Escape the Crystal

A short story of a young girl who struggles to write her first story in years.

Here we go again, Mr. Imms, the hippy of the whole staff here at Octorara, or beat or whatever. Who cares. He's a cool cat. A loud, excessively sarcastic cat. And his whiskers long and thick, brownish, hanging, dragging far past his chin, reaching and clawing towards his shoulders. His hair in its own world, like two hands praying, smack against each other. And peculiar, a tail! A wagging curly tail of thinner hair than his whiskers. and it bounces with ever step and with every meow he cries. New people, old people, and the cat still stands tall...

Day two, assignment number one; her teacher told her to be creative. Creative! she thought. How can I possibly write a creative story about a freakin' crocodile, a PINEAPPLE and an escalator in a hotel? But she thought and couldn't figure out what to write about...

She started writing about a hotel and a spirit stalker. This is how her story went:

"She never even deserved to be in such a spooked hotel. So dark, haunting, ranked odor of the lost souls..."

This already sounds cheesy, she thought, but kept going with it anyway. Maybe it'll get better.

"The sun hasn't even risen and I've began my ghost-hunting. Sofia, the eight year old who died of poison, Ally, the girl's older sister who jumped out the window of the hotel after Sofia passed, and Gregory, unrelated to both but found in the hotel basement with no pulse just a day after Ally died,"

...

"And I'll meet them all." Dude, this is super negative, super scary... I don't even like scary movies. I do like how it's creepy but super negative... Maybe I should stop writing it... Nah.

She observed how short her story was and how much still had to be written, but her mind went blank at the thought of the next part of it. How was she supposed to write about a crocodile and a pineapple? They had no relation. Or what about the escalator in a hotel? Those things just weren't known to be in the same event or even in the same conversation. It wasn't until the next day when she and Megan compared stories, and to her surprise, they were both in the "creepy" theme. She wrote a little more.

"I peer down to the watch on my wrist. Lines over lines, whirling and running over each other like they're trying to escape the crystal; they must know I'm coming." She crossed that out. They must know I'm coming?? LAME. "Insanity is walking through these halls!" Okay, this is really the worst thing I've even written. One last try; "Ally was a lion in the middle of a cage full of mice."

That's it! She was officially done writing this horrible story. Too much crossing out, rewriting, uncertainty; she knew she was never going to finish it and clearly never be happy with it. She already knew that a good piece of her writing makes it's way to the paper fluently and all in one go, inspiration and ideas bursting left and right.

In study hall the same day, the conclusion hit her. What about writing the story and writing the story? An idea like no other, and hence, she stuck to it.

And it was exactly what she wanted, finally writing again for so long. Every word belonged in its place and everything sounded the way she wanted it to sound. She was happy writing it and satisfied with the paper she handed in to the cat.