Trapdoor

 

            Thunk!

            Lily sat bolt upright in bed as the unfamiliar sound reverberated in the darkness.

            Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

            As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she realized the sound was coming from below. Was someone doing something downstairs? Maybe she should go and get Dad.

            Throwing her covers aside, her feet found the soft carpeted floor, and she walked slowly to the door. Her clock read 2:43 AM and she didn’t want to trip over anything in the blackness.

            Suddenly, the carpet under her feet disappeared and she found herself standing on something hard. Was it a piece of wood or something? She didn’t remember leaving anything like that on her floor. Crouching down, she felt the object she was standing on. She moved back to the carpet when she realized it was indeed wood. She tried to pick it up to move it out of the way, but it wouldn’t budge.

            The thumping sound had stopped, but now she had to figure out what this thing was in the middle of her floor. Her fingers moved around until she found something that felt like a handle. Grabbing it tightly, she pulled.

            Light streamed into her room from the hole that had appeared in her floor. The thing that she had pulled had been a trapdoor. The light was so bright, it was painful after the darkness.

            When she could open her eyes without squinting, she looked down into the hole. Was she dreaming? What was this? A rope ladder stretched down as far as she could see. Bright blue sky was now below her, without any sign of the ground. Feeling a little dizzy, she scooted away from the abyss, trying to figure out what on Earth was happening.

            After closing her eyes and taking several deep breaths, she opened her eyes again, hoping things would just disappear. To her disappointment, nothing had changed. Her room was still flooded with light that was pouring in from the hole in her floor. She stared at it, trying to make it make sense.

            But what was that on the inside of the trapdoor? She scooted a little closer until she saw the note attached to it. As she read the note, she knew she must be dreaming. If the trapdoor hadn’t been enough, this note certainly meant she must still be lying in bed with her eyes closed. It said: “Congratulations! You’ve been chosen to visit the World of Dreams. Climb down the ladder to experience anything your heart desires. Anything you can dream up can be a reality here. All you need to do is state the dream you want to experience, and then climb down the ladder.”

            After staring at the note for a full minute, Lily decided to try it out. If this was all a dream anyway, what would it hurt? Scooting forward until she was poised at the very edge of the hole, she leaned over the space and shouted, “I want to be able to fly around!”

            When she finished shouting, she leaned back and waited for something to happen. Nothing changed, and after a few minutes, she decided to go down and try the ladder. Telling herself that this was all just a dream, she lowered herself to get her feet on the ladder, which was swaying in the breeze. She nearly came right back up, but she kept going down.

            Her hands gripped the top rung of the ladder. She went down another rung, and the rope swung violently. Her body rocked backwards with the ladder, and she lost her footing. With a scream stuck in her throat, the rungs of the ladder slipped out of her grasp and she was falling. Air rushed past her as she reached out for anything to grab onto.

            With her arms flapping like a bird’s, she noticed something. She wasn’t falling anymore. The ladder was just out of her reach, but it wasn’t zooming past her. Hardly daring to believe it, she relaxed slightly and held her arms out like the wings of an airplane. She angled her body to the right, and she glided closer to the ladder. Grinning now, she tried moving in different ways, and was delighted when she was able to move how she wanted. Soon, she was spinning in the air, doing loop-de-loops and having a fantastic time.

            After soaring around for a while, she began to think again about her bed and headed back to the ladder and up through the trapdoor. Once she pulled herself up through the opening, she heaved the trapdoor closed and crawled into bed, smiling. Her last thought before she fell back asleep was, I hope I dream this again. Next time, I’m going to ask for cake and ice cream and eat as much as I want. Then she was lost to sleep.