The Challenge:
In
3000 words or less, write about a unique child who has been left
orphaned when their parents leave them without saying anything. How does
this child survive?
The Result:
Left in the Attic
By, Zachary Katz-Stein
Ardent closed her
eyes and hugged her knees into her chest, breathing in the familiar scent of
dust and sweat that clung to her stockings. It had been...twenty-two days since
she'd washed them and she'd worn them thirteen times...or had it been longer?
She shook her head. Since what Ardent thought of as "The Accident,"
days had begun to blur together.
The creak of wood
from directly below made Ardent catch her breath and squeeze her legs in
tighter. She counted to ten, then to twenty before she allowed herself to
breathe. She waited for the any sign of life below. Nothing. Muscles protesting
shrilly, Ardent slowly uncurled and rose to her feet.
She was in her
attic, surrounded on all sides by walls of boxes, moats of blanket-covered
furniture, and guarded by framed photographs of her parents. She touched one of
these as she passed, caressing the cracked glass. Though the attic was dimly
lit by the moonlight through the dormer window, Ardent moved silently across
the warped wood of the floor. When she reached the trap door she paused,
touching the cool metal pull ring and closing her eyes.
She didn't know
how, but sometimes when she did this she could tell if someone was in the hall
below. Her ears would grow hot and her cheeks would burn, just as they had in The
Time Before when Eric had kissed her
cheek after class. That had been an
exciting feeling though; this one made her afraid. She couldn't let people know
she was still here, not after The Accident.
Ardent's ears and
cheeks remained cool and pale. No one was there. Slowly, she pulled the trap
door to the attic up and lowered the ladder into the hall. Quiet and quick as a
shadow, she flowed down the ladder and started toward the stairs. These too she
passed as quickly and quietly as she could. Now that she had broken cover, her
best hope lay in speed and besides, she knew every grain of wood in that house,
including which could be trusted to keep their mouths shut and which could not.
Her first stop
was the bathroom. As hungry and thirsty as she was, certain calls of nature
became unavoidable if one held one's bladder all day. That done, she turned
toward the kitchen. She couldn't take much, Ardent reminded herself. Too much
missing food would get her noticed. Her stomach growled audibly. But so would
too little.
Carefully, Ardent
took one slice of bread from the middle of two different loaves so that both
were still the same length. Next, she stole a few slices of meat and a small
bit of cheese. All of this was fairly routine. When she opened the freezer,
however, her willpower was tested. There, on its own plate as though waiting
especially for her, was a beautiful strawberry sundae.
It was perfect.
Its vanilla mounds were topped with just the right amount of sauce. There were
even a few freshly cut strawberries along the rim of the dish, just the way she
liked it. Ardent swallowed and licked her lips, unable to take her eyes off the
prize. How long had it been since she'd had ice cream? Thirty days? Fifty? One
hundred? She wasn't sure; it seemed like a lifetime.
Ardent knew she
shouldn't take it, knew it was probably a trap, but her hand started to reach
toward the treat anyway.
"Mommy?"
a voice called from the hall outside the kitchen. "Mom?"
Ardent pivoted
around the refrigerator and sank to the floor as a young boy, maybe five years
old, shuffled into the kitchen. The boy rubbed his eyes and looked around in
confusion. "I'm here," a woman responded, stepping right past Ardent
to wrap the boy in a tight hug.
Ardent squeezed
herself further into the corner, not daring to believe the woman hadn't seen
her, yet she hadn't said anything so maybe...
"What are
you doing up at this hour sweetling?" Ardent heard the mother ask.
"I don't
know..." the boy replied, a frown in his voice. "I was asleep, and
then I had a feeling that it was important for me to come downstairs..."
His mother chuckled.
"If that half frozen sundae is any indicator, I think I know what drew
you..."
"It wasn't
that!" the child replied indignantly. "I was saving it for
later!"
"Uh-huh,"
the woman said. "Well, in that case, let's give your self-control a little
help, and head back upstairs shall we?" Ardent heard footsteps retreating
upstairs so she assumed the boy had agreed.
She lowered
herself to the floor and slowly peeked around the cabinet at floor level. The
coast was clear. Ardent reached the sanctuary of her attic without further
incident. The trap door closed behind her and she breathed again.
