The Scream

 

            They had been in the museum for an hour, and Eddy was bored. Mom had lied when she said it would be a fun experience.

            Eddy rolled his eyes and flopped onto a bench as they entered yet another room full of paintings. His older sister, Janet, looked closer at one of them. She was really into art, oohing-and-aahing over everything. Eddy tilted his head back to rest on the hard marble bench. He was done with all this art.

            But Janet wouldn’t look at the paintings quietly. “Hey, Eddy, come look at this!”

            “No thanks.” All he really wanted to do was sleep, but the next thing he knew, Janet had grabbed his arm and was pulling him toward a painting. He groaned and asked, “What’s so special about this one?” It was called, “The Scream.”

            “This is only one of the most famous paintings ever,” Janet gushed. “You don’t know how lucky we are to see it.”

            Reluctantly, Eddy looked closer at the painting. At least it was in his favorite colors. Blue, orange, and yellow did look really good together. Then he noticed the two people behind the screamer. He was staring at them, when he suddenly felt himself being pulled off of his feet. He fell headfirst through the painting, landing next to the people he had been staring at.

            Eyes wide, he slowly looked around. The blues and oranges that he had admired from the outside of the painting were now swirling all around him. The Screamer had his back to Eddy, but the noise coming from him was so loud. Almost falling over from the noise, Eddy tried to cover his ears.

            The man standing next to him looked down in shock. “Where did you come from?” he shouted.

            Eddy barely heard him over the scream, but he answered, “I was just looking at this painting, and now I’m inside it. How did that happen?”

            The man looked flabbergasted and turned to ask his companion.

            Eddy couldn’t hear their conversation. The screamer was still screaming. It was just a never-ending, AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! Didn’t that guy need to breathe?

            The man standing next to Eddy tapped him on the shoulder and said, “You’d better get out of here.” He nodded his head toward the screamer. “He never stops.”

            “How do I leave?”

            The man just shrugged, saying, “We’ve been here for more than a hundred years. We don’t know the way.”

            A hundred years! Eddy had to get out, now. His head was really aching from the noise. He pinched himself, hard, and woke up with a start. His heart pounding, he stood up from the hard marble bench and looked once again at “The Scream.”

            “Pretty cool, right?” Janet said excitedly.

            What had happened? How did he fall asleep? “Uh, yeah, sure.” Never had Eddy been more grateful for silence. He smiled and said, “Good thing we can’t hear that guy screaming.”