A Shorter Story Collection

The Rim of the Universe

She really wanted purple hair. Unfortunately, her mom wasn't very fond of her having dyed hair and had blatantly said no when she'd asked. She also didn't have any money to buy anything for herself or she would've already done so. She huffed to herself as she walked back to school. One day she'd be allowed to dye her hair purple and then maybe she'd be the cool girl in school.

She focused herself on the music playing in her ears, tuning out the rest of the world. Then, as she passed a dark alley, something weird caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. There, in the alley was an old woman, peddling a cart of hair dyes. It was quite surreal but again, she reminded herself that she had no money to buy anything. As she started to walk on she noticed the old woman motioning to her.

She took out her earphones and cautiously headed over to the old woman. The old lady held out a purple bottle. It was a bottle of purple hair dye! The girl was so excited that she threw caution to the wind and took it from the old woman. She thanked the old woman and ran off, not being able to wait until she could use it. She hid it in her backpack so that her mother didn't find out so that she could use it.

She ran home and excused herself from dinner and ran up to the bathroom. She quickly undid the package and set about dying her hair. It was a wonderful shade of purple, perfectly set between Lilac and Violet. She couldn't wait to get to school tomorrow, she'd finally be the center of attention. Of course, her mom would be mad but she didn't care. Once it was done it was done, there was no going back.

However, about halfway through the process of dying her hair, the ground started rumbling. She thought it was maybe an earthquake so she got down on the floor away from the windows. But the shaking just continued to grow. Then suddenly, in front of her, a portal opened and a large tentacle came through. It moved around as if it were looking for something. She didn't dare to breathe. However, the tentacle 'saw' her and grabbed her.

She screamed as the sucker covered limb dragged her through the portal. She continued to scream until she saw where it was that she had been brought to. She was dangling above a waterfall that seemed to just be falling into a void of endless space. Around was the endless void itself, it looked as though she was in space, and yet she could still breathe. Behind her, she could see the expanse of the milky way. And here she was, at the edge of it all.

As she was looking around, a massive squid-like creature rose out of the water menacingly. At this point, she noticed two things. One, that she still had the purple hair dye in her hand, and two, that the squid was the exact same shade of purple as the dye. This couldn't be a coincidence. She took a closer look at the label on the hair dye and only now noticed a note saying that this product contained Kraken ink, and to under no circumstance, use it.

The Kraken roared at her and in fright, she threw the hair dye at the Kraken. To her surprise, when the hair dye hit the Kraken it stopped screaming at her. It slowly lowered her down in front of its massive eye quietly conveying disappointment. The Kraken lifted her back up and a portal appeared yet again. The giant squid shoved her through it leaving her back in the bathroom. Just as the portal closed the bathroom door was shoved open by her mother. Wonderful, now she had to deal with this.