Week 12 Storytelling: An Alternate Dimension

Kristen was sitting at the kitchen table and slowly started to doze off to sleep while she was working on her homework. In her dream, she saw a long flight of stairs and a door at the top. Nothing else was in the room, it was all blank.

"Should I really open that door?" Kristen thought as she stared at the door ahead of her.

"Eh, why not?" she thought as she started to ascend the staircase.

As she opened the door, she stepped right into her kitchen at home—the exact same place where she fell asleep.

Her sister was always the one who kept to herself while she was at home—she never came out of her room. She now looked at her sister in the kitchen as she was relentlessly telling her dad everything that happened during her day.

Her dad always fell asleep watching TV when he got home from work every day. It was 7 p.m. and he was wide awake and talking to Kristen's sister in the kitchen. Her mother was always the one who was talking to Kristen at night and was passed out, asleep on the couch.

"Is this real life? Can they see me?" Kristen thought to herself.

"Oh, hi dear," Kristen's dad said as he ran up and gave her a hug.

Kristen gave him half of a hug back as she looked around the room at the two of them in dismay.

"Kristen, come join us at the table. Your sister was just telling me a story about how her ACT went today," her dad said.

Kristen followed him to the table and took a seat across the table from her sister.

"Kristen, oh my gosh! It went so well, and if I didn't get a nearly perfect score I'll be shocked!" her sister said as she looked at Kristen as her whole face lit up.

"Oh c'mon, Kristen! Tell your sister how happy you are for her!" her dad said as he patted Kristen on the back.

Kristen congratulated her sister, but immediately thought about how she missed how things were back in reality. She loved getting to talk to her sister and her dad like she normally wouldn't get to at this time, but she really appreciated how things were. She began to realize how she took her real life for granted. She loved her family. She loved having to practically pry her sister out of her room and have one-on-one talks about what was going on in her life. She loved talking to her mom in the kitchen as she worked on homework at night. She loved occasionally watching TV with her dad and talking until he fell asleep. She so desperately wanted to be back in reality.

Kristen closed her eyes and focused on her one wish.

"Please send me back home. Please send me back home," Kristen said as she began to notice her dad and sister's voices blend together. The whole room felt like it was spinning around her. Kristen opened her eyes and peeled her face from her textbook below her. She was back at the kitchen table again.

"Kristen honey, I made you your favorite homemade pizza," Kristen's mom said as she placed the scrumptious pizza in front of her.

Kristen glanced around the house. She saw her dad asleep on the couch with the TV on and heard her sister upstairs in her room talking to one of her classmates on the phone. Kristen sighed.

Life was perfect.

(illustration by John Tenniel)

Author's Note: I based this story off of the story "Looking-Glass House" from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll (1871). When Alice steps through the mirror above the fireplace at her house, she finds herself in an alternate dimension. I kept my story close to the original in this way by having my character enter an alternate dimension. When Alice entered her alternate dimension, she met people and creatures she had never met before in her life. I changed my story a little bit by having my main character meet the people she knew so well, but they acted the exact opposite of how they normally did.
The only thing I did change from the original story to mine is that Alice woke up from her dream by shaking the Red Queen and turning her into her own cat from home. My main character woke up by wishing that she was back in reality. Although they were both dreaming, Alice and Kristen both dreamt completely different dreams. I thought it would be cool to write a story about an alternate dimension because I think we all wonder at some point in our lives if everything we knew and everything that happened to us was totally different.