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Chapter 1: The Thunderstorm

Brian peered out of the window.  The lightning really was quite remarkable.  He bent over his homework again, but soon gave up.  What the hell?  What was geometry compared to the comfort of cuddling under a quilt watching a good movie and sipping hot chocolate with marshmallows in it?  Oh well, he could always try again tomorrow.  He stuffed everything in his bag and climbed upstairs.   He opened the room he shared with his younger sister Meredith, and to his horror, he found that she had decided that the room needed redecorating.

The disaster that greeted him included pillow feathers flying everywhere, a huge painting labelled ‘Brain’ (she could never get his name right) that showed him under a severe diet and with huge inflated head with little bristles on top, and a huge stain on the white – yes, WHITE – carpet from a spilled can of brown paint that she had imaginatively used to colour his X-Box— wait, she had done WHAT??!!

Two minutes later, he returned to his room, seething, with Meredith crying downstairs and his mother giving her a huge telling off.  He would have felt sorry for her if she hadn’t destroyed his X-Box.  He flung himself on his bed, immediately swallowing a couple of feathers and going into a frantic choking fit that brought his mother running up the stairs.  After he stopped, tears flowing down his eyes (his mother had a really hard slap), he looked out the window, just in time to see a humungous flash of light, and a big BANG.  His mum jumped, and went to look out of the window.  Brian and Meredith ran to the second window, but the darkness enveloped the garden like a black blanket.  Meredith had one of her rare brilliant ideas and suggested going out to see if she could spot something.  Their mother, who was terrified of darkness, agreed, but under the circumstance that Brian, who was 14, would accompany her.  She protested bitterly, but her mother was obstinate and kept insisting that it was no place for a lone 6-year-old child.  Brian sided with his mum, for obvious reasons.

Meredith finally agreed, though the ugly scowl on her face made it obvious that she wasn’t happy about it.  Brian considered this as a revenge and triumph over her deed of defacing his beloved X-Box.  He grabbed his torch and his sister’s hand and raced down the stairs before his mum changed her mind.  He opened the door and was nearly knocked off his feet by the blast of wind that gusted in.  The priceless antique vase that had once belonged to his grandmother wasn’t so lucky.  With a deafening CRASH, it broke into thousands of antique but totally worthless pieces.  Brian and Meredith looked at each other, then at the fast approaching thundercloud that was their mother, and then at the blackness of the garden.  The garden seemed like the best option, and when their furious mother finally arrived, they had vanished into the dark night, and only their fast diminishing silhouettes where to be seen.   She sighed, and started clearing up the mess.  Little did she know that that was probably the last time she would see them for ages.

Brian and Meredith were already halfway across the garden when they bumped into someone.  Meredith screamed.  The person was revealed to be their neighbour Lauren, a cute blonde girl with startlingly green eyes, the kind that seemed to pierce one’s soul.  Unbeknownst to her, the slightly older (two months, six days and about 4 hours older, to be precise), brown-haired blue-eyed boy was totally in love with her.  Unfortunately for him, she was dating this really ugly bloke (in his point of view), with muscles that could send you to the other side of the world with just a poke on the arm.  He was also one of the jealous types, so Brian felt pretty overpowered. 

He felt thankful of the darkness; at least Lauren couldn’t see the red blush spreading on his face.  When she spoke, it sounded as if a Seraph had dropped out of Heaven and started singing in front of him.

“Brian?”

Brian jumped.  He had been dreaming of a future that seemed pretty impossible, and he hadn’t realised that Lauren had been talking to him.

“Uh,” he said.  That didn’t sound impressive, so he tried “Erm,” which had absolutely no effect.  Lauren seemed amused, which was a good sign.  She was probably used to useless, speccy boys gawking at her.  It also gave him the courage ask her, “I’m sorry, what did you say?” to which she replied, “I said, Do you know what that sound was?  I saw this really big flash of light-”

“Yeah, me too!” interrupted Meredith, who was getting tired of being ignored.  “I think there’s something there!”

In fact, she was right (for once).  A complicated-looking machine revealed itself in the light of Brian’s torchlight.  Brian was fascinated.  He looked around, but he didn’t spot the older man hobbling away, towards the light of the house.  The machine was open, and without much thought, he clambered in.  Meredith, who was just as curious, jumped on in, and Lauren followed.  When all three of them where in, it was quite jam-packed.  It had been designed to hold one person comfortably, so three slim children where the equivalent of one burly person, meaning they were pretty squashed. 

This is the point where things stopped being normal and started becoming really, really bad.

Meredith, clumsy as usual, managed to somehow hit the CLOSE button.  The thunderstorm had resumed.  The door closed with an audible hiss, the antenna went up, and a streak of lightning flashed across the sky and hit the rod with an almighty BANG.  The machine vanished.

Later, Therese, Brian and Meredith’s mum, went out to search for her children.  Being a single mother, her children were the only thing that mattered to her.  Desperately, she searched until, drenched to the bone, she knelt down, weeping, in the middle of the garden.  Above her, the sun rose.