'We can't wait any longer. We need to pack up shop and get out of here.'

'Not without the girl. We don't know how much Mr. Silverstein told her about us. If we let her go, she could go to the police. There would be no way for us to escape.'

I froze at the sound of their voices. So close now that I could hear each word clearly without mistake. I glanced around the corner and down the hallway and saw the two men approaching. They didn't know I was there, but I knew that if I didn't do something quick, that wouldn't last long.
I pressed my back against the wall and looked frantically for a place to hide. My gaze settled on a closed door on the other side of the hallway. A janitor's closet. I only hoped I'd be able to make it in time!


'R-----! Dinner!'

Like a dream, the last fragments of the scene shattered as reality settled in. The door of the once desired janitor's closet formed back into the plain computer screen as the concrete walls of the warehouse dissolved, revealing the gray-pink walls of my bedroom. I again could feel the smooth plastic keys of the keyboard beneath my fingertips. The stillness of the quiet warehouse was replaced by Jan and Dean's Dead Man's Curve as their melodic voices floated out the stereo's speakers. The distinct sound of clinking dishware drifted up the hall from the kitchen when my dad's voice came again.

'R-----!'

'Coming!' I viciously stabbed at the save button with my cursor before closing the program, waiting until it was dome before unplugging the thumb-drive. I'd have more time to work on the story after dinner, but that didn't settle my annoyance of the disruption of my writing process.

This hadn't been the first time I had debated skipping dinner in order to continue writing a chapter. To me, the excitement of finishing another book outweighed my hunger for food causing me to ignore the heavenly smells wafting from the kitchen. I was more interested in finding what would happen next then what was on the dinner menu.

It had been this way since the third grade when I first settled down at my desk to write a story. With each word and each sentence I completed, my love for writing grew and grew. Sentences soon became paragraphs and paragraphs into chapters until my small hobby became an unleashed obsession as I wrote more and more trying to complete a book I was proud of.

I would carry a notebook with me to school everyday using every bit of free time I had to add to my book. By the eleventh grade I had finished a total of two stories in all and had begun several others, but no matter how much I wrote, I was never completely satisfied with the ending product.

My writing skill lacked something and my goal of finding this missing aspect persuaded me to write more and more and led to countless afternoons in front of the computer only to be interrupted by my father's familiar call. 'R-----! Dinner!'

No matter how many times I've been called away, I always know I'll come back to write and again be transported into a different world, where I become my characters: living their adventures, knowing very well that reality is only a sentence away.