The road to the university wasn't usually as dangerous as it was that night. The wet slippery roads that made the car slip an extra inch to the left every couple of minutes were different from the usual mid-sunset roads where the dew left over from that morning would make tiny rainbows on the plant life around the road. As the wipers swiped away the water that fell onto the windshield, lightning struck and showed the path of no more than a foot in front of the car, a different experience than the usual visual beauty of horizon and forest seen miles in front of the road. Aside from the pouring rain slamming on the windshield, a sound that calmed the brunette daughter, it was the opposite of a comfortable drive.
This was the fourth and final time the eldest would have been making this trip. At the young age of 21, she was already everything everyone wanted to be: popular, strong, intelligent, brave, and beautiful. Her blonde locks always fell perfectly styled along her shoulder blades and she always had at least two men by her side while walking along campus, one of which was her boyfriend- a tall, dark-haired, handsome, rich, business major and heir to the CEO of a large business. She dreamed of running a multi-million dollar company with him after graduating and was well on her way to that.
The middle child, an 18 year old brunette, was on her way to her very first year at the same university as her older sibling for a major of Theater and Art. Despite her very positive relationship to her older sister, she was very much different in every way from her. She had many friends, but wasn't stereotypically popular. She got good grades, but did not have the passion or drive for school and riches. She did what she had to do to get by, but preferred to spend her time locked in the fantasy worlds she created or living lives of characters in the theater. She was shy and quiet, but once you got her going her bubbly perky laugh would light up the whole room.
The youngest, and the only male, was a 16 year old brunette who loved reading, video games, and writing. He was very intelligent, often compared to his eldest sibling, and enjoyed getting excellent grades. He was gentle and quiet, perhaps from all the years of bullying from his older siblings or perhaps just by nature. Despite his lack of interest in stereotypically male hobbies, he was of high interest among the women in his class and would be seen in the art room after class hanging out with a few of them. His best friend was a male who played viola in the school's orchestra and often provided much inspiration for his fictional pieces and paintings.
In the front seat, the father sat hugging the steering wheel and crouched forward as much as possible to concentrate enough and hopefully see a safe amount of road ahead. The lights were on full beam, yet all you could see was falling rain. In the passenger seat was a quiet woman, the mother, who had her right hand secretly grasping the wall of the car next to her. In the back were the three children, all attempting to keep their mind off of the awful night. The eldest scrolled through her phone and texting her friends, letting out the occasional giggle as she responded to all of the latest drama, the middle was listening to music with only one earbud in, so she could hear the rain, and writing in her notebook, and the youngest was playing on his handheld gaming console.
"Theodore, maybe you would manage to snag a girlfriend if you quit shoving your dweeb nose in all of those games and open your eyes to the real world," the eldest sister chimed happily as she leaned into the middle seat's passenger, "and maybe then you'd lose some of that weight so we can all sit in the back here comfortably without your rolls pouring all our over us."
The younger girl laughed in agreement, "yeah, Theo we can barely breathe back here, give us some room!" She also began pushing against him in the middle seat.
"Mom they keep squishing me!" the boy chimed from the middle seat as his sisters continued to crush themselves into him as if they had no other choice.
"Girls will you stop calling your brother fat," the mother scolded from the front seat, "even if it was true, that's not nice!"
Elizabeth laughed her bubbly laugh and brought the hair tie off of her wrist to flick Theo with it. "We know he's not fat, mom! He's almost so skinny he can't even consider himself a man!"
The mother turned around from the seat and gave the middle child a glare before saying "enough, Elizabeth!"
"Girls," the man in the driver's seat spoke quietly per usual. He never raised his voice and never got heated, despite his frustrations with the constant bickering of his children. He had learned that it was best left to the mother who actually had the guts to scold the children. He took a deep breath before continuing, seeming very focused on the road ahead of him. "If you could please keep it down and stop the arguing," he began smoothly, "I'd really appreciate it. The weather is awful and I'm trying to focus on the road. Please, girls?"
"Yes daddy," Margaret responded happily before turning her head down back to her cell phone. Elizabeth rolled her eyes and shifted away from Theodore to lean against the window, shutting her journal to keep wandering eyes from peeking in on her work. Although she loved her sister, she never understood how she could be such a daddy's girl. Authority was not Elizabeth's strong suit and often she went against what her parents wanted. This was one of the times, however, that she would follow orders simply for the safety of her family.
An hour into the drive, the radio playing the father's favorite 60s music quietly began to fuzz out. No one was flustered, all of them assuming it was the weather interfering with the radio waves. The middle child began to feel uneasy and she placed the other earbud in her ear to take her mind off of the demonic radio screeching.
The accident happened quickly. There was one profanity screamed at the sight of a burst of light from ahead and then the car swerved. The father attempted to straighten his steering, but it resulted in the car crashing into the wall on the left. In a last-ditch effort to save the car, the father swerved to the right in a panic, effectively throwing the car off of the shallow cliff. The car rolled down the side of the cliff, bouncing off a few larger rocks along the way. Finally, the car's constant rolling was stopped when it crushed upside down against a tree a bit away from the cliff edge.
