Through the Door of No Man’s Land
To be at her grandma's was hideously boring.
Sara understood that it was imperative for her to stay there, after what happened with her father, it was the place she was the safest. But definitely, to get used to the change was a challenge. She was accustomed to a different standard of life. She lived in a big magistral house, with a bunch of servers that pleased her with everything she wanted, she only had to move her head and all she desired was done instantly.
But to keep all this fortune proved a mission impossible to overcome for her father alone, her mother being dead long ago. Debts were chasing him, all his responsibilities were piling up without being able to fulfil them and he didn’t want to disappoint his only daughter.
Without a matter of doubt, it was a lot of pressure for one single man, his heart could not stand it, and he went insane. He started having weird behaviors, flinched all the time and always looked behind his back. Until one day, everything exploded, literally. He decided to burn the house down, to run away from his problems, and burned to the crisp with the building.
Sara was heartbroken, she considered her father her only family, and kept locked in her heart her most precious memory with him, being a child, with no worries, watching movies in the living room with both her father and mother.
But due to those circumstances she ended up living with her maternal grandma, who hated her, since she was the living picture of a daughter she never stopped loving.
Her only refuge was the attic, where she could find a variety of treasures that once belonged to her dear mother, from pins for the hair, old make up, and pictures of her mother with people she never met.
One day while she was looking through the boxes she found some weird cardboard 3D figures, which she presumed were kaleidocycles, the first one that caught her attention was completely blank, that stood out surrounded by a bunch of colored ones, she took it in her hand and examined it. She realized she could invert the faces, but since there was nothing to see, she quickly put it apart.
Sara decided to pick up another, it had a beautiful pattern of colors that formed salamanders of different types, weirdly enough, one of the faces was completely black. She took it in her hands and turned it around, fascinated by its shape, but a light shone out of it and she was transported into the world of those salamanders.
The attic disappeared in front of her eyes, and suddenly she was surrounded by a blinding light, and then all she could see were colors and more colors in every direction, at first she was paralized, but the moment she saw a gigantic salamander approaching her way, frantically she turned the kaleidocycle until she got to the black face. A blinding light later, she was back at the attic.
Instead of panicking, she instantly understood what needed to be done, this was her only shot to be genuinely happy, there was nothing left for her in this world. She took the one in blank, and pasted pictures of the places she wanted to be in, scenes of the movies she used to watch with her parents, that would transport her to those magical, peaceful places. Besides, Sara added a black one in case she needed to come back.
She never did, she had the key to visit the places she truly wanted to be in, she located a house in the third world she had access to, and built a life in each one of them, so the kaleidocycle became the key of a door that transported the whole house to the world she wanted to be in, the black one was never opened again.
Finally, she found her purpose.
By Camila Orozco Step 11
