The Marvelous Adventures of Tippit - Chapter 1

I dashed down the street and rounded a corner. Something in the shadows had caught my eye. It shimmered and sparkled for the briefest of seconds, then faded to dull again. Searching the darkness, I saw it again. It taunted me with its quick blink. Three steps, four steps, clank! I stepped on it. I looked down, and saw a small sphere. Picking it up, I inspected it carefully. It was covered in strange etchings and seemed to be made of a silver colored material. I brought it out to the sun. It glinted in the light, and I noticed a small black dot on one side. The dot was smaller than the head of a pin, but it sparked my curiosity.
Looking up, I noticed the sun was setting. It was a gorgeous pink-orange color and the puffy clouds were blue with a hint of yellow on the bottoms. It was truely a marvelous spectacle. I had always loved to watch the sun set. Each one was more brilliant than the one before it. Even if it was raining I would hurry outside to watch the beautiful orange sphere set between gray clouds and bolts of lightening.
I was due home before dusk, so I ran down the almost empty street at a brisk pace. It was Sunday, so besides a couple people who were out shopping for the next day, everybody was at home eating dinner or reading yesterday's newspaper. This town belonged to me.

"Tippit! Tippit? Where are you, dear?" My grandmother was always worried about me. She would make sure I got home before seven o'clock every night. It didn't surprise me, though. I was the only daughter of her only son. And, to make matters more complicated, I was an orphan. My parents were killed in a train accident three years before, when I was eight. My grandmother had every right to fuss over me like a mother cat. But, I had to admit, it was a bit on the annoying side.

As she opened the front door of our little house, a jogged around the corner. "Mama Beth! Mama Beth! Look what I found!" I always called her Mama Beth. "Look! What is it?" I showed her the strange orb that I had discovered earlier.

"I don't know," she replied. "Bring it in so we can look at it under a light." We stepped inside out home.

I lived in a nice house. It was about twenty years old. It had brown paint on the outside, and blue, red, yellow, green, and purple paint on the inside. There was nice, dark wood furniture and the one couch we had was upholstered with nice burgundy fabric. My grandmother always liked to clean and make the house look nice and neat. She also liked art. Several paintings that she made of me and my cat, Pinnip, hung on the wall. We also had quite a few copies of Degas paintings. My grandmother was a bit of a nutcase. She only liked Degas and the paintings she did. The kitchen always smelled like a bakery. My grandmother always had fresh baked bread. My favorite was banana-pecan bread. There were two bedrooms. One for me, and one for my grandmother. My room was painted blue and green. Hers was painted red and purple. I loved to help my grandma paint. We had no basement, but our attic was stuffed to the bring with odds and ends. Old manikins, fabrics, boxes of baby toys, and a large treasure chest were shoved in every corner possible.
We went into the kitchen and placed the tiny sphere on the table. We shone a light on it and it glinted in the brightness. My grandmother turned it over and over in her old, wrinkled hands. She studied the small dot and saw that it was a slight hole. She went to her room and brought back a pin from her sewing drawer. Handing me the pin, she said, "Here. Stick this in the little hole right there." I carefully took the pin and pressed it into the hole.
A sound like a sonic boom follow. I grabbed Pinnip. There was a huge gust of wind which blew everything except for me and Pinnip away. We were surrounded but blue, then yellow, then green, then white, then black. It was like we were in a huge vacuum. I held onto Pinnip tighter, and the I lost consciousness.