Home is Breaking
2023 Gibberish Competition | Challenge 1
In case you missed it, I am participating in the 2023 Gibberish Competition! The first challenge is to tell a story that is intense and suspenseful, focusing on building and then releasing tension. You will find my entry below. I hope you enjoy it!
If you’d like to learn more about the Gibberish Competition, or find the other participants and their entries, you can do so here:
Word Count: 1753
Tentatively, Valerie reached out and touched the doorknob. She paused, hopeful, and tried to turn it. Locked. Children weren’t supposed to be upstairs at all, and much to her chagrin, Dad had locked the door today.
Luckily, she had swiped his spare key last week.
She let herself in, carefully locked the door behind her, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once she could see again, she pulled a chair over to the wall and climbed up to turn on the lights. The little room she was standing in contained a lot of buttons and a funny helmet. Valerie wasn’t exactly sure what all the buttons did – that was Daddy’s job – but she’d watched him enough times to know which ones would take her to Home.
“Boop bop,” she sing-songed to herself as the machine turned on. She slipped the little helmet onto her head, making sure that her eyes and ears were covered, just like she’d seen her father do with his patients.
Valerie closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly until her field of vision was bright with dancing yellow and green lights. She pictured her favorite place in the world, conjuring up as much detail as her little mind could think of: sunshine streaming through vibrant green leaves, wildlife teeming all around, a glittering lake heavy-laden with brightly-colored kayaks… and at the center of it all, on a tiny little island, a cottage made of rough-hewn stones and logs, with smoke and singing wafting together up the chimney and out over the water.
Home.
She hadn’t been to her real Home in forever, or so it felt. They’d moved away and never gone back. If she thought about it, it was only one Christmas that she hadn’t spent there, so maybe it was only five years or so. She was still not sure how many years happened between Christmases; she was almost seven, after all, and could only remember one or two.
But this was almost as good. Not quite as good, because her best friend Becky never came over to play, but almost as good. Valerie took off the helmet and peered through the window to the next room, which was almost too high for her to see through. A cheerful blue sky greeted her. That was a good sign. She dropped the helmet on the ground, threw open the second door, and grinned.
Home.
There it was, just like she always remembered it. Skipping, she made her way down to the lighthouse, where her little boat was always waiting for her. A chipmunk skittered out from her seat as she buckled on her life jacket. Her boat almost flew across the water, and before she knew it, she was standing inside the cottage.
She quickly set to work with her train set. For some reason, every time she visited this Home, Mom had put it away. She wasn’t sure how that kept happening, since Dad told that her Mom had died, but she wished that Mom would leave her trains out like she used to. It took her a lot of time to set them back up. There was the little village that went on the floor. The big city, where the train station could be found, went on the coffee table. Home, of course, belonged on the ledge of the fireplace.
Meticulously, with the focused concentration only a child can muster, Valerie laid tracks, constructed buildings, and planted trees. Lost in her own little world, she organized trading routes, negotiated peace deals between warring neighbors, and constructed an entire new neighborhood under the couch. Couchville, it was christened.
All of the sudden, the sky outside began flashing red. She looked up from her trains. How long had she been here? An alarm bell began sounding as a mechanical whir clunked and thunked and steadied, gradually increasing in intensity.
There was something she was supposed to do when this happened, but she couldn’t quite remember what it was. Next to her, the fireplace began to vibrate. Her trains rattled on their tracks, and one fell off the ledge. When it hit the floor, it pixelated, fell apart, and dissolved into thin air. The rest of the trains followed suit, and the fireplace was starting to look unstable.
She’d outstayed her welcome.
“SHOOT.” Valerie didn’t quite know who was supposed to be shooting, but she’d heard her dad say it last time this had happened. Maybe it was a command sequence. “SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT.”
Nothing.
Valerie surveyed the cabin one last time before placing her hand on the knob. It felt warm to the touch, which scared her a little, but she flung open the door anyway. The fresh air hit her face, and for a moment, she forgot why her heart was beating faster. She breathed in deeply, and almost went wandering off again before she noticed that the red light was still flashing from the sky, and the alarm was getting louder and more urgent.
Oh, right. Home was breaking. She needed to get to the door. Where was that door again? She thought for a moment, trying to remember the view she’d seen when she walked in. All she’d been able to see from the window was the sky, so that was no help. She’d gotten into her boat to get to the cottage… Maybe she’d just paddle back across the lake and see if she could find the door. She darted back to the shore of the island, noticing as she ran that her shoe was untied. Did she have time to fix it? Probably not. And it wasn’t like she could tie it all the way by herself anyway. She hopped into the boat, pushed herself into the water, and started back across the lake. The wind had picked up, and it was hard for her to keep her boat pointed at the lighthouse like Daddy had taught her. Soon it was entirely out of her view.
