Outstanding Story (Sub-junior) - The Blue House

“The Blue House” is one of the outstanding stories (sub-junior) of the first biannual International Short Story Contest 2019 written by Anvi Srivastava, Gems Modern Academy, Dubai, UAE.

The Blue House

There lived a triplet with their parents in an apartment building. Their names were Rose, Lily and Jasmine. It can be noticed that all the sisters’ names are based on flowers. It was because their mother loved flowers. The triplets loved to dance, sing, discover and imagine. They were all 10 years old. One evening, they went to the nearby park to meet Jack and Jill. Jack and Jill were siblings. They lived on the other side of the park. Jack was 9 years old and Jill 11 years old. Jack said, “Hi Rose, Lily and Jasmine, it is 5:30, our parents are going for shopping and will be returning at 7:30, so we have enough time to play and ha-”. “And discover,” Rose added by interrupting him. “Ok then Jack was about to say have fun,” said Jill. “Ok, now let’s go,” said Jasmine. “Yes, she is right let’s go” repeated Lily.

Lily is very good in repeating things such as yes, she is right and other stuff. They all walked towards the woods. Soon they found a huge house coloured with blue on all the sides. There was something written on the wooden board. They saw ‘ENTER’ written on the broken old board. Originally, it was as ‘DO NOT ENTER’ but the ‘DO NOT’ part had broken off due to the weather. Noticing ‘ENTER’ the kids excitedly went inside the house. As it was spring the house was neither cold nor hot. They saw a big board. On the big board, there were newspapers from 1970, 1978, 1985 and 1988.

These newspapers had red threads on it which said, ‘NO IT IS WRONG’. Somebody must have done this because he/she wants humans to know about him/her or maybe he/she hates humans. Now the kids saw an enormous, weird thing. It was written ‘TAKE OUT THE COVER’!! Many years ago, it was written as a signboard ‘Do not take out the cover’ but the first two words broke off.

Rose took out the cover and saw it was a UFO. She used to see it in her dreams before and now she was seeing it in her real life. Then suddenly the spotlights turned on and they got scared and started to run as fast as they could. While running in the dark, someone holds Jack’s right leg. He used his power to get rid of it but couldn’t. His friends looked at him and then ran towards him to help. They all heard him screaming. From the right side, Jill remembered that he always kept a torch in his back pack. She left Jack’s hand. Jasmine said, “What are you doing? Don’t you want your brother to get out of this thing?”.

“I know what I’m doing,” said Jill angrily and loudly. It was so loud that all four looked at her, oh I mean five of them because whosoever was holding Jack’s leg was also watching. Because Jack’s leg was free for a few seconds and if he hadn’t paid attention to Jill he could have told his friends about this and ran. Poor, careless Jack. “Wow, Jill, you have a torch” said Jack. Jack switched on the torch. The bright light of the torch did a new discovery! It was a weird looking man. His face was triangle filled with blue colour. His body was a rectangle filled purple colour which had some bangles filled with yellow colour. His legs and hands were coloured red. “Run,” said Jill. “No, I want to click a photo,” said Jasmine. “You have a phone?” asked everyone together. “Yes, I have,” said Jasmine. “But you guys told to run, right?”. “Yes,” said Lily first time in her life (not repeating what others say). They all looked at her for a second and ran. While running Jasmine called her mother. Her mother said, “Jill’s parents were not feeling well so returned early,”. So, they all went running to Jack’s house. Jill guided them. Rose looked back and said, “What a frail alien, he is awful”. “No, he is not”, said Jasmine. “But he is so lonely”, said Rose again. “OK, OK, today for the first time Lily reminded us,” said Jasmine, trying to change the topic.

When they reached the house, it was about 6:30 in the evening. “Come inside, let’s play” said Jack. They played together for half an hour, then the triplets’ father came to pick them up from Jack’s house. The next day, Rose went to the triplet’s list and cut the word ‘Discovery’. In the evening, they went down to play as usual. They played ‘Hide and Seek’, ‘Tag’, etc. But they didn’t discover anything!! They were too scared to go back to ‘the blue house’.