Ardent moved to
her little nest in the far corner. She had made her "bed" from old
clothes, winter coats, and spare table settings that had been swallowed by the
attic long ago. Nestling herself into the folds of fabric, Ardent drew comfort
from the large writing desk that protected one side of her bed and from the
wall of boxes that shielded the other. She was safe here.
She began to
breathe slowly and deeply. Her muscles tensed and released. Her pulse still
sounded in her ears. She had almost been caught. In fact, she thought the woman
had seen her, but no. She couldn't
have or else she would have reacted. Screamed probably. How else could she have
reacted to finding Ardent still in the house?
Slowly, her body
relaxed. Soon she was fast asleep...
...She was in her
room. Ardent came awake slowly. Her thoughts were muddled as if she'd slept in
later than usual. Then she sat bolt upright. She had slept more than usual and now she was late! She tore out of her
room and hopped down the hall, trying to slip on her shoes. She stamped into
them just in time to take the stairs two at a time, calling out, "Why didn't
you wake me up? You know I hate being late!"
Nothing.
No response.
She reached the
bottom of the stairs. "Mom!" she shouted. "Dad! Are you ready to
go? "
Silence.
"Hello?"
she called out, suddenly nervous. Ardent began to wander. Something was wrong.
She was definitely home, but somehow it didn't look right. It looked...older?
The familiar furniture was worn and patched in ways she couldn't remember, and
where were her parents? One generally left early to open the family bakery, but
the other was always there to make sure she got to school safely.
Ardent could only
remember one other time she had come down the stairs to find an empty house,
and then they'd at least left a note on the table.
She walked
quickly into the kitchen, certain that they must have remembered to leave her a
note at least. Then she froze. She walked over and placed her hand on the
smooth, well-worn wood of the kitchen table. Here was the problem, the thing
that made Ardent's spine tingle: her family had just bought a new kitchen
table. This table was worn, but it was also unmistakably the same. Her brain
tried and failed to make sense of it. It was the same table and it wasn't.
Her shock carried
her dazedly over to a window. She looked out and, again, had the strange,
disconcerting feeling of looking at the familiarly impossible. The street was
the same...and it wasn't. It looked more developed, the buildings looked bigger
and older than they were yesterday. She shook her head.
The rattle of
keys in a lock jerked her back to reality. Finally, she thought, that must be
one of them now. She had started toward the door when it cracked open and
unfamiliar voices drifted in. Ardent froze. She didn't know why but the idea of
strangers with a key to her house, on top of the other shocks of the morning,
terrified her. She dropped to the floor and rolled behind a couch as the door
opened.
"As you can
see, Lady, we haven't changed anything."
The sound of footsteps.
Three? No, four. "I can see
that," a female voice said. "It's exactly as I remember it."
There was a strange catch in that voice, as though the memory was not entirely
a pleasant one.
"Are you all
right?" a different, slightly deeper, male voice asked.
"Yes,"
the woman said. "Or at least I will be. It's just been a very long time
since we've been here, that stupid fight..."
"You
couldn't have known."
"No,"
the woman sighed, "but I could have been less stubborn."
"This is the
one you were looking for, isn't it?" the higher male voice asked.
"Yes,"
the woman said again, a smile in her voice this time. "We'll take
it."
...Ardent woke up
with a gasp and then had to hold her breath to keep from coughing as her sudden
movement raised clouds of dust.
"I thought I might find you up here," a calm,
familiar, woman's voice said.
Ardent jumped to her feet and whirled to face the intruder,
mentally preparing for me worst. The woman would tell her that she was crazy
and her parents were dead. She would say that Ardent would have to go to an orphanage
and that she'd never see Eric again.
The woman smiled as if reading these thoughts in Ardent's eyes.
Something about the smile spoke to Ardent. She recognized it. It was her
mother's smile. "You're not crazy, and your parents aren't dead," the
woman said. "Well, actually here they are, but don't worry you'll have
many more years to spend with them and," she added with a conspiratorial
wink, "you'll see plenty of Eric, I promise."
Ardent backed away quickly, bumping into the desk behind her.
This woman was a mind-reader, a witch, who wanted to kill her. How else could
she know what Ardent was thinking?
