Jonah's Miniscule Adventure

It was a hot summer afternoon and the air conditioner was broken. The garage was too hot to work in, so I decided to go down into my father’s basement. He’d been working on an invention that he kept hidden in the corner of the basement behind a bunch of boxes. His last invention had failed and he was taking a break from inventing, but that didn’t stop me from trying to sneak a look at his newest project.

I pushed the boxes aside and crawled in between them. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I spotted Dad’s project covered by a blue tarp. He was always careful about strangers seeing his new inventions. Even though he hadn’t invented anything in years, he still kept up appearances.

I reached out and grabbed the edge of the tarp, ready to pull it off and reveal his latest creation, when something sharp dug into my finger and I yelped in pain. It felt like every drop of blood in my body had just rushed to my fingertip. I pulled my hand away from the tarp, looking at my bloody finger as if it would provide some answers for what I’d just done to myself. When I looked back up, everything around me had changed color.

All of the cobwebs were red and brown with age, the floorboards were black with dust and splinters from where Dad had kicked them over the years. The lightbulb hanging from the ceiling flickered on and off as if it were dying along with the rest of the house. I put my finger back under my nose and sniffed at it; there was no blood anywhere except for that little spot on my finger where it had been pricked by whatever had stabbed me earlier.

I realized what must have happened; Dad had been working on that time machine again! He never actually called it a time machine—he said he was building a dimensional gateway—but that’s what it was: a time machine!

I heard Dad coming home upstairs, followed shortly by Mom yelling at him for not calling her or letting her know he was going to be late again. He always tried to invent things when everyone else was asleep so that nobody would bother him while he worked—so much for that plan!

I crawled back out between the boxes and ran up into my room, hoping Mom wouldn’t call me downstairs before Dad could get away to work on his machine in peace again tonight. As soon as I got home from school, I went straight to Dad’s basement again and poked at his project with the same two-pronged fork that had pricked me earlier that day—nothing happened, not even a blip! Dad must have figured out what went wrong already and fixed it since there was no way I could have gone forward or backward in time while being stuck here in 2017; I mean, who would want to live in 2017? Not me!

After dinner later that night, when Mom was watching TV next door with her boyfriend Ted and Dad was fast asleep upstairs after a long day of not inventing anything (except for maybe fixing a faulty dimmer switch), I snuck out of bed and headed back down into Dad’s basement through my bedroom window instead of going through Mom’s studio like I did earlier today (she once told me she thought she saw someone sneaking around next door after she closed her curtains for the night). When I got down into Dad’s lab, though, something wasn’t quite right... there were cobwebs everywhere! They looked pretty dry too so they couldn't have been there all day—it hadn't rained since morning because then they would've been wet like they usually are when it rains outside! This can only mean one thing: Someone else has been messing around down here while Dad's been asleep upstairs!

Sure enough, something moved over near where Dad's "project" used to be covered by the blue tarp—and it wasn't just one something either: there were *two* somethings moving around beneath the tarp! In fact, one of those somethings appeared to be getting smaller as well as closer toward me! What is going on?! All thoughts immediately flew out of my head except for one: *How do you get out of danger when you're trapped inside your own house?!*