Many centuries later, deep in the heart of a dark and wild forest, something began to stir. A deep rumbling shook the surrounding area, and animals began to run and fly as a volcano burst out of the ground and erupted, covering the forest in lava and ash…
Many miles away, the sun was just beginning to rise over Illinois. In the suburbs of Chicago, alarm clocks were going off, and people were beginning to rise to face the day. In a moderately sized pale yellow house, an alarm clock went off. A seventeen year old girl rose out of bed and shut it off wearily.
This girl was named Ren Callahan. Glancing in the mirror, she took an inventory of her image. Short, messy, over dyed black-and-blonde hair, puffy eyes with dark circles underneath, a too-pointy nose, hints of a lurking breakout. I'm going to need some serious makeup, she thought. She sleepily wandered downstairs, where her mother was already sitting at the table, drinking a large mug of coffee.
"Morning," her mother said.
"Nrrh…" was all Ren could say. She shuffled to the coffee pot, poured herself some coffee, and sat down across from her mother. From her seat, she could see out the kitchen window into the backyard. It was a sunny Monday morning in late May. She sat there just staring out the window before her mother broke the silence.
"So are final exams today or tomorrow?"
"No, Mom, finals start on Wednesday." she said.
"Mmhm." her mom murmured.
Ren sighed and finished her coffee, then got up and headed back upstairs. She got ready and 45 minutes later she was back downstairs.
"Mom, I'm going to school. See you tonight." she said.
"Bye, hun. Love you. Oh wait, can you take your sister to her school?"
"Mooooom!" Ren groaned.
"Please! I've got a job interview at 9 and I can't take her on the way!"
"Fine. Whatever." she replied. "CHLOE!" she screamed upstairs. Chloe, Ren's 13-year old sister, stood at the top of the stairs. "Ready!" she said in her cheery, high-pitched voice.
"I'm so happy for you." Ren said sarcastically. "Now get down here. I'm going now."
She put on her backpack and grabbed her keys and purse, then stepped into the garage and got in her car, a red Jeep. Chloe opened the passenger seat door.
"No way, kiddo. I'm picking up Mel today and she gets shotgun." Ren snapped.
Chloe sighed and got in the backseat. Ren opened the garage and turned the radio up as she pulled out of her driveway. She drove a few blocks and then pulled into the driveway of a large pale blue house - the house of her friend Melanie Parker, commonly called Mel. She honked the car loudly and a tall girl with long dark brown hair stepped out of the house and ran to the car.
"Hola Ren." Melanie said as she sat down in the passenger seat.
"Morning." Ren replied.
Mel got in the car and they headed for the middle school. Pulling through the parent drop-off lane, Ren stopped the car for long enough to let Chloe out.
"See ya, Chlo. Need a ride home?" she added, realizing that she had been pretty snappy to her sister that morning and wanting to make up for it.
"Uh, can we go get ice cream afterwards?" Chloe asked.
"Yeah, sure."
"OK see you after school." Chloe said and happily walked off.
"I want ice cream!" Mel said as they pulled away from the middle school.
"Well, we can get a big group to go tomorrow after school but I think today it'll just be me and Chlo."
Soon they pulled up to the high school and Ren parked her Jeep. She and Mel parted ways and headed to their respective first-hour classes.
Ren wandered into her math classroom and set down her stuff. Glancing at the wall clock, she noticed that she was exceptionally early that day. The door opened suddenly and her friend Max, who was a senior and a year older than her, wandered in.
"Oy Ren, what's up?" Max asked.
Ren giggled. "Oy? What the flip? You're such a loser." she said, playfully punching him in the arm.
"We've got a while, look, even Mrs. Lear isn't here, wanna go for a walk?" he asked.
"Sure, why not?" she replied, and they set off walking. About twenty minutes later they returned just as the warning bell rang, and sat down in their seats.
The entire day went by fairly uneventfully, although the staff was acting unusually uneasy and jumpy. However, most of the student body brushed it off as nothing.
Until Ren's sixth and final class of the day, her biology class. The teacher looked at the class in silence and waited until all the students were seated before beginning to speak.
"Class, today a rare event has taken place, the likes of which no one has seen before." the teacher, Mrs. Atwood, said softly. She then walked to the television and turned it on, where local news showed footage of petrified trees covered in ash, and a volcano in the center. They had entered in the middle of the broadcast but they caught the reporter saying anxiously, 'Locals say that this volcano reportedly spontaneously shot out of the ground in the middle of a forest here on the South Island of New Zealand about seven hours ago and erupted, covering the surrounding area with ash and lava. Sources say that…"
Mrs. Atwood shut off the TV. The students exchanged bewildered looks. One boy, Steven Hoffman, stuck his hand in the air.
"So, the volcano, it just…popped right out of the ground?"
"Apparently so," the teacher replied.
"Weird." a girl murmured.
"Very much so." Mrs. Atwood said, and then proceeded to launch into a lecture about volcano creation and how very unusual this volcano's sudden appearance was.
Eventually the bell rang, and Ren packed up her things and headed to the car. As she drove over to the middle school to pick up her sister, the music on her car's radio drowned out any thoughts she may have had about the strange occurrence half a world away.
She picked up her sister and they drove to a nearby ice cream shop. They took their ice cream to the city park across the street and sat on the swings, eating in silence, until Chloe said, "So did you hear about this volcano that randomly popped out of the ground in New Zealand?"
