Once Upon A Time

Prologue

            Everything was completely quiet except for the soft breathing of the sleeping teen snuggled in her bed.  The door slowly creaked open and a small girl peeked her head in.  A stream of light from the hallway illuminated into the room and the girl quickly shuffled into the room, closing the door behind her.  The young girl glanced around the room with a look of excitement on her face.  In her small hands she had a huge leather bound book cradled to her form.  The book was almost as big as her and she had great difficulty carrying the large item.

            The young girl glanced at her sleeping older sister slyly, double checking that she was still peacefully sleeping.  Satisfied that her older sibling was out like a light she tiptoed her way through the big room.  Time was of the essence for the time being because the sleeping teen could awaken at any moment, thus, the young child would be busted.  The young girl wasn’t even supposed to have the grand book in her possession.  If her sister were to wake up the young girl just knew she would get in so much trouble.  This is why she had to do her dirty work quickly and return the book to its rightful place on the shelf.

            The young girl’s soft footsteps made pitter pattering sounds on the hard wooden floor beneath her.  Her bare feet slapping against the cold floor.  She would stop every couple of steps to make sure the small sounds weren’t arousing the sleeping teen.  Her heartbeat continued to speed up and the blood was rushing past her ears.  Her heart was thumping so loudly that she feared it could wake the dead or in this case the sleeping.

            The girl was halfway there when her sister let out a small groan.  The girl froze and looked over her shoulder, keeping as still and quiet as she could.  Her breathing stopped and she clutched the book to her chest even tighter.  The tan skin around her knuckles was turning a ghostly white as she willed her sister to fall back asleep, missing the fact that there was another breathing person in her room.

            The elder sibling soon let out a content sigh and turned over in her bed, her breathing evening out once again.  The young girl was thrilled that she wasn’t caught and hoped for the best that she would get out of the room unnoticed.  She continued on her way to the bookshelf until she was finally standing in front of it.  Old, bound book still glued to her chest she peeled it from her and stared at it for a few seconds.  The moon light that reflected into the room gave way to the eerie design that was engraved on the books cover.

            She ran her small fingers over it, admiring the artwork on its cover.  It was so intricate that it enticed her to open the book, being sucked farther until its depths.  Fingering through the pages she fell upon the story she enjoyed the most.  It was a story that her sister would always read to her before bed.  This is indeed how the young girl attained the book in the first place. 

For the first time her sister was quite unobservant and snagged the wrong book while leaving the young girls room.  Instead she had grabbed her younger sister’s book full of nursery rhymes.  The book looked extremely similar to the story book for they both looked aged and contained a great magic.  Yet, they each had different owners and were both far from home.  

But, the young girl could care less at the moment.  She was so drawn into the page that she was reading.  She wanted to keep this story to herself and the part she was reading was one of her favorite scenes.  It was a scene where the hero was fighting the villain, with no other character related at the moment.  She loved a good adventure story and the fight scenes were always the best.  So doing the most unthinkable thing she ripped out the page, folded it up, and stuffed into her pajama pockets.

She thought the magic would be nulled if the entire story wasn’t ripped out.  If it was only a page it would hurt.  She switched the two identical books out with a wide grin plastered on her face.  The young girl was completely enthralled accomplishment when nothing took a turn for the worst.  Trying not the press her luck she shuffled out of the room quickly and shut the door behind her.  With the page tucked away in her pocket she went off to bed without a care in the world.

All things were once quiet again, with only the soft breathing of the teen girl.  The clock in her room ticked softly, a faint ghost tone in the background.  All of the clocks in the house that were set at the same time ticked together and once the clock struck twelve the grandfather of all clocks chimed.  The sound was loud and booming, but also raspy like the voice of an elderly grandfather.  The chime echoed down the hall, deep and rich, the only disturbance that rattled through the whole house.

The grandfather clock chimed seven…eight…nine…ten…eleven…twelve times before it lingered off into nothingness and all was quiet again.  Once again the clock in the teen’s room ticked away softly, without a care in the world.  But, at 12:01 A.M. sharp, that’s when all hell broke loose and there was peace no more.

A/N: Please comment and tell us what you think.  More to come soon. :)