chelsea is that you?” Mom called from the kitchen.

“Yes,” I mumbled back unhappily.

“Good, your finally up, I would have woken you up earlier, but you know your brother, he’s such a handful. Do me a favor and feed him.”

“Do I have to?” I moaned, as I dragged my way into the kitchen. Purple title ate up our kitchen floor. Our median brown cabinets laid on the walls sucking up most of the kitchen’s wall space. A small black square table sat its self in the center of the room, four white chairs laid at each of its sides.

“You are almost seventeen and you almost never help out around here. I do all the cooking and all the cleaning, all you do is sit there complaining. I know that you’re a teenager and all you do is want to have fun and be with your friends and not have to be stuck in this house, but please just help me out on this. I know that I work and so does your father, and that we’re not always here all the time, but think of your poor, poor brother Will.” After a while, her voice sounds just like an annoying buzzing sound that is stuck on repeat. “He never sees you anymore and always has to go to day care. He’s going in kindergarten next year and you should help him with his homework when he gets some. You should-”

I cut her off. “Mom you don’t get homework in kindergarten.” I muttered taking a bowl and cereal out of the cabinet.

“Oh but you should still help him out anyway, he’s little, he needs the help.” She said as I was already on my way to feeding my very annoying five-year-old brother Will. There was no point fighting her, I’d end up having to do it anyway.

Will sat in a high chair by the kitchen table. Mom still in her pajamas stood by the stove cooking eggs even when it was a quarter to ten.

“Will hungry!” Will screamed banging his fists on the table. I poured Will his cheerios and milk.

Will is short for his age he had dark brown eyes and a cute little smile. However, don’t let his looks fool you, he is a brat and if he doesn’t get what he wants he cries, and cries, and cries. It’s annoying. One moment he’s fine but if you tell him no he has a fit. Will ate like a starved pig, but most of the food fell to the floor. When he was done, he sat there with milk and cheerios covering his face.

Mom turned around with her eggs, her blond hair fell around her face and she gave me a look. She noticed me actually dressed and not in my pajamas, she said, “Where are you going?”

My answer was, “To the “The Weird but True Museum”

“Oh you are, good for you.” She laughed lightly, “What’s with the new interest of learning?”

I shrugged, “I need to get out of the house.”

She laughed, “Yeah, you’ve been stuck in this apartment most of the week, from friends being away and it pouring almost every day.”

I sighed, “Yeah, I really don’t feel like going to the movies again.” I had gone to the movies two days in a row this week.

Mom took a bite of her eggs. “After breakfast, I’m taking Will to a friend’s house, and then I have to run errands, so it’s good that you’re going out, I’ll give you some money so that you can eat there instead for having to come all the way home.” She dug her fork into her greasy overcooked egg and took a bite. I stared at her in disgust.

My mom had never been a good cook. Well, she’s not good at most things. It’s somewhat funny. She always needs help with computers and stuff. However, the one thing she’s good at is baking. She makes the best cakes. Mom chewed her eggs and when she was finished, she opened her mouth to speech. However, before she could say anything, I dashed out the door of our kitchen and ran to the door of our apartment. I slipped on my vans and jogged out of our apartment, #63.

The elevator door opened, I ran down the hall to it. On my way I saw that someone was moving in three doors down, I didn’t see anyone and I didn’t go looking for anyone either. I had to go down three levels to get out the door of the apartment building.

It was spring break, and all I had to wear a thin sweatshirt. I headed down the street and started to catch my breath. Sucking in some air through my nose, I smelled the faint lingering sent of gas and smoke. My shoes begin to be soaked in water, they squeaked when I walk over the puddles made by the rain droplets.

Casually I joined the hundreds of others walking down the streets of New York City. Some wore suits and carried briefcases, others talked on phones. The tourists held cameras wearing I <3 New York shirts and taking pictures of everything they saw. Lines of yellow car ran through the streets picking and dropping people off. Taxis were everywhere you look. There was the occasional honk, the shouts from people trying to get you to buy something or come into their store.

A couple of minutes into the walk I saw a little dog. I thought it might be a Maltese, or Shih Tzu, no, no I think it is a Pomeranian, whatever it was it had a very annoying bark. It was more like a cry for help or the wheels on a bus when they make that squeaking sound. The dog was on the end out his leash, with his feet in the air. It also growled and snapped its teeth at me. It wasn’t unnatural. Animals never really liked me.

The crowd stopped, a red hand blinked telling you not to cross. Three girls that looked a little younger than I did stood next to me. One had the bottom layer of her hair purple. One had long really curly brown hair and wore a Kris Allen sweatshirt. The last one had short choppy brown hair and wore a black fedora. She held a bloody tissue to her nose. Giving her a funny look, her friends smiled and laughed.

“I got a bloody nose,” Stated the girl. The other two broke into laughter. Before I could question any more the red hand turned to a white person. Everyone continued across the street, a current that you couldn’t stop. The girls walked a different way, and the thought of them was forgotten, but that’s New York, just moving forward, not back.

The museum was right before Greenway High School, which is the school that I go to. By the time I grabbed the handle, the rain started pouring down. The doorknob was shaped like an alligator. I walked in dripping wet. The entrance of the building was like a dome. Before I could get a good look at anything, a cranky old woman yelled at me.

“You got to pay before you can go in!” she croaked. Her gray hair looked like a rats nest, and she had more than enough wrinkles. She wore a red uniform, which needed a wash badly. There was a wart on her face, and there was even hair growing out of it. She was someone from a scary movie, the type of person that goes insane and starts killing everyone. I paid her the fee and went in. Glad to have her out of my sight.

