YIP Index

Attic

by Persephone

It was yet another rainy day and Jessie was really getting bored. After fifteen rainy days already, she was wondering if the sun would ever shine again. In the last fifteen days she had explored every inch of the house, except... the attic. Now her mother had always told her never ever to go into the attic. She had always heard about how much fun other kids had in their attics, yet she wasn't priveleged enough. All of this HAD to change, and today was the day. The only thing was, the entrance to the attic was in her mother's room (dun dun). How on earth was she going to get in there, she had to think fast before she was bored out of her skull. Finally she had an idea--she would put all of the dairy products in the garbage or down the drain. Since Jessie couldn't live without her dairy products, her mother would have to go out. The fact that the dairy store was in the next county, several hours away had nothing to do with her plan. Now she had only to put her plan into action. She ran downstairs and took fifty containers of yogurt, twenty pounds of cheese, sixteen and one half pounds of real butter, and fifty gallons of two percent milk out of the fridge and proceeded to dispose of it. After this was done she ran into her mother's room crying, "Mommy, Mommy, where did all our dairy products go?" "Here I'll take a look, calm down darling, it's okay." Together the went down the stairs. Mother opened the fridge, "You're right, it's all gone, I guess I'll have to go to the store and get some more. Do you want to join me?" "No, that's okay Mom, I think I'll clean my room." Of course unbeknownst to mother, Jessie had cleaned her room several times in the past fifteen days. As she tearfully waved goodbye to her mother, all she could think of was how much fun she would have in the attic. She closed the door quickly, but not so quickly as to cause her mother to be suspicious. As she climbed the stairs she rubbed her hands together gleefully. This was the day she had been waiting for all of her life, she was so close. She entered her mother's room, there in the middle of the ceiling was the entrance to the attic. There, in pearl grey the entrance to what she had dreamed about ever since she had been old enough to dream. She moved the chair so it was directly under the entrance. Carefully she pushed the entrance up, it slid back a little and she was able to lower the ladder. She then put the chair back in place. As she ventured up into the attic, shivers went up her spine. It was everything she had ever dreamed about. The room was filled with old fashioned trunks and dress dummies. "Where do I begin?", she thought to herself. She then noticed that the trunks were numbered starting at one and ending at eight billion, no not really, it ended at seven. Being the good girl that she was and a superb math student she began at the number three trunk. "I've always wanted to play dress-up", she said as she cautiously opened it for fear of porcupines which could be nesting inside. Inside there were beautiful garments of sheet metal, and dried pig skin. The variety of outfits was unbelieveable, there were skirts, bras, pants. The crowning jewels were of course the matching sheet metal wedding gown, and the groom's tuxedo. Jessie was in heaven, she tried on everything, including the tux. There was even a full length mirror in which she could view the outfits. In some of the other trunks there were photo albums and assorted trinkets. Jessie opened one of the albums to gaze upon a picture of her mother in the wedding gown and beside her, the man Jessie guessed was her father. She wondered where he was, mother had never said anything about him, and it had never occurred to Jessie that she had a father. She closed the album. It had now been about five hours, and mother would be home in about half and hour, she would have to hurry to get everything back in place. As she was putting the trinkets away she came across this little earwig made out of pine needles and sheet metal. She wanted to have something to remember this day by, so she slipped it into her pocket. She finished putting everything away, and had just come down the ladder when she heard the truck in the driveway. She hurriedly put up the ladder and ran into her room. Within three minutes she was asleep in bed exhausted from all the excitment. "Jessie, come and help me carry in the dairy products, Jessie? Oh well, she can't hear me, I guess I'll bring them in myself. Now where did I put that forklift?"

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