Pandora's Box

Chapter twelve

Sol's journey is a little bit different...

The moment the sheet is pulled, life flashes before his eyes in the form of a bright red train moving by. He stands alone on the platform he usually passes on the way to work. This time, after the train passes, the view is different. Instead of facing the open land, he looks at a castle in the distance.

As he moves closer, he recognizes the odd material that has been used as the building blocks: cards. He has no other place to go so walking through the open doors seems to provide an answer to where everyone else has disappeared to.

He enters through an arched opening, into a dark room. As soon as he walks further, the heavy doors shut with a bang and he is left in the darkness. This only lasts for a few seconds because he starts noticing a glimmer of light at the corner. The light from a candlestick which he picks up and uses as his guide as he continues to explore.

He moves into the room on his right. His footsteps causing the wooden floors to creak no matter how slowly he moves.
In the room he hears soft tiny footsteps that run rapidly across hard floor. The sound gets louder as he moves towards the dollhouse that sits in the corner.

The vintage dollhouse looks similar to the one his sister used to admire in the shop windows when they were kids. He moves closer and pulls the roof off the house and holds the candle stick over so he can get a clearer look.

It looks to him like a mechanical contraption that causes the doll inside to run around in circles nonstop. He notices that the doll wears a navy long sleeved dress as it runs, similar to the one his sister was wearing last night. He dismisses as a coincidence until his eye catches a glimpse of yellow in the dolls hair. Sonii always has a yellow hair tie in her hair, it's become something he associates only with his sister.

He moves his face forward for a closer look but stops immediately when he hears the doors creak. He stares at the opening, waiting for something to walk through.

Even though he can't dismiss the feeling that is sister is actually trapped in the dollhouse, he walks towards the door hoping to find a reason as to why they're here.

He walks into an empty, low lit room with nothing inside except for a cage. A girl with a lilac shirt scampers across and he doesn't need to thinks twice to know that the girl is Lilli. She's in trouble and he rushes forward to help but a force throws him backwards into another room.

The candlestick he used for light has gone missing. He notices light coming from a poorly covered opening that is half the size of him so he has to crouch down to peek through.

It's easy to spot the green tinted hair that belongs to Kai as he falls into a mass of water that's deep enough for him to sink. Sol waits for Kai to come up for air but that doesn't happen so he proceeds to try and pull the wooden planks off the opening so he can get through and help his friend. However, every attempt to pull off a plank leaves him with the pain of several needles piercing his skin.

He is forced to stop. Not because the pain is too much, he is willing to handle the pain. He stops because the floor beneath him breaks apart and he falls further and further down.