Artemis Fowl is just a book, right? Right?
Uh-huh. That's what I thought too.
(Revised for a more current story. :D)
Just a Book, Only a Book
Chapter 1- Just a Book, Right?
Ren closed the door behind her quietly and slipped out of the house. She had almost made it clear of her brother. So far so good. She padded quietly down the driveway. Just a little more time until she could run like the devil on her heels.
Just a little more . . . Yes!
She had it!
"MOM! REN IS ESCAPING FROM DOING HER CHORES AGAIN!"
Well, almost had it.
Ren tripped on an upturned pebble and swung herself onto the sidewalk in clear momentum. No one heard. No one heard. No one heard! She chanted mentally. Mom didn't hear!
"Ren! Get your behind back into this house and help me clean!" Nope, she was standing in the doorway tapping her foot patiently, her face as red as blood. Poor Mom, her blood pressure must have skyrocketed.
Ren sighed, defeated again, and walked back up the driveway. So close too. She walked back into the house and stormed up to her room.
"Now clean your room young lady before I take back your allowance."
"Yes mother," replied Ren glumly, trudging past her brother's room.
Her brother howled in a complete idiotic laughing fit. Rolling around on the floor like a dog, he banged his fists on the carpet having ruined his sister's plans again. It was pure joy.
Ren snorted. Yeah, stay rolling! Exactly where he should be! On the floor, she thought furiously, fuming into her room.
"What's the matter Ren? Wanting get out of cleaning again?" Her younger sibling teased, laughter ringing in his voice.
"I don't see you cleaning Michael." Ren snorted.
"Now now, girls aren't suppose to snort." Michael wagged a finger as his older sister gave the finger and slammed the door to her room.
It was completely, unconditionally unfair! Ren raged in her room for awhile, throwing around oddball curses and swears. She didn't want to stay stuck in her room; her chores were already done --- more or less --- besides the dusting of the furniture and the steadily piling mountain of dirty laundry. But her room looked fine as it was.
No doubt Michael had told a white lie and shimmied Mom into her infuriated, mad-as-hell, foot stomping, curse flinging frenzy that any and all life forms wanted to avoid if at all possible. Her mom hated a dirty room. (Whose mom doesn't?)
Then it struck her on the head like a twenty-pound bowling ball --- a plan to get out of this cage and enjoy the beautiful day. If her plan went, she could find a nice place to read one of her favorite books Artemis Fowl again, catch a flick, maybe even join her friends at the skating rink later on too.
Ren flung her black pouch over her shoulder and stuffed her book into it. She also grabbed some other things like her glasses and a pen --- you never knew when you might need a pen. Her ID badge wasn't a bad idea either to throw into the bag, just incase she somehow died and they needed identification on her, but she highly doubted she would die today. It also had its other purpose. To get into the house if it was locked, all she had to do was slide the thin plastic across the bolt in the door and presto! she was in.
Now she just hoped her plan wasn't too cliché for her own family to figure out.
She threw the covers off the bed and tie then together. Then she tied the end of the makeshift rope to end of her bed and flung the rest out the window. She was going to escape the old fashion tie-sheets-into-rope-and-scale-down-house way. Marvelous. Simply Marvelous.
She started to scale down the sheets slowly, being careful not to make a sound. Her mother, as all others, had superwomen hearing. Quietly, she tiptoed slowly down the side of the house.
It would have been a marvelous idea if only she had though of one thing. The knot tied to the bedpost. It wasn't tied tightly enough. Not to mention the slick furnishing on the wood to make it extra slippery.
Ren felt the rope-sheets slip down a ways as she looked up fearfully, then she looked down to the ground. The ground was about ten feet away. Ren began to feel a bit woozy.
Heights. Oh how she loathed heights.
"Bad idea . . ." She gulped as the knot tied to the bedpost loosened its grip and unraveled, sending Ren plummeting ten feet to the hard concrete patio.
Ren screamed wildly --- which sounded very similar to a squawking chicken who was being strangled while being fed through a grinder, and if you don't know that sound, just imagine the worst off-key shriek in the world. Yeah. That.
She landed on her bum on the hard concrete, and that hurt in itself. Ren rubbed her bum and stood up cautiously. She wouldn't be able to sit for a week now, that's for sure.
