“Aria.”
I looked up from my sketchbook.
“Three weeks of summer have passed, and you haven’t left your room.  You have to go do something.”
“Okay, I will.”
I left my house and walked a few blocks then arrived in the middle of Times Square, where someone was drawing street art.  I stayed to watch the artist draw, and after finishing his drawing, I realized it was a 2D staircase.  The only strange thing about it was the colors; the staircase had a variety of colors and designs on it.  The designs varied from polka dots to stripes to zigzagging lines.
The artist looked up at me and I got a weird feeling.  Every part of his body was covered in black clothing except the space around his eyes.  It was not colored normally.  It had a design similar to the staircase’s design on it.
“Nobody step here,” he said, then he walked away.
Pedestrians walked on the stairs regardless of his warning and nothing happened, leaving me with one question: What makes the stairs so bad?  Confused and curious, I walked onto the first step of the stairs.  Nothing happened, so I continued walking on the stairs.  Eventually, I came to realize that the stairs seemed 2D from where I was, but they were actually 3D.  I was actually walking down the stairs, rather than across them.  But why was I the only person with the ability to walk down them?
The stairs led to a door which I stared at for a while, in fear of what lay behind it, before opening it.  I saw a variety of colors and designs, similar to those on the staircase, in the shape of a tube.  I put my legs in the tube and slid down, and before I knew it, things went dark.
When I opened my eyes again, I was at the end of the tube.  I crawled out of it slowly, then walked up a few concrete stairs.  Things looked the same except for one thing; everything and everyone was covered in street art.
“Run, the storm is coming!” someone shouted.
I followed a group of people into a small building.
“Hi, I’m not from around here. What’s going on?” I asked as I watched other people run inside the building.
“You certainly don’t look like you’re from here.  I’m Piper, and what’s going on is the storm is coming.  You may have noticed that we’re all made of colors and designs.  The storm consists of something that smudges us and our work.”
I watched with Piper as once-beautiful images on the roads turned to smudges of color.  It made me sad, watching someone’s creations vanish before my eyes.  The storm ended, but I got worried when I saw the results.
“Piper, it’s gone.”
“What?”
“The staircase.”
She stared at me for a moment then motioned for me to follow her.
“There’s this place we call The Blank, it’s where we all go when we want to draw something.”
“I see.  Did you get here like I did?”
“I don’t remember how I got here.  How did you get here?”
“Someone was drawing street art near where I live.  It was a staircase filled with color, and I walked down it then ended up here.”
“We have a small issue.”
“What?”
“Look at your hand.”
I looked down and noticed an orange and pink design flowing up my hand.
“What’s going on?” I asked nervously.
Piper looked like she had just understood the secret of life.
“I bet everyone here saw someone drawing then walked down the stairs the artist drew.  Eventually, all our appearances became filled with designs and colors.  We lost our memories when our appearance changed.”
I saw someone looking at us in the corner of my eye.  It was the man who made the staircase.
“Piper,” I whispered.  “Run to The Blank and I’ll follow.”
She looked at me for a moment, then turned and ran.  I followed her, and the man in black followed us.  We eventually arrived at The Blank, which turned out to be an endless plane of white.
“Piper, draw a staircase,” I commanded.  She pressed her finger to the white and began drawing a concrete staircase.  I turned to face the man in black.
“Aria, I know you’re an artist.  You belong here,” said the man.
“Done!” Piper yelled.  I took her hand and we ran down the staircase, opened the door, then jumped through the tube.