Prompt #44

[Fell down a well

It should be pretty

Like a little fairy tale]

            I was going about my business, walking along the ceiling as usual, when something that had never happened before, happened. I fell. And I didn’t just fall. I fell into a well. And I didn’t just fall into a well. I fell into a well with another dimension at the bottom of it.

            How did I know it was another dimension? Because everything was on the ceiling and I was on the floor. Imagine the oddity of it!

            I tried to go back immediately, of course, but it is extremely hard to jump down a hole that is above you. Once I decided that that plan was not going to work, I resorted to something much less dignified. I yelled for help, hoping that someone might drop a bucket down and whinch me up. No one did.

            Giggles filled the air at my sad attempts. I looked up and around, hoping to locate the person who had made the merry sound. No one. I scratched my ear, partly as a nervous gesture and partly because the thought occurred to me that I might be hearing things in my distress. Then I sat, because if I was so distressed as to be hearing things, it was probably not wise for me to stand for my balance would be off-kilter and I could fall. Imagine the disgrace I would feel if that happened!

            The giggles came again, and now I was truly concerned. I dug in my ear and shook my head, trying to dislodge anything that might be stuck inside. Anything and everything that was inside my ear, stayed there. Then I got to thinking that perhaps it wasn’t my ear, but my brain causing all the mess.

            It was about then, as I doubted my own sanity, that a small man walked by. He did not walk opposite me as most people do and which, in this case, would have been on the ceiling. He strode across the wall, as if it was perfectly normal and not strange at all. Imagine the nerve!

            I stared, with an open mouth, as he walked right by me without so much as a hello. And I knew he wasn’t a figment of my imagination, because any figment of mine would have had better manners. I stood and cleared my throat. He did not stop in his determined walk.

            “Excuse me?” I called.

            He looked over his shoulder, his pace slowing but not altogether stopping. “Yes?”

            I hurried after him. “Do you hear the giggling, too?”

            His eyes crossed and a small line appeared along the top of his nose. “Giggling?”

            The high-pitched laughter cut through the never-ending room once more.

            “Ah,” he said, the confusion disappearing from his face. “You must be new.”

            “I assure you, sir, that I am most definitely not ‘new.’” I huffed as I talked and I could feel my face turning red.

            “You are most definitely new if you’ve never experienced a turn.” He turned back to the front, not even gifting me the respect to meet my eyes when I spoke.

            “If you would, what is a ‘turn’?”

            He spun his finger in the air. “A turn is when the Great Ones turn our little box. When that happens, we get put somewhere else. For instance,” He pointed above him. “Before the turn, I was over on that wall. Now I am on this one.”

            “And if you do not mind my asking, who are ‘The Great Ones’?”

            “The bigger people outside the box,” he said with an air of irritation.

            I pondered that. The white walls did not feel like a box nor did I feel like I was in a box. But then, something had made me fall.

            “How did the Great Ones get outside of the box?” I asked.

            His foot fell to the ground with a heavy thump. He stood still, arms at his side, feet together. He twisted his neck to look at me. “That is not the question to ask. The question is how do we get outside of the box?”

            The giggling started up again.