Looking around, Valerie realized that she had no idea where she was. Or more importantly, where the door was.
This was bad. She didn’t know exactly what happened when Home broke, but Daddy had always seemed upset about it. He was always so careful to leave before the red light started to flash. He had told her to never, ever come here by herself. She racked her brain for the word he’d used… implicate? irrigate? obliterate? disintegrate? One of those. She didn’t know what any of them meant, anyway. But a feeling in her tummy told her that something bad would happen if she didn’t find the door.
All at once, her delightful dreamland became sinister. The sunlight shining through the trees and reflecting off the water hadn’t changed, but they seemed… bigger. Scarier. All of the animals had hidden and their little chatters had gone silent. The wind was getting colder and louder, whistling in harmony with the whirring noise that still hummed in the background. The flashing red light and the blaring alarm screamed at her to panic. She could feel her heart beating all the way down the tips of her fingers, and thinking was suddenly so much harder than it normally was. Her arms moved the paddle back and forth and back and forth, almost without her choosing, and she jolted when the boat hit land.
As she clamored out of the boat, it started to vibrate. Breathing quickly, Valerie tripped onto the shore and tried to stand and run, but her left foot was stuck. One of her shoelaces, still untied, had caught on the boat and refused to budge. Twisting around to try and reach it, Valerie stretched her fingers as far as she could. No luck. She tried to push herself back into a standing position, not wanting to touch the boat. She could feel it heating up through her sneakers.
“SHOOT!” She tried again, hoping it would work this time. Still nothing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the cabin crumble, its dust carried off by the wind. Home was breaking. It wouldn’t stop. Would she break too? Tears blurred her vision as she tried to force her brain to focus. She looked back at her shoelaces and wished her fingers would just untie them without her having to work so hard to see them.
The water behind her turned to steam, floating up and away. The wind was howling by now, and the temperature just kept dropping. Her fingers were so cold that it was hard to move them, and her foot was starting to go numb inside her shoes.
She wanted to cry. She was never going to leave this place. It didn’t feel like Home anymore. Why had she come here? Daddy had told her never to come here without him. Why had she come?
The back of the boat turned to sand and slipped away.
“Please,” she whispered. “Someone. Anyone.”
Her voice cracked.
“Help…”
Next to her, a doorway flashed into existence, and her father’s silhouette appeared it in.
“VALERIE!” His voice was frantic. She’d never heard him sound so terrified.
“DAD! OVER HERE!” Her foot was still caught in the seat, which was beginning to vibrate more intensely. The back of the boat was gone, and the paddle had vanished into thin air. The alarm bell was almost one continuous whine, so familiar and constant she’d forgotten about it.
He raced over, his face clearly betraying his fear.
“Shi-” His voice was barely more than a whisper as he fumbled with her laces. “Shoot.”
He gave up on the laces, tugged her foot out of her shoe, and scooped her up into his arms. He half-ran, half-stumbled in the direction he’d come from, his breathing heavy from the effort. They passed through the anteroom, where helmet still lay on the floor. Finally, they tumbled, almost on top of one another, through the doorway. Valerie’s father slammed the door shut behind them. As the door closed, as the little bit of Home she could still see shrunk smaller and smaller, Valerie saw the forest itself begin to pixelate and fall apart, drifting off like so much smoke from the cottage chimney. The door closed with a crash that shook the house.
Her dad pulled her into a bear hug, sobbing. She’d never seen him cry before. Not even after Mom died.
“Valerie, please never do that to me again.”
She was sobbing too.
“I love you, Daddy.”
I hope you enjoyed the story! I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. What worked, what didn’t? Were there any questions left unanswered? Drop a comment and let me know!
Stay tuned for my entry in the next challenge, which will be posted between July 15th and 19th as per the competition rules:
Finally, if you haven’t yet subscribed to Blinking Blue Line, I would love to have you join me on this adventure. I’m still in the world-building phase, but I’m hoping to begin posting regularly after the Gibberish competition is completed, the academic year begins again, and I’m able to decide on a publishing schedule that works for my family.
Received, Read, reviewed, and your feedback is prepared! For fairness, I will wait to deliver it once I've received and reviewed your fellow competitor's stories as well.
That aside, I enjoyed this! You'll see my more detailed comments this week, but splitting hairs aside and taking your story for what it is, I enjoyed it a lot! Have you ever read Ray Bradbury's short story "The Veldt"? It hits some similar notes though takes it in a different direction.
Well done!
Wow ... Very vivid picture, Sara.