I wrote this for my Creative Writing group meeting tonight and wanted to share it with anyone I could. I might be making a website for said group to showcase our writing on, just to try and show people what we do/can do. The prompt this was based off of was: you walk into your house and it�s completely different � furniture, decor, all changed. And nobody�s home. I might make this into a long story, I might not. I still need to finish "Hazel and Duane" and edit it. (Not to mention I'm thinking about writing a prequel and/or a sequel to that story as well, if enough people enjoy it).
I wandered into my apartment around 2 am last night. I usually don�t go out after work, but some of my friends had invited me to a club. I�m such a hermit, and I�d been doing the usual routine of going home, watching TV and then going to bed for two weeks now. Yeah, I went out on weekends, but there was something about going home right after work that made my life feel like one big non-event.
I honestly don�t remember much about the club, or anything, really. Just that I came home with a strange hum in my ears, as if they were underwater while the rest of me wasn�t. I fell asleep on the couch, grabbing the blanket I used to protect it for warmth. It sounds pretty normal, doesn�t it? Except for what happened when I woke up, that is.
I opened my eyes wearily, thinking it would be about 11 am, the usual wake up time for me on Saturday. But when I looked at the clock, it said 1 pm. No big deal, just a couple of hours of extra sleep, which I probably needed.
But then I looked at the clock again and realized something. That wasn�t my clock. My clock was just the digital readout on the cable box. But the cable box wasn�t there. Instead, there was a small, old TV with rabbit ears. The clock was above the TV, one of those 50�s style cat clocks, which surprisingly worked. For a while there, I got caught up in the back and forth movements of it�s eyes and tail, but then I snapped out of it, looking at the rest of the room.
The walls weren�t white, but rather, a sea foam green. The carefully framed and placed paintings that dotted my walls were gone, replaced by grungy looking band posters, hung up with pushpins. My cat and his cozy bed were gone, nowhere to be found. The room was surprisingly bare, besides the TV and the couch, there sat a red (if you could call it that, most of the paint was worn off) Fender Stratocaster, a beat up Marshall amp and a small music stand with music on it.
Finally, I looked down at the couch itself. My blanket was still on me, but this time, it was one of those ones you get for your car in case it breaks down. The couch was no longer a dark green, but rather, a very garish orange. It wasn�t as comfortable, either, as I could feel at least one spring digging into my back. Where the heck was I? Did I even know anyone like this?
I got up off the couch and decided to see if there was anyone in this apartment. I looked through the poor excuse for a kitchen, with its tiny table and bare cabinets (I was really hungry, not that I wouldn�t have repaid the person had I found anything worth eating). I checked in the bedroom, which was just a twin bed, a small desk with a giant laptop and a closet filled with boxes. I checked in the bathroom, with it�s pastel colors and ocean theme. There was an odd messiness to this place, and it was very spare. As if the person who lived there was never there at all. Which was also true now, of course.
I decided to try and call one of my friends, or maybe a cab to get home. But when I grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket, and opened it, it wouldn�t work. My phone said it was in an area without service, which angered me. My phone worked almost everywhere, why wouldn�t it work here? I decided to open the door to the apartment, to find out where the hell I was in the first place.
I looked at the door, which was also pretty plain. The number on the door said 707 and the name�was mine! This shocked me, and confused me. Why was I friends with a girl who had the same name as me? My name was really common, so it wasn�t a stretch, but still, how could I forget knowing her? I left the door slightly ajar to walk down the halls and look for the elevator. Except, there wasn�t one, only seven flights of stairs, which I was forced to trek down.
On my way out, I came across the mailroom, which was on the side across from the entrance. I would have ignored the room normally, but someone stopped me on my way out.
�Hey, Scarlett, what are you doing out so early?� said a young man; he was probably younger than me, actually.
�What do you mean?� I asked, shifting my eyebrows.
�Well, you usually don�t go out until about seven or eight at night, and you don�t come home until four in the morning or so. By the way, your hearing about the noise ordinance violations is tomorrow. If you don�t show, you might get evicted.� He said, grabbing his mail.
�What are you talking about?�
�Are you sure you�re okay, you don�t seem yourself. Just watch yourself, Scarlett. There are a lot of old ladies in here who just like to make trouble. They don�t understand the younger generation. I think if you keep working hard, your band could really go somewhere.� He said, unzipping his sweatshirt to show a dark blue band shirt.
�The Full brings? I�ve never heard of them before. Are they any good?� I said, wondering what he was trying to tell me.
�What is going on with you? Maybe you should go to the hospital. If you can�t remember your own band�s name after your big show last night, then there�s something going on. Well, I have to go for a run now,� He said, zipping up his sweatshirt. �But I�ll see you around.�
Before I could process what he�d said, he was gone. I thought about going outside, but I didn�t have any key to get back in. I decided to retreat to the apartment that was supposedly mine, until I could figure out a plan of some sort. If I was lucky, maybe something would happen to let me know what was, well, you know, happening.
When I wandered back in, everything was pretty much the same. I decided to snoop around the apartment some more, hopefully to find a key. I really wanted to have lunch, since by now it was almost two in the afternoon. Alas, there was no key to be found, I really had no idea where this girl kept her stuff, but it wasn�t where I would keep my things. There wasn�t even a little key rack, or even a purse. This girl was supposed to be me, but honestly, she was nothing like me at all.
I started to get bored with searching, so I snooped around in other ways. I took a look at the sheet music that was on the stand. It looked interesting, but when I tried to play it, I couldn�t. I was never a music person in the first place, so it made sense that I wouldn�t wake up in a weird place with magical music skills. I just hoped that no one would come in expecting me to play any of the songs that for some reason had my name on them. I then turned on the TV, which only led to more confusion.
There was a presidential address on TV, about the war in the north. Wait? The north? Like Canada? Indeed, it seemed as though there was a war between the people of Quebec and those in the rest of Canada over Quebec�s independence. It seemed to have gotten quite bad, if our president had to make a statement about it. The worst part was that the president looked very familiar to me, in fact, she appeared to be my grandmother. Not just physically, but she had the same voice, the same taste in clothing. But her love for crime dramas was now replaced with pure political savvy. It startled me so much that I dropped the remote.
I paced back and forth in the living room, then the kitchen, then the bedroom. What was I going to do? I didn�t belong in this world; I didn�t fit in here. There was a mistake somewhere, but no way for me to fix it. Everyone would believe I was this girl that I wasn�t and it freaked me out. Once they started to depend on me for things, I would surely fail, and this other girl�s status would be ruined. I took a few deep breaths, and tried to reassure myself that I could do this. I decided to take a bath and change my clothes, so that I could get out of this apartment for a bit and clear my head. I�d leave the door unlocked and maybe find out where that guy from the mailroom had gone, so that he could let me in when I came back. Maybe I could find the landlord and tell him I�d lost my key, or her, really.
After my bath, I went and grabbed some clothes, which fit me quite well. While I was in the closet, I noticed a door behind all of the clothes. It was a smaller door than the other ones, but I could still fit in it. I checked to see if it was locked, it wasn�t. I opened it, and as soon as I did, I was enveloped in darkness. When I turned around, the door I had come out of was gone. The only option left for me was to keep walking straight.
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