The entrance room had a giant white Pterodactyl hanging from the ceiling. You could see where each bone met the next. Its big white teeth glisten in the morning’s light. The main room was stuffed with people. It was hard to breathe.

A random cop stood by the entrance of the room. His stomach bulged under his blue uniform. His short orange hair was slightly grayed with age. His arms were crossed and he leaned against the wall. His black brown eyes jumped from person to person analyzing them. Our eyes met for a second, I gave him a weak wave. He just stared at me then looked away. Lovely.

I wanted to get a better picture of the Pterodactyl, from where I was there was bad lighting. I took a couple of steps backwards. I would have taken another step, but I crashed into something. I turned around to see a guy my size, around my age with dark black hair with steaks of light brown, which flopped down over his dark blue eyes. His face was a perfect oval, his body looked stiff and he looked well built. His skin was light, his lips were thin, and his mouth laid in a smile, but it did stay in a smile for long, his mouth fell. He shook his head, flipping his hair away from his eyes.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to crash into you.” I said quickly, helping him up.

“Sure you did,” He yelled, his face turned bright red with anger or maybe embarrassment.

“What’s your problem? It was by accident, I’m sorry.” I growled.

“I don’t care, you still hit me.” He yelled.

“I didn’t hit you. I bumped into you by accident like I just said.”

As I talked the boy, stared off to space, and mouthed my words with his four fingers and thumb.

“This is so stupid, you’re stupid.” The boy turned and walked away never looking back. He left me with a blank look on my face. After a minute or so I figured, I better leave it alone, there’s no point to apologize to someone who’s just too hard headed.

I reached for my map. It was in my pocket. It wasn’t in any of them, I looked down to see a crumpled messed up map on the floor that I had clumsily dropped. I guess from all the commotion it must have fallen. I picked it up and looked it over.

It was so confused that someone would need a map to read this one. When I finally understood it, I looked for something interesting. The room I picked was called Unknown, a room made up of other facts and artifacts that didn’t fit anywhere else. I headed for the stairs I hoped that I wouldn’t run into the guy again. I climbed up five sets of stairs just to find out that the room was on the third level.

To get to the room that I wanted to get to I had to go through four others. The last room I had to go through was the African Mammals room. The room was a rounded rectangle, display cases laid around the sides of the room, a staircase sat on one side of the room, which lead to an upstairs level, where more display cases laid. A mother, baby and father, elephant sat on a platform in the middle of the room on the first floor.

After leaving the African Mammals room, I found out that the next room was not the Unknown but the Reptiles and Amphibians room. I had gone the exact opposite way. I sighed and put my hand on my fore head.

How could I be so dumb to go in the opposite direction? While I’m here, I might as well look around. I looked over the map, trying to figure out where I had gone wrong, I counted the rooms on the third floor, there were seventeen, not including the planetarium.

The room was so small that it needed to be two times bigger to fit all the stuff. The rectangular room was packed. Ten display cases sat in the middle of the room. A small pathway wrapped around the display cases. In between each display case, there was a thin walkway. The ten display cases stood in two rows, five in each, and a pathway separated each row from the other.

The room was stuffed with snakes, frogs, lizards and salamanders. The displays were so squished together that you could barely see anything. They showed skeletons, habitats, the animals’ muscles, and bones. In one display case had a big brown spotted snake that was about to eat a rat. The snake had a diamond pattern on its back. Its eyes were red.

In another one, a Komodo dragon was eating some meat from a prey that another Komodo dragon had killed. A plaque sat by the display, on it read a random fact about Komodo dragons.

“Komodo Dragons tend to eat Deer and Wild Boar.”

There were frogs swimming in fake ponds and ones hunting for food. There were lizards sunning themselves on rocks. Frogs must close their eyes to shallow read another plaque. There was a tiny TV up in a corner that showed a video of frogs’ lives. I watched the video for a while but got bored of it, we had learned about the frog’s life cycle since first grade.

It was hard to walk around. You needed to be the size of a rabbit just to walk a few feet. Walking to look into the next display, I hit into something small. Looking down a little girl looked up at me, her brown hair sat in two braids. Her lower lip quivered. I really need to watch where I’m going.

“I’m sorry are you okay?”

“DADDY!” Her father turned around, she ran to him grabbed onto his leg. “She pushed me!” she yelled pointing to me.

“I-I didn’t mean to… I didn’t see her. I accidentally walked into her.” I stated quickly. Her father laughed lightly.

“Don’t feel bad, you’re not the first one to hit into her today.” With another laugh, “She’s the only person who can actually walk around.”

A smile slid across my face, I’m not in trouble. “You have to be the size of a bunny to get around.”

“I like bunnies.” The girl stated, then to her father, “Daddy I want a bunny.”

We laughed, “I’m still sorry though.”

“It’s okay. It was a mistake. You can’t avoid every problem nor can you predict what will happen next.” I nodded and they walked down another row.

As I looked around, I saw that there was a sign on the floor next to a hole in the wall. Workers carried long planks of oak, back and forth from in and out of the room. I walked over to the sign to see what it read.

New Amphibians room,

Coming soon in October.

The museum was going to make the Reptiles and Amphibians room much bigger, which made sense, it really needed to be bigger. They were moving all the amphibian things into the new room and this room is going to be soul the Reptile room.

Standing up, something crashed into my head. BANG. That cracking sound was the last thing I heard. I saw the gray dirty floor come closer, and felt my necklace slip from my neck. I tried to grab it with my left hand but it slipped right through and fell to the floor. My head crashed into something hard and something round crash into my teeth. My eyes closed and the will to move or do anything slipped past me, and I fell into a heavy sleep.