Search efforts went underway a couple days later after the family had been missing from work and school attendance. With the weather finally clearing up three days after the accident, the search was called off when investigators stumbled upon the bloody broken mess.
Investigators cleared the wreck as a weather-related driving accident after finding no evidence suggesting anything criminal. The coroner determined the cause of deaths to all be impact-related and found that they all died on impact, a relief to family and friends who wanted nothing more than to make sure such a happy family did not suffer.
A closed-casket funeral was held for the whole family a few days later. All five members of the family were arranged in chronological birth order up in the front of the huge funeral room. Flowers of all different shapes, sizes, and color were spread across the room in an attempt to bring peace and light to the very dark time. That did not mean there were no tears, however. The mother's father stood next to her casket through the whole ceremony, sobbing that he had to experience the funeral of his only child. This sight made cousins of the family break their composure and realize how dark of a time this was for everyone. Margaret's boyfriend sat in the seats in front with his head down, holding the bouquet of red roses he had planned to surprise her with on her first day back to campus and silently sobbing. Theodore's three closest friends sat in the middle, switching off to go up to the casket and say a pray repeatedly, hoping that it would give them all a peace of mind. Elizabeth's best friend sat outside of the funeral house with Elizabeth's dog, petting him and whispering apologies and expressions of sadness to him. The dog himself was very seriously distressed. In only a few days, he had dramatically lost weight and often woke in the middle of the night crying and would steal the clothing that was previously Elizabeth's off of the floor of her friend's closet and sleep next to it at night.
Everyone in the town was uneasy and shocked by how the setting of the neighborhood could change in the blink of an eye. The large almost mansion-like house of theirs was put up for auction only a few weeks after their death, which set their previous neighbors on edge. The high school the children attended had put up a statue honoring their memory and citizens of the town filled the surrounding area with flowers weekly. Whenever someone would leave the house, another member would make sure to say "I love you, be safe". Nobody's lives remained unchanged by the accident.
But it was the children's lives that changed the most.
Margaret opened her eyes to find herself standing in complete darkness. When she opened her mouth to scream, she was met with a crippling fear of the unknown and instead chose to stay quiet. A minute went by of Margaret standing still and gathering her thoughts before a single dim spotlight shown on the area she was standing. A couple of feet away from her stood both of her siblings. Elizabeth was dressed in a knee-length white strappy silk gown. Her now light-brown hair was pulled up into a small pony-tail and her hands were pressed to her face. On her other side stood Theodore, also with light-brown hair and a white suit. He stood stiffly straight up and flinched when the lights rose, blinded just a little bit. Margaret looked down at herself and found that she wore the same dress as Elizabeth.
"Guys?" she questioned softly, getting both of them to look towards her and rush towards her. They both approached her from opposite sides and she wrapped her arms around them in comfort and relief, trying not to cry. She knew what had happened and she knew she wasn't on Earth's plane anymore.
The lights slowly began to rise on the children. It soon became apparent to the trio that they were in a large room. The floor was shiny and reflective, the walls were perfectly painted, and there was a balcony above the floor. It appeared almost like a ballroom.
"Welcome to the Velvet Room," exclaimed a nasally hidden voice. "I am Igor, and I am pleased to invite you three to become guests of this place."
The eldest sibling stepped in front of her younger siblings, pushing her arm in front of them as a shield. "Who are you and why are we here?"
The lights lifted to a table a little ways in front of the children and revealed a short bald man with a huge nose. His hands were perched under his nose and he spoke without blinking. "No need to be so edgy, Margaret. I am Igor and I am in charge of this place. You are here... because you are no longer living."
"No longer… living?" Theodore's voice quivered from behind Margaret.
Elizabeth pushed down her sister's arm and poked herself out from behind Margaret asking firmly, "Where are our parents? Is this some kind of sick joke?"
The big-nosed man chuckled and responded, "Your parents have crossed over to the other side. All of you died at the hands of a shadow and because of such, were brought to me. Not everyone who dies by the hands of a shadow wakes in this room, however. Only the strongest hearts full of the most hope are allowed an option other than the final resting place." The children stood in fear and blinked. Igor knew very well that the three were not trusting of him and had a hard time believing this wasn't a dream. "Margaret, you have shown great leaderships skills throughout your entire life. You stand for strength and authority, traits that could very well help me along my journey." Margaret's hand fell to her side as she furrowed her brow in confusion. "Elizabeth," he continued knowing he had their attention now, "you show a power of hope and ambition. And Theodore, you have proven to be very intelligent and wise. You think before reacting. All three of you had bright futures ahead of you. This is why the Velvet Room chose you to help it in its journey to truth and understanding of human relationships. However, you do not have to accept. Be warned, this job is not one for the light-hearted. You will be vigorously trained in magics and lessons that seem impossible to the Current World. You will build relationships with people that will inevitably die. You will not exist any longer as a human being, but instead as a Velvet Room attendant. You might not complete your task and have to live with the repercussions of it for all of eternity. And you will never see your parents again. But if you accept, you will help in achieving humanity's goal of finding the truth, and thus will ultimately save the world from caving in on itself if that is what humanity so wishes. Do you accept the call of the Velvet Room?"