hey I found this in my story folder in Google Docs and I really like it? I kinda forgot where I was going with it but my sister convinced me to post it anyway. I'll try to remember what was supposed to happen next. Enjoy!
There are few times in the life of a fourteen-year-old where peer pressure causes them to do something incredibly thoughtless and dangerous. Some kids go cliff diving, risking death and injury just for the thrill. Some get persuaded to graffiti a corporate building at the risk of getting arrested. Another being convinced to ditch school at the risk of being caught and punished by parents and teachers. Still, few kids could say that they had been begged by their friends to sneak into the basement to see a failed invention. What exactly was the risk? Getting caught by Jazz, Danny's older sister. It would mean the end for the three of them, death by overprotective lecturing. While they were normally allowed wherever they pleased, Jazz asked Danny not to go to the basement when his parents began construction of the portal. After all, there were "live wires" and "unstable chemicals" that his parents had left unattended. This is why he hushed his friends as he opened the basement door and looked back cautiously to make sure there wasn't a stern older sister casting a shadow down the hall. He walked down the stairs and flicked on the light switch, illuminating the lab.
It was dimmer than usual, and looking up Danny could see why. Several fluorescent bulbs had broken, a result of the portal short circuiting, and his parents had yet to replace them.
Sam and Tucker whistled. The room was littered with scraps of appliances that had been stripped to provide parts for the portal. To his left Danny saw a hole burned into the table, the result of spilled ectoplasm. It dripped ever so slowly onto the floor. Drip. Ten seconds. Drip. Another ten. Drip. He heard Tucker's hiking boots thud as he walked toward the portal blueprints; Sam's heavy steel-toed boots followed.
"Wow" Tucker muttered breathily.
"Yeah." Sam said. She traced the hard white lines with her fingertips. "I don't understand any of this," she finished with a cheeky smile. Tucker rolled his eyes.
"Let's see the main event" said Sam, making her way to the portal. Danny joined her, and after a glance at the ectoplasmic weaponry to his side, so did Tucker.
The portal was dark and cavernous, and Danny saw the spark of a live wire inside.
"So it doesn't work?" Sam asked, looking at it curiously.
"Nope." Danny replied. "They plugged everything in and it all just short circuited." They were still discouraged over the whole thing. It was rather unlike his parents to give up so soon, but he supposed that one could only take so much mockery. It was their life's work after all. Danny never thought much of their odd hobby, their ghost hunting was the bane of his social life. Still, it pained him to see his parents so discouraged.
Sam pulled out a camera and began taking pictures of the scene, everything from the "danger meter" to the portal to the wires on the floor. Danny heard a bedroom door creak open upstairs. It could be one of his parents, finally coming downstairs to get a drink or something, or it could be Jazz, about to catch them, and that was not a risk that Danny was willing to take.
"We should leave," Danny said immediately.
Sam stopped taking pictures and turned to him with a twinkle in her eye. "You should make a pose inside the portal."
Danny frowned. "Sam I can't-"
"Come on Danny. Haven't you ever wondered what's inside?" She looked at him expectantly and he peered into her gorgeous violet eyes. The word "yes" escaped his lips. He didn't think about it, it simply came out, purely reflex. Whatever she asked of him, he would do.
Sam tossed him a hazmat suit. "Gotta be safe," she teased. Completely forgetting about the danger of his sister, Danny fingered the material and looked at the black and white suit. He looked into the cold darkness of the dead portal, and realised that was never really alive to begin with. That first spark when his parents plugged it in had done nothing to give it life. The longer he stared at the large, complex hole in the wall,the more eerie it seemed. A part of him felt drawn to it, as if aching to return to a home home that he was completely unaware of. Another, less primal part of him reeled at the thought. The portal was wrong and would bring about nothing good. Danny felt conflicted. He wanted to leave this awful place, to never see the godforsaken portal again, but he also wanted to go inside, to feel the cold metal on his bare fingertips, to let it take him where he was meant to go all along. He slipped the suit on over his jeans and arms and zipped it all the way up to his neck, not even thinking about it.
"Wait wait wait." Sam put her hands up and came over. She ripped off the iron-on patch of his father's face. He looked at her. "You can't walk around in there with that on your chest," she said, gesturing to the patch.
Tucker snorted and Danny glared back at him, trying not to grin. He turned back to the portal and took a step towards it. Why did this moment feel so big? It was as if he were taking a step on the moon. One small step for man, he recited in his head. Really though, all he was doing was providing Sam with some scrapbook photos. It was really no big deal, so why did his palms sweat and his heart speed up?
He took a step inside the portal. His boot hit the metal frame, making a low clink sound. Sam took another picture. "Go on, you're not scared are you?" She motioned him to go in deeper. He walked past the cold darkness and sparking wires and welded metal and stretched out a hand. Cold concrete. He was at the back of the portal. He turned back to his friends who were silhouetted by the light at the end of the portal.
The door to the basement opened with the groan of hinges supporting a heavy load. "Danny?" Jazz called. Danny swore and moved forward frantically. Jazz was so going to kill him. Danny's breath caught as he tripped, barely catching himself on the wall. His hand hit a button. Click. It all happened in a split second, energy hummed through the walls and the portal was finally alive. Danny gasped and the empty portal was filled with a thick green luminescence. Cold lightning coursed through every part of his body, a scream ripped up through this throat and shred the air throughout the house. Sam froze. The sound paralyzed her and her blood ran cold. This was not happening, not to Danny, never to Danny. Tucker stared at the unnatural green pool before him. His brain was shattered and all he could do was stare. He couldn't comprehend what was happening, and a part of him wondered if he ever would. A dagger of ice struck Jazz's chest, propelled by the awful screech. Her breath was stolen from her with a pathetic wail and she collapsed at the top of the stairs, clutching the railing and staring at the awful green wall below. The scream jolted through Jack's mind and he forgot every failure and every success that had ever taken space in his mind. His lethargy was immediately expelled and with a quickness that he had never before experienced, he leapt up and ran toward the basement. Maddie saw nothing but blackness. The source of that cry of complete agony, the likes of which she had never heard before, was coming from the boy she loved more than life itself. With the power of a million suns she bolted out the door and to her son, to the center of her world..
Danny was nothing but pain. Everything he had ever been had been flushed away by the paralyzing sting of agonizing death. Every muscle and bone in his body ached and he collapsed. He felt a rush in his gut and every moment that had ever shaped that fourteen-year-old came to his sight all at once. Grasping at his mother's shirt as she left him on his first day of kindergarten, Dash's knuckles bruising his chest as he shoved Danny against the lockers, his mother stroking his hair as she sang My Sunshine, his dad's powerful fist wrapping around Danny's as he led him through a near perfect fishing cast, falling asleep on Jazz's shoulder as he watched the sunset out the RV window, laughing triumphantly as he finally beat Tucker at Smash Bros, watching the white snowflakes fall against Sam's beautiful black hair, opening a birthday present to reveal his first telescope. In a blink it all disappeared. Danny exhaled his last breath and was overcome with a coldness. His body and mind suddenly felt lighter and he picked himself up off the harsh metal floor.
Danny stumbled toward the end of the portal. In another set of circumstances, he might've stumbled toward his friends, out of the portal. This was not the case. Danny stumbled to the other side, to the swirling green world of purple doors and strange souls beyond.