"The Story"

"September 14th, 2020, 6th grade. I'm 11 years old. It's the morning, sometime after the usual 8:30 online meeting. I've finished saying the Pledge and have just logged off."

That was the day. September 14th of 2020. I was finished eating my morning cereal and sitting on my new fluffy blue chair, one that is now sagging and turning brown at the edges like a leaf. Instead of heading to work on some small school assignments, I clicked over to my Google Slides and decided to work on my new slideshow story.

"My head's buzzing with an idea. By that time in the morning, I'm already thinking of all the possibilities, all the things I can write about with this new plotline. I erase the last few slides of the slideshow and start again."

The previous night, I had had an inspiring dream. As of now, I cannot recall every detail of it-- it's been almost 3 years since then. But I do remember that the idea I had spawned from a singular sentence I read on a yellow tag attached to a box in my dream.

"Close your eyes and drift off to sleep... and let me take control."

Yes. You guessed it. My first story was called "The Story." It was the first slideshow story that I ever finished completely. I couldn't think of a better name for it, so it became known as "The Story" until May of 2021, when I was back in school and decided to rewrite it after deleting it.

"I know they've got to be something like eyes in the dark. I think their eyes are all different colors. Maybe green and purple... and, ooh, red! How can there be scary eyes in the dark without the eyes being red? I start to make my character encounter my new ideas."

Needless to say, I was incredibly excited about my new idea. I think this excitement is what allowed me to finish The Story completely. It had a pretty well-thought-out plot for something that an 11-year-old would make. Since this first story, I have learned that if I have a special amount of inspiration, I can create any story, no matter how long it takes, and finish it.

"What should I name these characters? They're gonna have to tell her their names... Maybe the green eyes could be white eyes instead, actually. And maybe I'll call the white-eyed guy Blake, just for good measure. Then maybe the purple one can be... can be... Chris. And what about the red one...?"

I still love these three characters, even now, seeing the plot of The Story having grown and blossomed through several drafts into the self-published book that it now is. At the time, I had no idea how important these characters would become to me and my storylines. I had no clue what they would become in the future. And who knows... maybe some kind publisher will come my way and bump my story up to the rank of being actually published and on shelves. Then my awesome characters might finally get famous. But back in 2020, I was just making them for fun, and I had no intention of publishing.

"I know! I know! He'll be called Red!"

Red. My absolute favorite character out of all of them. Red was still my favorite at the time, too. I adored him. He got the most lines, the most monologues, and he was the most powerful of all of them. With a name like Red, how could he not be?

"These guys will be brothers, I think. And they'll be called Shadows, too. I think they want to... take over the world... using kids. They probably turn kids into Shadows. Maybe there's a special process that they use for that. I wonder what it could be..."

Oh, yes. My character in The Story was me. It still is, in fact, in my book, Playing with Shadows, that follows relatively the same storyline except more developed and understandable. The main character is named Kloey, and I am Chloe. There's also Kaila (Kayla), Rosy (Rosie), and Nam (Nem). I did small name changes just for privacy purposes. I wasn't sure if it was needed or not, but I did it anyway. At the time of The Story, I was only writing for fun, and so I didn't care much about the privacy that I do now.

"They kidnap kids, that's what they do. They're supposed to be all scary in secret, but they act soothing and lulling 'till you get too close. They have claws and they look scary... Oh."

It was then that I realized it.

"This is... kind of a horror movie?"

I then felt truly amazed. I had created something that could follow the plot of a horror movie. After this moment, I developed everything about the Shadows: how they looked, how they acted, what they did to turn children into Shadows. I was obsessed with The Story and all of its wonder.

"Red is the tallest and biggest. He's the strongest out of everyone. And he's really, super villainous. Chris must be kind of a nerd, because... because he just is, and then Blake oughta be the little one who's very small and like a kid. Maybe he's not super strong like the other Shadows are."

The character development in The Story came quickly afterward.

"I've got it now! My character gets taken by the Shadows after Gales crashes into the mountain. Then, Rosie has to rescue me with Gales. Then, Rosie saves me from the Shadows even though they try to make me one of them and I accidentally beat her up because they tell me to. We fly away on Gales, but the Shadow Guards from Researchers' Mountain are chasing us, so we end up crashing because they're launching so much stuff at us..."

It went on and on and on. I was so incredibly excited about it. And since it was 2020, I began to have imaginary friends again. Can you guess who they were?

"C'mere, guys. Look at this! This is what you're doing in my story!"

The Shadow Bros. At least... that's what they became known as in my imagination. Red, Chris and Blake were all brothers-- somehow, even though they're not quite the same-- and they were all Shadows. So they were dubbed the Shadow Bros... by me.

