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Hello everybody. We all know that my activity on Gaia has been extremely limited as of late, but that can be blamed solely on school and school alone. I never thought prepping for college would be this hard. You would think we would get a break from academics to work on it, but no, it's even harder than before. How sad. Anyway, I apologize for not always being here or being able to participate in zOMG! due to the school firewall, but the good news is that I'll be going home on the 21st and will, perhaps, be able to spend more time with over my break. I did manage to complete another chapter in the Twisted Dimensions novel that I will share with you here, but before I do let me just wish you all a happy Thanksgiving and the best of luck.

~The Ninja ninja cool

Chapter 7
“So, you’re back, huh?” James’ stepmother noted as he pushed the screen door open. Her tone hinted that she had hoped otherwise.
James nodded happily as he continued inside. He wasn’t going to let his stepmother’s incessant nagging fowl his good mood.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.
“My room. First day homework.” James explained.
“Oh no you’re not.” she informed him.
“I’m not?”
“No, I need you to clean up the kitchen before you do anything.”
James’ eyes widened. The kitchen was a disaster zone. “The Great Wall of China” as it were. Plates stacked to the ceiling and unidentifiable food matter ground into the dishes, silverware, and counters making them almost impossible to clean. And anyway, it was her mess, not his, so why did he have to clean it up?! James was outraged, but he managed to calmly ask, “Are you goin’ somewhere?”
His stepmother grunted in affirmation. “Bingo. Be back at seven.” she replied, stepping out of the door.
James gritted his teeth and looked toward the horribly messy kitchen. It was worse looking than he had remembered.
“Screw that!” he yelled to himself as he stormed into his room, throwing his backpack hard against the bed before remember that his precious stone was inside. Quickly he went over to it, taking it out of the backpack. It was unscathed. James breathed a sigh of relief. Now, where could he put it so that his younger siblings, and the older one for that matter, wouldn’t mess with it? James looked around and shrugged. Nobody else should be home for about an hour, so he had plenty of time to decide. Normally, Ashley would get home at the same time as him, but she had said she was doing something with friends after school. James silently thanked the gods for the small reprise of silence around the house. Well, there was no use putting it off any longer. He would have to have the kitchen cleaned before his stepmother got home or she would flip s**t. Sighing, he got up from the bed stretched.
Now, for no reason in particular, perhaps it was the experiencing of his first French class today, or maybe some unseen divine influence came over James and told him to do this, but instead of cursing silently to himself in English, he muttered the word, “Merde…” the French equivalent to the word “s**t”. James thought he heard a crackling sound behind him where the stone was so he spun around to see. The stone was sitting just where he had left it. He shrugged and headed back out of his room toward the kitchen.
James froze. He was just outside the kitchen… the perfectly clean, spotless, odorless, and absolutely sparkling kitchen. Very slowly James backed up into his room without taking his eyes off of the kitchen. He lay down on his bed, put a hand on his forehead, decided it felt a little warm, and closed his eyes.

