1 Blue Ballerina

I only had one sister. She faded when I was about 10 years old. I was watching television. OK. That's where I should start. Yes, I was watching television. I started to switch the channels. I used to love cartoons. Which kid doesn't anyways?

Normally, there were about 3-4 different cartoon channels and I was easily finding something to watch, but that day everything seemed to be boring. I started to switch to adult channels. Usually, the common channels were between 1-30, but I went up and up. I was alone in the room and I got the shivers. We had this huge saloon. It was very cold, we only used that room when there were guests in the house.

I knew they were just channels, nothing to be scared about, but I was wondering who would watch them. There were countless possibilities of what I could see and that was giving me the creeps. Mostly there were some unknown traditional movies. About 100's, there were channels showing the old records of fish tanks. There were different kinds of fish inside and they seemed to be just wandering. I waited a bit to see if they would eat each other, but no. Nothing. They were just swimming. No one was feeding them. I thought maybe they fed the fish when it wasn't recording. I realized that I was scared even more. These fish were soulless, I thought. The screen was pale and there was this classical music. Even more soulless.

I felt like I couldn't go up anymore. My fear conquered me and I got out of the room. I went to my mother and she was doing the dishes. I looked at her, but she didn't notice me. I don't know why, but I didn't call her. I just waited. She kept doing the dishes and finally felt my presence.

''Oh, Simon. You scared me! What do you want?''

I couldn't think of anything reasonable to say to her. I didn't want to tell her about my little adventure. I kept looking at her eyes.

''Simon, is something wrong ?'' she asked.

''No, mommy.'' I said.

She told me to go and play with my sister. Well, I was still curious about the channels. I got out of the kitchen and went back to the television. This time I was calmer.

I went up to the 200's. There were... Uh... Really hard to remember now. Politicians. Yes, of course. There were politicians, speaking of boring things that I couldn't understand at that age. Can't really remember what they said, but they looked very serious. I was wondering who would watch them.

Anyways, I went up and up and there... Channel 300.

It was a musical channel. There wasn't any video playing on the screen. Only music. I remember it was again classical music. I wasn't a fan of classical music as a kid. Well, I'm still not. I went up and up. There were more and more music channels, without any video like the first one. Musics were different, but I realized something was the same with all of them.

There was this blue screen and a ballerina image on it. She was in the air. Kind of a jump that ballerinas do. It was called a ''grand jeté''. She had this fading body. Almost like a ghost. Her face and dress were also pale blue. Her hand in the front was almost like calling me.

''Come.'' ''Come closer.'' I imagined hearing her.

The more I stared, she started to get more and more realistic. It looked like she was trapped there and fading. I felt like she wasn't trying to get out. She wanted me to get in. But that's just my imagination right?

I closed the television and went back to my mom. That was a rough day. I didn't tell anyone about it. That night I had trouble sleeping. But, when I did, I saw my lovely sister in my dream. She was with me, staring at that ballerina. The ballerina moved her hand through the television, right into my sister's little hands. Her face is still in my mind. That blank face... She pulled my sister right into the screen. My dear sister was now, trapped with her. They were both fading together. I was right. She doesn't want to get out. She wants me to get in.

Tomorrow when I woke up, I rushed to my sister's room. She was already awake. It was so early in the morning, but she already had that blue dress on her. I had never seen her having that kind of a dress before. She was staring outside from her open window. I froze up.

''Look, Simon !'' she said. '' A grand jeté I will perform.'' and there she jumped.