Jama started this story on a long roll of paper. It looks like a treasure map or proclamation, wrinkled from repeated rolling and unrolling. "And look," she said. "When I'm done, I can wear the story like a dress."Once upon a time, there lived a young girl (as all stories start, this girl was blind to her purpose in the story). She was a different kind of girl. As all girls of her age, she disliked boys (except the really nice ones) but almost as much as boys she disliked pink.
Now, by 11, she and all her friends disliked Barbie but most of her friends still played with dolls. She did not. She only ever had one cute thing she played with and that was her stuffed dragon that she got when she was seven. Oh how she loved that dragon. She loved it as much as she would love a dog (if her parents would let her get a dog).
The girl's name was Lillen. She liked her name, though it was somewhat 'girlie'. She admired the elegance about it. Lillen never wore pink. She never touched the 'stuff'. Her dragon had but one small patch that shone pink in the right light but she didn't care. What she liked to wear was black, not because she was 'goth' and not because she liked to be 'dark' but because girls clothes were either pink, black, or pink and black and that was a combination she wouldn't be caught dead in. Why wear pink and black when you wear black to avoid wearing pink? White was no option because she had yellow hair and yellow and white make you look like a bannana fudge pop (or poop she would say)!
Anyway, one night she had a dream, a very scary dream. In it there was a light outside her room, not a hall light, not even the bathroom light, but one that lit up the air like a trapped fairy. Then she realized it was a flame, a tame flame. Shadows licked the walls of her room like dark bedposts casting darkness that scared you to sleep. She clung to her dragon and felt her fingers slip through his shadow. A cool prickle dripped over her face like dead snakes. She screamed and a figure appeared in her door, a dark dark figure. She was holding a candle. But the candle didn't light her face. It was a black candle and it cast shadows instead of light.
All Lillen could see was the figure's dark dark eyes that lit up the hall outside her room. She found herself on the floor of her room. It was all lit up and white light streamed in from the windows. It was not a school day. She sighed and walked out the door after looking both ways just in case it wasn't a dream after all.
As she grumbled down the stairs, she saw something move. It had darted under the kitchen table. She immediately called her cat (just in case), no reply. She called again, no reply. Oh well, Molly must be sleeping. Lillen sat down at the table and called her mom - no reply. She decided she would make some toast and surprise her parents with breakfast. It was afterall, a weekend. So she hopped off the chair and trudged into the kitchen. She yelled.
It was the loudest yell possible. There before her was her cat, frozen in time chasing a mouse. Now Lillen was scared. She looked at the clock "12:10 pm" she whispered. She ran upstairs to her parent's bedroom. They were both frozen in time too. She felt her eyelids droop and she fainted.
