Inverted

• Gabriel Wijaya, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2022

A rift had opened. A split in reality itself. He looked inside and everything seemed completely normal. It was like a mirror dimension of the very room he was standing in. However, the room beyond the circular portal felt somewhat weird to him, even though it literally looked exactly the same as the other side. He decided to commit to it despite the very clear voice in his head telling him to stay right where he was. He was hesitant but when he slowly stepped through the floating portal, he noticed that everything was inverted. Colors were way different. white had turned into black, red turned into green and purple turned into yellow. It gave an ominous feeling to the atmosphere that waved around the abnormal room. He heard something outside, but it sounded wrong. He looked out the window and saw two women with dogs chatting to each other. They were not talking normally. It sounded like gibberish at first, but eventually, he noticed that they were speaking backwards somehow. When one of the dogs barked it sounded strange as well. He stepped back in surprise as dizziness rapidly washed over his body. He looked back at the rift but it was not there. He began to panic and screamed but the words that came out of his mouth were unlike anything he ever heard himself say. He ran downstairs and saw his mother in the living room sitting on the leather couch watching television. Unsurprisingly, the TV channel was running backwards. She looked slouched and lazy, which was completely the opposite of what she was in real life. She turned her head and began speaking backwards like the two women outside. Even though she was talking like that, he noticed that she had an aggressive tone in her voice which was different to his own mother’s voice, which was calm and soft. She clearly did not want him near her at all. He ran to the front door and turned the handle, but it would not budge. He then turned it the other way which worked. He ran out, scared of his own mother and began to look around. It was nighttime which seemed weird, because people were taking walks and when he was in the other dimension it had been day. People, cars and birds were all going backwards and the smell of the air also had a musty and dirty scent, unlike his own neighborhood. He then saw his father’s car which was parked towards the garage door. He had never seen him park it that way. He worried that he may never get back home and tears ran down his scarlet red cheeks as he wept hard. He wished everything would go back to normal, and at that very moment, a rift opened once again. He immediately leapt through it with hope, and he landed on the sidewalk he was familiar with. He breathed a sigh of relief, and cheered inside. He was finally home.