There was a painting, and in that painting was a castle. There was also a boy in that painting. The poor boy’s name is Joe. But there was a problem. Joe was not supposed to be in that painting. One day, Joe invented a device that would allow him to travel to anything, including objects, space, and time. He tried that machine in the painting and became trapped in it.

Joe thought that he could easily get out. He was wrong, there was a whole other world in there, in fact, there wasn’t even a castle there. Joe’s device got taken away by a monster within the painting. The monster was big and white, almost like a skeleton, exactly like a skeleton really. He walked around looking for the device until he found something.

Joe found one of the monster’s minions, who also spoke English, who explained everything to him. The minion told Joe that he had to go through a series of challenges, some of which are deadly, to escape. He didn’t have a choice. After two minutes of being scared and not moving, Joe started walking towards the first challenge, a maze of bones. As he walked through, he was very grossed out, but at least he remembered a small trick, always go left if you’re lost in a maze.

After an hour of pain, Joe finally discovered his second challenge, rock climbing. He almost screamed. Instead, he yelled into the air, “Why!” But he never got an answer. He eventually gave up and climbed the very large and sharp rocks, which was a very painful experience, especially for Joe, who had never gone rock climbing before. I shouldn’t have to do this! He thought.

By this point, he was about halfway up when he suddenly got very tired. Now, he was almost at the top when he fell. After a little bit, he rolled instead of falling. Once he got to the ground, he passed out. When he woke up, he had a really bad headache. He tried to walk around but all he could see was black. Eventually, Joe could see fine, but his headache was still there.

Joe hated being in the painting. He knew he had to retry the rock climbing challenge. As he climbed, he became angrier and angrier. After five whole minutes of climbing, he finally made it to the top. At the top, he was greeted by the skeleton again. This time, the skeleton let Joe speak to him.

“Why’d you put me in here?!” Joe asked angrily, “Why did I put you in here, Joe, you really don’t understand it do you?” Asked the skeleton, “Understand what?!” Joe asked, “You put yourself here, Joe, you created all of this.” The skeleton answered, “How?” Asked Joe, not as angrily as before, “Well, you’ll just have to find out, and from here, you may call me Mr. Skeleton.” Just then, Mr. Skeleton vanished.

Joe spent a long time, 57 minutes to be exact, trying to figure out what Mr. Skeleton was talking about, and trying to figure out what other creepy monsters were going to talk to him. His thoughts were interrupted when he stumbled upon his third challenge, escaping a troubling zombie-infested island. “Weird.” Joe said to himself, “I was just thinking about zombies.” This time, Joe thought he was prepared, but he was very wrong.

He saw zombies, closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them, he found himself in a small town outside of a house with the doors open. He didn’t see any zombies so he decided to walk into the house. “Wait a minute,” Joe said, “Did I beat the challenge just by closing my eyes?” Just then, he heard a growl, like the kind of growl that if you heard, you would think it was a zombie. He rushed inside the house and shut the door behind him.

He found himself upstairs, with every single door and window closed. Joe realized that there was a door to the front balcony, so he opened it and found a whole horde of zombies waiting for him outside. When they saw him, Joe ran back inside, but when he did, a zombie had just opened the door. What?!, Joe thought to himself, I thought zombies couldn’t open doors! But unfortunately for him, Joe was very wrong.

It took Joe only a second to realize that he had only one option, jump. He ran as fast as he could to the balcony, then just jumped. It stung, but he didn’t have time, Joe ran at the same speed as before, away from the town. At almost every corner, Joe found more and more hordes of zombies who almost immediately noticed him, and when they did, they joined the rest of the hordes who’s only current goal was to get a hold of Joe so they could finally get the “snack” that they wanted. The look in Joe’s green eyes when he ran very easily said, “someone save me.”

Joe kept running until he ran out of breath. When he did, Joe became surrounded. Joe thought for a few seconds and decided to attempt to run through them. He realized he didn’t have left to think, so he hustled through the zombies and kept running, even though he was running at a slower rate. After two minutes, Joe saw something in the distance.

Joe found out what the thing was, it was a military base. Luckily for Joe, the base wasn’t filled with zombies, instead, it was filled with soldiers, as you would probably expect. “Son, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at one of the shelters dedicated to civilians.” Said one of the generals, “I don’t know, what year is it? Is it still 2019?” “No, it’s 2035, what are you a time traveler?” “N-no,” Joe stuttered, “I don’t think so.”

Since it was illegal to give Joe a weapon, the general gave him some binoculars and told him to keep a lookout. Joe could see very far, so far, that he could see almost exactly what they looked like. The zombies were very bloody and they looked like a mutilated body that got put back together. Wait, Joe thought to himself which he did a lot of, Those look exactly like the zombies that I drew for a school project last week.

“Congratulations, you finally figured it out!” Said Mr. Skeleton, “So I really did create all of this, but how?” Asked Joe, “How you perceive this world depends on you entirely, how you react to situations, if you are an optimist or a pessimist, every part of you, big and small contributes to what you create in this world.” Answered Mr. Skeleton, “So I could just imagine a different world and go there?” “No, the only way you change this world is if you change yourself, again it depends on you. Someone could come in here and see rainbows and unicorns, and another person could see a world where everyone lives in a tree.” 

“What is this place really?” “It is the dimension that exists between the present and the past, which the human brain simply cannot visualize, and you are no different, that is why you see it and feel it in your own world, you can’t see it in its true form. Here, take it.” Said Mr. Skeleton as he gave Joe his device to go back to Earth.

“Why are you giving this to me now, after all that?” Asked Joe, “Because you needed to learn your lesson” “My lesson?! You kept me here because you wanted to teach me a lesson?!” “No, I kept you here because you wanted to teach yourself a lesson. Somewhere deep down, you wanted yourself to learn about you, you see, if everyone had that device, I would look and be the same, except I can speak every language, and all I would do is take away their devices until they learned what they wanted themselves to learn.”

“Ok I get all that now, but what about your minions? Why purpose do they serve?” Asked Joe, “Well I don’t always have the time to explain things to people, I have other work to do.” Answered Mr. Skeleton, “What about everyone in this world, when I go back home do they just disappear or stop until I come back?” “No, they stay the way they are, even if you went away, and I already told you how you can change it.” “Could I take a friend or someone else here?” “Yes, but they wouldn’t be with you, they would have to go through their own journey to get their device back as I explained earlier.”

“Ok I’m going home now, my family is probably looking for me.” Said Joe, “No they aren’t, you don’t listen, do you, this is the dimension between the present and the past, meaning there is no future, so when you go back, it’ll be like you never left.” Explained Mr. Skeleton. Joe proceeded to do as he promised, and went home.