"Yeah, pretty crazy isn't it?" Ren said, kicking the wood chips at her feet.
"Yeah…Mrs. Taylor said it's impossible."
"Aah, Mrs. Taylor…I had her in seventh grade…she's awesome. Yeah, my teacher said it's impossible too, but I guess mother nature proved science teachers everywhere wrong today, huh?"
"I guess so… it's pretty much insane. I kinda want to go to New Zealand just to see…"
"Yeah, me too. That'd be wicked cool."
They finished their ice cream but stayed at the park for the while. While Chloe was climbing the large tree in the center of the park, Ren was walking around aimlessly, just thinking. She had been walking for several minutes when she spotted something out of the corner of her eye, shining brightly in the setting sun. She bent down to look at it - it was made out of gold and half-buried in the ground. She pulled it out and brushed the dirt off of it. It was a golden ring, absolutely featureless. It looked far too large for her so she wiped the remaining dirt off of it, unclasped the chain of the locket she was wearing, and slid the ring onto the chain. Ren's full intention at the time was to seek its owner.
She continued her walk, thinking almost nothing of her recent discovery. Soon it grew dark and she found Chloe and they headed home. In the car, Ren pulled the ring off of her necklace and showed it to her sister.
"I found this buried in the dirt while I was walking around back there." she told her.
Her sister examined the plain ring, squinting and rotating it. "Well, it's really big, it probably belonged to a guy." she stated.
Ren sighed. "Expert observation, Sherlock." she grumbled.
"Well it's really plain! There's probably a billion rings like this around! There's nothing carved on it or anything, not even on the inside. You may as well just keep it, I don't think anyone's gonna miss this…except maybe Bigfoot. It's huuuuge…."
Ren sighed. "I'll talk to Mom about it when we get home." And with that she put the ring back on her necklace and started the car.
When the two sisters arrived home, their mother's car was not in the garage. Chloe ran up to her room immediately, but Ren went into the kitchen. On the counter was a piece of paper upon which, written in her mother's hasty scribble, it said, "Went to the Bachman's house for a dinner party. Be home late. TV dinners in the freezer."
Ren sighed. The Bachman's were close friends of her mother's, and her father was out of town for several days. His job as a pilot took him around the world constantly and at the moment he was probably flying somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
She wasn't hungry so she shuffled upstairs to her bedroom. She shut the door and sat down on her bed, pulling the ring off of the necklace on her neck. Ren was unable to explain it, but she felt strangely drawn to this plain, ordinary ring which she had found barely an hour before
Without thinking, she put the ring on her finger. All of a sudden, she heard rushing wind and looked around to see a blurry world she didn't recognize rushing past her. Ahead of her was a fiery volcano…and a tower…and…she could barely describe the next thing she saw…it was a gigantic, fiery eye and she knew instinctively that it could mean only one thing - evil. It suddenly turned to her and she heard vicious whispering in an eerie language which she didn't recognize. Screaming, she felt herself pull the ring off her finger. Her eyes were shut tightly and she was laying on the floor, panting. Opening her eyes, she saw Chloe standing above her, her eyes wide with shock and fear.
"Holy crap, where the hell were you just now?" her sister asked.
"What do you mean?" Ren asked, puzzled.
"Well just now, you were screaming. I came in, and you weren't there. Then suddenly you were on the ground and still screaming." Chloe told her.
"The ring…the ring did it! I saw…horrible…terrible…evil things…" she squeaked, shaking her finger in the direction of the ring, which had fallen when she took it off and was lying several feet away from her on the ground.
"You're insane. Absolutely crazy." Chloe told her.
"No, put it on. No, on second thought, don't, no, wait--"
But she was too late. Chloe had put the ring on. She could hear her screaming, and soon she had taken off the ring. She was white as a ghost and she curled up in a fetal position on the floor, panting and shaking.
"What the hell…what the hell is that thing!" she panted.
"You're thirteen. Watch your language, little sis." Ren snapped. "I don't know what it is. But I don't like it. And I want to get rid of it!"
She set it on the top of her bookshelf and said, "OK, now don't touch this and don't tell mom, got it?"
Chloe nodded, still pale and quivering.
"'Kay, now, back to your room. I have to call Mel."
"She'll never believe you." Chloe said flatly.
"Yes she will. She's the only one psycho enough to believe this stuff. She's a fantasy freak."
"Whatever." Chloe snapped, and with that she got up and left Ren's room.
As soon as Chloe left, Ren raced to the computer and IM'ed Mel.
gilligans toenail: MEL OMG LISTEN TO THIS. IM NOT CRAZY I SWEAR:
gilligans toenail: I was at the park & found a ring…I put it on & it made me disappear & I saw stuff. Like weird stuff, visions of places I've never seen before. & a volcano & a tower & a giant flaming eye.
go BOOM 231: wtf are you talking about!
go BOOM 231: psycho!
gilligans toenail: NO SERIOUSLY. I'm not crazy.
gilligans toenail: can you come over right now?
go BOOM 231: I'll ask.
gilligans toenail: ok
go BOOM 231: yeah I'll be over in 5 minutes.
gilligans toenail: k see ya then.
Ren put up an away message and paced around her room madly until she finally heard the doorbell ring.