Short Stories

Story Jumping

It began with a story.

My grandmama could always tell the best stories. She'd take you there and suddenly you were in a different world and everything was amazing. She had perfected the storytelling art. The way my grandmama wove her words was like some sort of magic. She spoke of things that I swore weren't real but they felt like it.

Then I go and find out that they are real. She was telling a story like any other time, her audience enraptured. Then the air started to shimmer before my eyes. It was glowing, sort of, but mostly just shimmering like the sidewalk in a summer heat wave. I rubbed my eyes, and when I opened them, I wasn't at home anymore.

It jumped to my lips like a Mexican bean. It was a nasty word that my family would have disapproved of. I don't think I could have stopped myself from saying it even if I tried. It was just there suddenly, and I blushed even though nobody was around to hear it. My grandmama would have taken me and washed my mouth with soap, though, and it was awful to know she would have been upset if she was there.

I was kind of stunned, too, and I pinched myself at least three times because I thought I must be dreaming. But I wasn't dreaming. I stood up and looked around, the air was still doing the heat wave shimmering but I didn't dare rub my eyes.

I had been taken right out of my grandmama's big comfy couch and deposited on a bunch of desolate rocks and now I didn't want to go somewhere else. By my reasoning, if I'd rubbed eyes and got transported somewhere else, it would probably have been even farther away from home.

The sun was hot but there was some nice shady outcroppings nearby, and I headed there. A little stream of water trickled between the stones. I paused, thinking of all the hype about water that's not purified, but decided it was too hot - and ultimately too important - to not have the water. As I drew it to my lips I felt a burning like fire.

I swallowed hard, and the water went down with my swallow and the fire raged hotter. Then it went away, suddenly, and I tried a bit more. No fire this time, so I kept getting water. The flaming feeling had made me feel awfully thirsty. It was cold, colder than I'd think it would be, and I felt a sense of despair. Logic had been proven dead wrong and now all I could do was sit here and wait. And maybe travel, but hopefullly not 'til later. The sun was killer, my hands were already red from its heat. I curled up in the shade, trying to convince myself I was dreaming, and despite the overwhelming heat I managed to doze off.

It was twilight when I woke up, a hazy color of in-between times. I crawled from the shelter and was happy to find I wasn't near as hot as earlier. I looked towards the sky and saw a couple of stars. I was gonna have to find a way back home no matter what. With a sigh I started walking. It was hard to climb down all those rocks: it was like an elaborate pile that was supposed to be a maze.

I slipped, and bumpity-bumpity-bumped down the rocks. It was painful but finally I was at the bottom. I knew I had to get up but I didn't want to.

"Were you trying to get all the way up there?" It was a girl's voice, and I looked around to find an exotic-looking girl standing nearby. Her ears were pointy and her hair was spiked; it was green, too. I dared to rub my eyes. She was still there, looking all weird.

"They say it's impossible," she said dreamily, gazing up at the top. "And that if you do get up there, the sun burns like wildfire but the water's the temperature of ice."

"It's true," I said, thinking about my reddened skin. "The water burns at first, too, but then it's okay." She looked at me in surprise.

"Oh! You were trying to get back down," she said, looking a little giddy. "So it's all true? The sun burns like wildfire?"

"Yeah. Five minutes in the sun and my skin's red as a lobster." She giggled.

"So why did you go up in the day?" she asked me.

"I didn't. I was taken up from my home there." Upon this, she clasped her hands to her mouth and fled. I don't know what I said, but apparently it was bad. Taken from company, I sighed, and started walking. I'd have to find a way home by myself, then.

I thought to myself what could be wrong. In this place it couldn't be a rare occurrence that people were magically transported. Or at least I thought so. I mean, if my grandmama sent me here - and she had to have sent me here - she wouldn't have left me without anything.

Or at least that's what I thought - that's what I hoped. Because if my grandmama didn't send me here then nobody would know a thing and I might be lost forever. I couldn't think about that, though. If I thought about that, I'd just sit right down and cry, and cry, and cry.

I don't know how long I walked. Eventually though the sun was rising and it didn't burn. It felt kind of good after the chilly night. But I was exhausted, so I found a nice place to curl up - in the roots of a tree - and I slept until the sun was high in the sky.

By then I was very, very hungry. My stomach was growling and aching and begging for food. I would have eaten anything right then. But I crawled out from the tree and started hunting around for water. That was more important. My throat was parched and I really wanted to drink... something.

I ended up falling half-way into a hole. "I'm Alice," I thought as the world spun and I ended up in my bed. I was dirty and icky, but my grandmama was there with food and water. I ate and I drank as my grandmama told me what happened.

"You brought yourself into one of my stories, you silly girl," she said, "You changed it all up, though luckily the ending didn't change up much. You'd best be glad she went a-runnin', because otherwise the ending would have been all wrong. Nobody likes it when their stories are wrong, even if they think they're fiction." She went on like that for a bit, and I was confused. I just stared sort of blankly, until she finally stopped and sighed.

"Well, dear, we're going to have to work on that." She patted my head and left. I got up and took a shower.

My grandmama often talked to me about me "bringing myself" into stories. She would often say I need to work on it. I didn't pay much mind. I didn't bring myself into anything. Not especially anything that would defy and go against everything I knew. I just thought my grandmama was being silly.

She wasn't, though, because I got brought to another story and I wasn't anywhere near my grandmama that time. I had to go and find my own way home. I did, but it took a while. I started listening then.

She told me how stories are power. So, you see, even if you think a story's fiction, it isn't. There's always a way to tell it right, and a way to tell it wrong. And then there's some people who can just hop into a story and mess it all up.

Trust me, I've messed up my fair share of stories. Stories aren't as simple as one would like to think. You only get that when your world is turned upside-down. If you keep thinking about a story, you can be a part of that story. Or maybe you can be a storyteller, like my grandmama.

The stories are in all of us. Some of us figure it out with storytelling. Others of us figure it out with play-pretend. Or you may be like me, and you figure it out by bringing yourself in a story.

But whatever the case, everyone has a story - and everyone has a way to bring a story out into the light.

After all, it always begins with a story.