The woman's smile grew a little broader. "I'm not a
mind-reader, or a witch, and I certainly don't want to kill you...or haven't
you guessed yet? You don't really have to answer, I know you have." She
brushed her straight black hair out of her eyes and smiled Ardent's mother's
smile again. Her smile.
Ardent's eyes went to the crescent shaped scar on the back of
the woman's wrist, reflexively touching the same spot on her own wrist. She'd
gotten it after falling out of a tree and badly breaking her arm. "Hurts
still sometimes, doesn't it?" the woman asked, her hand going to the same
spot. "Funny the tricks that the mind plays on the body."
"H-how...?" Ardent managed to stammer.
"How did I know you were here? How is this possible? And,
maybe your biggest question, why have I let you live in the attic for close to
three months without saying anything when I surely must have remembered how
torturous it was?" Ardent nodded and closed her mouth, ready to listen.
The woman sighed. "Well," she said, "the last
question effectively answers the first doesn't it? I knew you were here because
I remember being here myself twenty..." she thought for a moment,
"...twenty five or so years ago. I'm honestly still not entirely sure how
it's possible and that's part of the reason I let you hide in your personal
little hell for three months."
"The other reason is
that I'm afraid we'll need the skills you developed here. The ability to move
silently, the feel of wood under your feet and how to tell when it's going to
creak. We'll need to know how to hide, how to steal, how to feel if the
adjacent room is empty. Most of all we'll need to know how to survive without
anyone or anything around." The woman, the older Ardent, shook her head.
"Our life hasn't
been - won't be - easy. You'll have to deal with the Snatchers when you get
where you'll go next, then there'll be your little run in with Principal
Kelledorn. Let me tell you now, this is a time when the 'principal' is not your
'pal.'" Ardent's vision blurred and she heard a ringing in her ears as the
woman talked and talked, apparently dying to get twenty five years of baggage
off her chest...
"...fight," the
woman concluded. "You'll have to fight I'm afraid, you won't want to, but
you'll have to. I - " Suddenly the stream of words stopped and she looked
down at Ardent's glazed look with surprise and amusement. "Good God,"
she said, "I remember feeling like that. You haven't taken in a word I've
said have you? No, of course not, I remember."
She gazed over Ardent's
head now as if looking into the past. "The damn woman wouldn't shut up.
She kept going on and on and when I finally began to believe I could time
travel, I swore to myself that I wouldn't make the same mistake." Her
shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. "Yet, here I am, prattling at
you just as she - I - did before, ah Ardent. Time is such a strange thing -
especially for us."
Again she looked up, seeming to think for a moment
before continuing even more seriously. "We don't have much time left, but
I need to say two more things before you go: first, don't trust the gap-toothed
man, you'll know him when you see him, and second," the woman smiled.
"When you feel like giving up, when they have you trapped, outsmarted and
outgunned, remember this: our story has a happy ending. Everything will work
out. Goodbye now child, enjoy our life."
Ardent was about to ask what she meant. Was this
woman - her older self - going to leave her to her attic now? Then she felt
sick. The room, which had merely blurred before, began to spin in earnest. The
ringing in her ears turned to a roar and then the room went black...
...When Ardent opened her eyes she saw a bright
light and a white ceiling. She looked down. She was lying in a hospital bed,
tucked under too warm covers, in a gown, with an IV sticking out of her arm.
"How are you feeling?" a pleasant male
voice asked.
Ardent looked left and saw a gap toothed nurse
leaning over her with a needle. He followed her gaze to the syringe in his hand
and smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry about this," he said. "It's
just to help with the pain."
What pain? Ardent felt fine, except for the IV in
her arm. There was a bang out in the hallway as a janitor and doctor collided
and the gap toothed man glanced automatically toward the door. Ardent carefully
but quickly removed the IV and rolled out of bed.
She hit the floor on all fours, cat-like, and
scrambled under the bed.
"What the - ?" the nurse exclaimed as he
turned back to find her bed empty. He started around the foot of the bed to see
if she was hiding behind it. Ardent began to crawl silently toward the door. By
the time the nurse stooped to look under the bed she was nearly there.
"Hey!
Stop!"
Ardent ran and didn't look back.
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