"I think this is gonna be the climax. Rosie better choose a good song for this one. Let's see... I think my character will..."

Oh, yes. I forgot to mention. Rosie was adding small instrumental songs to the slideshow. And yes, it was a slideshow. I had not done anything with writing on "google docs" yet. For some reason, I resented Google Docs. Which is funny, now that I think about it, because nowadays I have used Google Docs three times to write my books, Playing with Shadows, Partners, and Kin (yet to be published).

"Wow... That's the end..."

What happened in the end of the story? Well... to say that, I have to say everything that happened in The Story.

Two friends, Chloe and Rosie (ironically named after my friend and I of the time), are at a wedding for one of Rosie's relatives. It's storming outside. Both of them-- us-- decide to leave and go outside, seeing these strange glowing orbs out in the rain. One of them is purple and has the marking of a dragon on it. The other is golden and has the marking of a camel on it. Chloe touches the golden one and Rosie's point of view is not mentioned, at least not there.

Once Chloe touches the golden orb, she falls asleep. This is where The Story became a mishmash of The Lego Movie, my own ideas, The Legend of Zelda, and a thousand other things. These things were all my favorite things.

Chloe wakes up in the office of a Bad Cop-Good Cop, except... it's only Bad Cop. The Bad Cop asks Chloe why she touched the sphere (which is an indefinite reference to Bad Cop-Good Cop in The Lego Movie), and Chloe answers, and so on, so forth.

Eventually, Bad Cop, whose name had been Kayda as a knock-off of my friend's name, decides that Chloe must have the powers of the sphere extracted from her in a process so much like The Lego Movie's that it's actually uncanny. Luckily, Rosie bursts through the door at the right moment riding her enormous dragon, Gales, which she received through her own sphere in the shape of a dragon, and rescues her friend. They both fly away into the sunset.

As I look back on this story-- or at least, what I can look back at it, because it's long-gone by now-- I find that it reaches just as deep as it had when I first wrote it. Playing with Shadows doesn't match up to The Story's glory. The Story had an ending that really ended the villains, and Playing with Shadows has an ending that does not end the villains and lets them rule the world. (Sorry for the spoilers, but I don't think anyone has read my book, anyway.) The Story had an ending so dramatic and so perfect that the main character died.

Chloe is kidnapped by the Shadows when the dragon her and her friend are riding crashes into a mountain. She "Shadouwed," meaning that the Shadows take control of her mind.

While writing this, I began to develop Red, Chris and Blake, and I began to admire their characters more and more as the story went on. Red is an "edgy Batman." Chris is a snarky nerd. And Blake is a little white-eyed tattletale. But all of them have a deeper side that I discovered in Playing with Shadows. In The Story, they were just villains, and nothing other than that.

I almost miss that functionality. I miss when villains were just villains. If I ever have the strength to, I might rewrite Playing with Shadows and make the Shadows just villains, and nothing else.

In The Story, Chloe's mind is reshaped by the Shadows as she spends more time with them. Rosie, upon discovering that her friend has been kidnapped, makes an attempt at rescuing her. In the process, she only gets hurt, as when Gales tries to tear apart all the Shadows in one fell swoop, her best friend charges at her with a dagger.

At the "riveting conclusion" of The Story, it's storming. Red, looking Chloe in the eyes, holds Rosie still on the very edge of a cliff and waits for her to make the final jab. Chloe raises her hand into the air... but then lightning strikes, flashing behind her, and something in her eyes changes. She remembers. She remembers that Rosie is her friend, and that she herself is doing the wrong thing by trying to harm her.

In a turn of events that even Red hadn't anticipated, Chloe grabs Rosie and slings her out of the way. Just then, another blinding spark of lightning splits the air, and Chloe pushes Red off the edge of the cliff, banishing him to drown in the seawater below. She looks back at Rosie and begins to smile, thinking that the war between humans and Shadows has been won. But Red, taking his final revenge, grabs her by the foot, and she is sent tumbling down to the ocean just as he is.

Rosie lifts herself away from the rocky ground, eyes wide, and leans her head over the edge. The blue water is so far off that she cannot see what has happened. Yet she knows that her friend is gone.

The sky clears. The rest of the Shadows vanish into air because their leader has died. Rosie is left sitting at the very summit of the mountain, soaked of rainwater, and mourning her friend. The world is saved.

The Story was my first finished work. My first work that I was proud of. It evolved into Playing with Shadows, which I wrote when I was 12 and self-published after turning 13. Even though I have placed it out into the world, I feel that the original The Story still lives on. The original villains, and their original intentions, and the original plotline and landscape, and the original mountain with the edge of the sea- they all live on.

That was The Story. My first story that I had ever put to a real end. Now, as I remember it, I remember how much it meant to me. And how it began my call to writing.