Author's Note: The Following Story was inspired by the Movie Lost In Austen, which I have just watched and have fallen deeply in love with. I highly recommend it. The movie is centered on a girl, Amanda, who loves the book Pride and Prejudice and finds her life lacking in comparison. She wood prefer to cuddle up by a fire and read the book she has memorized for the hundredth time than to spend a night with her boyfriend. Everything changes when she finds Elizabeth Bennet in her bathroom. Elizabeth discovered a portal between the two worlds, and Amanda finds herself trapped in her favorite book until she can find a way to open the portal from the other side. I highly recommend the movie, but it inspired this story.
Understanding this concept may be a bit difficult, but bare with me. Chloe Sullivan is an ordinary, all right, a slightly eccentric girl. When she is eight, her mother walks away from their family and Chloe blames herself for her mother's unexplained departure. Due to a fear of getting close to people who will also, undoubtedly abandon her; she throws herself into books, allowing herself to be swept up by fiction. She finds herself fascinated with the Superman story, and grows up on comics, George Reeves' The Adventures of Superman, Christopher Reeves' Superman Movies, and Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, staring Dean Cain as The Man Of Steel. She falls in love with the Superman, and the beautiful romance between him and the spunky Lois Lane. One day, she finds a portal and is transported to the world of the Man Of Steel, but things are strange. She finds she has stumbled on him in his youth, before Lois, and he is reluctant to accept his destiny. She feels it is her duty to propel him towards the path she knows he is destined for, as well as to keep him away from a girl she knows not to be his soulmate. In doing so, she may discover the story she thinks she knows is not as set in stone as she thinks.
This story is to be told in first person through the perspective of Chloe. The part of this story that is in 'the real world' takes place in 2011, as this is when I am writing it. I have not decided when the Smallville bit is supposed to take place yet.
Lost In Smallville
Prologue
I sat down on the bed and turned on my Lois and Clark DVD. I was going to watch the pilot. Yes, I had seen the pilot at least a hundred times now, but, what did that matter.
Much like the great Nellie Bly or the even greater (though fictional) Lois Lane, I aspire to be a journalist. I want to someday work at The New York Times, the real world equivalent of the Daily Planet. However, unlike the Daily Planet, which for seventy years or so has remained the most important source of news in the world, The New York Times is, unfortunately, losing readership. This is a result of a combination of things. First, there is the weakened integrity of some journalists and the effect their weakened integrity has had on the public's opinion of all journalists, even the honest ones. Second, there is the television, which has allowed people to get news in a quicker, easier way. Third, there is the economy, which, let's face it, is what we blame for anything that has gone wrong. Finally, there is the general apathy of America. Without a real life Superman to inspire us, we are all just a bunch of selfish, lazy people. That being said, I feel compelled to explain what effect this dying of newspapers has had on my life. I, an aspiring journalist aged fourteen, am living in New York, going to a school where I was today told at a meeting with my guidance counselor to pick a more practical career path.
"Perhaps an accountant." She suggested, which just proves she barely glanced at my grades, as I have no talent for math, let alone no interest for it.
After that, the most disgusting thing happened to me. My writing partner at the school paper, who no doubt only joined so he could have an excuse to watch the cheerleaders practice without being viewed as a total pervert, tried to come onto me. I caught him looking at my breasts, which has happened before, and I usually try to ignore it and turn away, but this time, I decided to call him on it. His response was that he was merely appreciating the view, but if it bothered me so much, perhaps he could even the score by showing me his. When I rolled my eyes, he insisted that I had been flirting with him, and that he would be more than willing to go off into a corner with me. Charming, right? I, of course, left disgusted.
So, after finishing homework and writing an article for our school paper, an article I am sure our editor will not publish as it is too 'controversial' for a school paper, her words, not mine, I collapse on the couch and escape into the only world I feel maintains hope and integrity.
Oh, Lois, how I envy you, to have a smart, kind, gentlemanly writing partner who absolutely adores you, as opposed to what I have, a hormone crazed, indelicate, and quite stupid boy. But I suppose that is how all boys are in the real world, isn't it? I should learn to accept it.
As I approach the scene where Lois and Clark get in the elevator and she says that thing about being on top, I hear a noise coming from my kitchen. My father is at work, and nobody else lives here. It is not the most settling thing in the world. So, I get up and go to the kitchen, and I find a strange sputtering coming from the refrigerator. When I open the door, I do not see the sparse collection of plumbs, and the macaroni and cheese that we usually keep around, but a painting of a street. However, when I reach out to touch the painting, I see it is not a painting at all, nor is it a photograph. It is, in fact, a road. There is a road in my refrigerator. A road inside my refrigerator! . Now, a smarter girl would shut the door and go to sleep, hoping these delusions would disappear. I fancy myself rather smart. However, not unlike Lois, I have quite nose for trouble. More so, I have a nose for mystery. I have always dreamed of mystery coming into my life, and a very clear mystery appeared in my kitchen. I am not stupid enough to pass up an opportunity, or perhaps I am too stupid to listen to the tiny voice of reason in my head. Either way, I find myself stepping onto the road in my refrigerator. The door closes behind me, and then disappears. Did not see that bit coming. This cannot be a one-way trip! Wherever I am, and whatever adventure awaits me, I know I have to find my way home eventually, because my father needs me, and I cannot abandon him like my mother did. I can only hope that this refrigerator world is like Narnia in that no real time will pass.
As I walk down this road, I take in the scenery. It really is a beautiful place, wherever I am. I have never been fond of the country, but there is a little appeal to this place. The air is clean, and it is peaceful.
The next thing I know, I am chocking on dust, and then I am on the ground. A truck just nearly hit me, not that I can completely blame the driver, as I was not really paying all that much attention to where I was going. I head a truck door slam and then a very handsome blue-eyed boy comes down to my level and helps me up.
"Are you all right?" he asks. I nod. He sticks out his hand, "Hi, I'm Clark. Clark Kent." And then, for a reason completely unrelated to the truck, I find myself unconscious.