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I was listening to the dull sound of the wind whistling around the closed car as I drove home. It was a much more relaxing drive than it had been on the way in that morning. I glanced quickly down to the paper sitting in my passenger seat.
“France, huh?” I thought to myself. I’d been taking the course for three years now, but I still wasn’t any good at it. This trip though… I’d passed up the option of going my freshman year, but I’d heard good things from the people who went. I supposed it would be a good opportunity for me to brush up on the language. I’d have to look into it.
Upon arriving home I called out to see if my parents were around. There was no reply, so I went on inside. I placed the French trip papers on the couch and grabbed a pop from the pantry.
“Awesome.” I thought to myself. “No homework.”
Taking a sip from the soda, I flicked on my Xbox and proceeded to blast the hell out of the virtual aliens on my screen. Yessir, it didn’t get any better than this – with the exception of not having school tomorrow.
After a few hours of mind numbing virtual murder, I heard my parents pull up in the driveway. Flicking off the game counsel I stepped outside to greet them.
“Hey Nick!” my dad said cheerfully. My friends always told me the same thing about my dad. Whenever they first met him they had all been scared to death by his scruffy big guy look; once they got to him though, they all agreed that, “Dude, your dad is awesome.” I liked to think so too. He had a scruffy grey and black beard, wore glasses sometimes, and still ran marathons. For a sixty year old, he was in really fit shape.
“Come help us carry groceries in, Nick.” my mother called.
Shrugging, I replied with a, “Kay,” and went to unload the car’s trunk.
My mother picked up the papers I had discarded on the sofa and examined them as I brought the groceries into the kitchen.
“What this?” she asked in a cheerful tone. She read it over. “Oh, did you have any interest in the trip this year, Nick?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I was thinking it would be pretty cool if I could go this year.”
“I think we can do that…” she said, glancing at the bottom line of the paper with the price on it. “I’ll talk to your father about it.” she told me, folding the paper up.
“Okay, cool. No rush or anything.” I replied.
“So how was the first day of school?” she asked. This was the ultimate mother question. Every day after this I was sure she would ask, “So, how was school?”
“Fine.” I said, countering with the ultimate teenage response.
She nodded and I excused myself upstairs to my room, passing the old mirror on the way up the stairs I glanced at my reflection for minute. ‘Man…’ I thought. ‘Why are there so many other people just like me in the world? What chance do I have of making a difference in the world? Why even bother trying? It’s not like anything is actually helping you out…’
“What am I talking about?” I said aloud, realizing that I had no idea what I was even thinking, or why I was thinking it. Shrugging off the thought I proceeded to my room and picked up the phone line.
‘I wonder if James is thinking about the French trip…’

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The ringing filled James’ ears causing him to open his eyes and blink. He mechanically got out of bed and made for the phone, avoiding glancing at the kitchen on the way.
“Hello?” he said into the phone.
“James?” I replied.
“Hey. What’s up?”
“Not much, you sound tired. Did I wake you up?”
“Yeah, I was just taking a nap. I needed to get up anyway.”
“Cool. Anything interesting happen after lunch?”
“Uhh…” James tilted his head toward the still sparkling kitchen and immediately turned back. “Nope. Everything’s normal… really really normal.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?” I asked. The tone in his voice had seemed a bit freaked out.
“Huh? Oh. Nothing. So, yeah. Um…”
“Hey listen.” I said breaking into James awkward stuttering. “I think I’m going on the French trip this year. Are you thinking about going?” I asked, and James’ attention seemed to shift to the conversation.
“Ha! Are you kidding? My parents couldn’t afford that trip in a million y-…” he trailed off. “Unless…” he pondered.
“What?” I asked, curious as to whether or not James had actually had a sudden epiphany.
“Well, it’s a long shot,” he admitted, “so I don’t want to get my hopes up. I’ll tell you later. I’ve gotta check on something, okay?”
“Well, all right. I’ll talk to you later then.”
“See ya.” James said, hanging up the phone.
James took a deep breath and closed his eyes. After meditating for a moment he opened his eyes and peeked around the corner at the kitchen. It was still sparkling clean. As he had expected, he wasn’t hallucinating. Stepping in, he looked around. Even the ceiling had been dusted. James ran a finger over the counter creating a sound of squeaky cleanliness.
“Wow…” he muttered. “How on Earth…?” the kitchen didn’t even have the smoky cigarette smell that lingered around the rest of the house. On the contrary, it had a lemony fresh scent about it.
“Alright…” James began to talk to himself. “The kitchen cleaned itself. So what? Makes it easy for me, right?” he laughed nervously to himself.
“This is cool, right?” the thought of what his stepmother’s face would look like when she saw this entered his mind and he grinned.
James was still coming to grips with what had happened, but he didn’t have a problem with it, that was for sure. He had to check something. He went back to his room and shuffled through the cluttered closet. He flung aside old junk and several items that he had thought long lost. James finally came across what he was looking for. He pulled the tin from below a pile of dirty cloths and unlocked it. He opened it and looked over the contents. He grinned. “Yeah, this might be enough…” he mumbled to himself. He placed the tin on his bed and went back to the kitchen. He shook his head as he looked over it one more time. James decided to pass it off as an amazing paranormal coincidence. He went back to his room and opened his French book, going over some vocabulary.

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