Am I here or not?

[Luke2004]

Am I here or not?

 

Well, it all started when my mates and I decided to meet at the park, we all got ready, but I was late. I rushed about to make sure I had all the stuff I needed, then I shouted to my mum, “I’m going to meet my mates, be back later.” She tried to reply, as I heard her start to say something after I’d closed the door. I began walking towards the park, when I arrived we didn’t really have time to do anything, it started to thunder. The sky was dark, the rain came pouring down. We wanted to get into a shelter as soon as we could; we began to walk around looking for a shelter. We found a house, an empty house. I said to my mate James, “Go on, what you stood there for?” He replied sharply, “I’m just stood here looking around – making sure that nobody about.” I began to say “What do you mean ‘making sure that…” I couldn’t finish, Matthew had butted in and said “C’mon guys, what you waiting for?” We all stepped inside to find nothing, but empty plain walls, or so I thought.

 

I said to everyone “I’m going to go exploring; I’ll meet you guys back here in half an hour. If I’m not back, come looking for me.” James shouted “What do you mean, if you’re not back?!” James is one of these people who are frightened to try new things, and wasn’t really looking forwarding to staying in the house. Matthew replied before I had a chance, “He means, if he gets lost.” Matthew always tried to think of a reason to stop James from worrying although it didn’t always work it seemed to this time. I replied trying to sound convincing “Yeah…exactly…what… I meant.” I walked off, leaving them in the passage way, I found some stairs and slowly walked up them, scared in a kind of way. There were three bedrooms, it looked like this house once belonged to a family, and it suited one anyway. I went into one of the bedrooms, which had a gleaming golden stone in the corner… I touched it, to make sure it was real, I managed to touch it, and convince myself I wasn’t dreaming. I decided to go back down the stairs, looking for Matthew and James. There they were, still stood in the passage way, James looking after Matthew. I began to explain “Hey guys, I’ve been up the stairs and I found this golden stone… gleaming!” I waited a second, and there was no reply. I didn’t know what was going on, I went up to them, slightly pushing James, although he felt himself move, for some reason I don’t think he could see me. I was really mystified here, I didn’t have a clue what was going on, I couldn’t get anybody to notice me. Could that stone be magic, and make you invisible? It could have been anything; I wasn’t sure at this stage.

 

It was such a coincidence though, I decided to walk back up the stairs, this time hurrying as quickly as I could, and touch the stone again – I thought if I had actually been made invisible touching it again would make me re-appear. However it never did, I kept trying, still nothing, after a while I started to her Matthew with nerves in his voice scream “Luke… are… you … there?” I was going to reply, although I released I could now be invisible I still tried. “I’m up the stairs to the left, inside the room” I replied at the top of my voice. This time James began, he sounded scared, it was strange for James, he has always been the brave ‘tough’ guy, he began “Luke… this isn’t the time or the place to go around ignoring people.” It didn’t matter how hard I tried nobody could hear me, it must be true.

 

I figured that it was true, I was actually invisible all the things I’d wanted to do when I was a kid, I had wanted to become invisible but not now, not here.

 

I decided to walk along the landing and go into another room, where there was a book, not just a normal book, it was open on a page – I began to read it. It said ‘If you ever touch that gold stone you need to get somebody to say “Whoever touched the stone, reappear before me, now.”

 

This puzzled me, how on earth could I possibly get someone to read those out loud, then I remembered I was invisible. I could put the book in front of Matthew and he would call James tell him he found the book on the floor and read out what it said. But would he? I stood thinking, it took me about half a hour to figure that he most probably would, as he would be puzzled himself, wondering what this gold stone actually is. I picked up the book, and sneaked around to make sure nobody noticed me, after all I didn’t want Matthew and James to run off and leave me. I managed to get the book in front of James when he wasn’t looking, he said “Hey James look at this…” pointing to the book, I was almost hitting myself, the only time I needed him to help me the most and he’d let me down. I was amazed at what happened next, James said “Whoever touched the stone, reappear before me, now… what does that mean? What gold stone? Where could it be?” I reappeared. I heard Matthew say “What…What… AHHH!!!” he was very scared, you could just tell that by the tone of this voice. I didn’t take half a second to answer, “To cut a long story short, DON’T GO UP THE STAIRS. I’ll tell you the full story later.” This time Matthew saying without been scared, “Hey look guys… it’s stopped raining!!” James said, “Oh well, never mind.” I was starting to think to myself weather we should have gone to the park at all, because if we hadn’t, this wouldn’t have happened, Matthew wouldn’t be scared to death, I wouldn’t have been made invisible. It was good been invisible I just didn’t like the way of getting back to a see-able state. I was glad that I could now be seen, I was happy to see that the rain had stopped. On the way back to our street, we decided it would be safer to keep all of this a secret, to not let any body know, as it’ll spread and everyone will want to go there.

 

 

I'll post it all when I've finished, tell me what you think so far please.

 

It's meant to be sort of a mystery story, although this is the introduction it'll be hard to judge the genre of this piece. - Luke.

Edited May 19, 2005 by Luke2004

[ThaddeusMcKlown]

you're quite talented at both graphics and writing. but it dosen't nec. flow at some places, and it hasa some minor grammatical errors. w/e. you did well

-TM-

[Luke2004]

Thanks, it's meant to be like a first person story, you might have read them before, where the book is written first person. - Luke.

[BrassKnuckles]

I read your story, and it sounds like a decent beginning to an archetypal tale, which isn't a bad idea. But please rework the mechanics to make your story easier on the eye. One thing to do, for example, would be to make each new quote a paragraph. Like so:

 

"This picture frame is too small," said Harriet.

 

"You complain about everything," replied Jim. "Stop it."

 

Harriet started to cry. "I'm telling!"

 

And so forth. Also, vary the length of your sentences and the composition of your syntax (ie. instead of all sentences being simple sentences like "Yancy knocked over the glass," throw in some complex or compound-complex sentences, like "Yancy, never lacking in clumsiness, knocked over the glass and spilt all the wine.") to keep the reader interested.

 

Above all, however, keep going with this.

[Luke2004]

OK Thanks for the tips, I'll keep going and see what I get. - Luke.

[Kayuni]

Nicely done. Haven't seen many mysteries on here -- not that there are many active posters here anyhow.

[Vanzant]

I like reading stories written in First person better, great work.

[Luke2004]

I've added the rest of the story to the first post.

 

Thanks for your comments everyone. - Luke.