The girl quickly snapped to her senses again and looked around. It looked like nobody heard her. Now that was a surprise. Ren dashed over to the fence in the backyard and hopped over it with grace --- until her shirt caught the fence and pinned her there. She ripped the end of the shirt off of the fence and fingered the penny-sized hole. "Aw shoot!"
But that didn't matter now, she was free! Free as a bird, and Ren was going to do what she wanted to do now. No more chores or fussy brothers, this was her day!
Guess I should tell you a little bit about Ren. Her true name is Randolph Erin Nickleson. Randolph was her first name because her father wanted a boy and they had a girl instead, but he refused to call her anything except Randolph. Typical fathers. She wasn't a beauty queen or a giggly prep. No way. Ren was a regular fifteen-year-old girl that was extremely normal, if not a little weird (Everybody is somebody else's weirdo!) and a complete klutz. Yep, a klutz.
Ren always managed to somehow snag her cloths on something, screw something up, or just slam into a wall, pole, post, fence, ect. She was a fair-skinned freckly girl, with fiery red hair and dark eyes. Her friends could have guessed her bloodline came from Ireland, and most of them did. Wrong. Her grandparents came from Germany. Germany all the way.
Ren walked down the sidewalk to the neighborhood park, but it was such a beautiful day and Ren loved beautiful days. So, she decided to take a detour.
A major detour.
She passed houses she had never seen and neighbors she never knew. Then the houses started to spread further apart and become grander. Soon she was admiring huge mansions, great crisp white buildings with golden angels as weathervanes and seventeen-car garages. The houses also, as she ventured on, somehow began to remind her of something.
What? Ren hadn't a clue.
She'd never seen these houses before in her lifetime and she had lived in this neighborhood her whole life. She even boasted walking down every street blindfolded. But now it seemed as though she wasn't even in her neighborhood.
"But I'm sure that I took the road to the park . . . but where's the stupid park? I couldn't have made a wrong turn . . ." She trailed off, her feet shuffling to a stop in front of large iron gates that loomed over menacingly. In the middle of the lockpad serpent who's mouth opened to strike was the letter 'F'.
She trailed her eyes to both sides of the gate. A twelve-foot brick wall ran around the property to keep things out, or to keep something in. The sight gave her cold chills.
Ren raised an eyebrow, eyeing the funny gate. She scratched her chin and looked around at the mansion. For some odd reason it rang a very familiar bell. It looked a lot like . . . nah. It couldn't be.
The Fowl Manor didn't exist.
But in her own curiosity, she looked over to the nameplate that indeed read 'Fowl Manor'. She gaped; still not sure that was she was seeing was right or some cheap trick.
"No way. No possible way this is the Fowl Manor. I mean, this has to be a fluke or an illusion or something," she reasoned to herself as her voice echoed into the seemingly vacant manor. It was too creepy for her. Just turn around leave, the reasonable voice in her mind persuaded. Just turn and leave.
At first, she did turn her back to the strange manor, but then turned back. Curiosity always killed the cat! her reason shrieked. With a deep breath, she pushed her way through the huge gates and chanted, "Then satisfaction brought him back."
The yard --- garden --- field of flowers --- was beautiful. If beautiful could even touch the sheer magic of the garden. Huge golden flowers blossomed everywhere and a small pond bubbled in the corner, huge oaks casting their shade upon the entire yard.
"Either Mrs. Fowl really have some good tastes in garden decorating. Either that or they had an expert landscaper," at her own joke, she giggled, realizing the absurdity of it all.
Ren walking into the manor's lawn, knowing what she was doing was breaking the law. Trespassing, of all things. But no one was home, so why not? Just take a quick peak and zip on out.
But somebody was home. Well, two 'somebody's actually.
She walking onto the lush green grass and spun about, inhaling the sharply fresh air. It was better than she had pictured, if this was indeed the 'Artemis Fowl' manor. Her mind denied it all. There was no possible way.
There was a line between fiction and reality --- a thin line, but a line nonetheless.
But, honestly, could this have really been any other manor?
"This is amazing."
"Glad you like it, but I thought there was a law that banned trespassers, or do we need to hang up a rude orange sign that said 'No Trespassing'?" A cold voice spoke from behind Ren.
She froze. Sure, she didn't know the voice, but she had read enough of Eion Colfer's books to know his words. To know that undermined arrogance laced with the confidence of cornerstones. She turned slowly, one name sounding from her lips.
"Artemis . . . Fowl?"
Review:D
