A Collection of Short Stories

8: Some Secrets Should Stay Hidden

Hannah walks down the stairs into the basement. She wanders around the room, looking intently at the things scattered around the small room. There was a chest full of costumes and a worn out carpet. An armchair was also confined to the basement's four walls.

Hannah feels something crawling up her leg, so she looks down. A spider was making its way up her leg. She yelps and jumps upward while trying to shake the spider off. In the end, she manages to shake it off but trips over the carpet.

She regrets tripping because as soon as she hits the carpet, the spiders that were hiding in there were crawling all over her body. She squeals and tries to shake them off. Hannah guessed that she looked like a complete idiot, trying to shake those spiders off.

Once she is done with her silly little dance, she makes her way to the carpet, wanting to flip it over to its original position. On her way there, however, she notices that there was a small wooden door where the carpet once lay. Does the basement have a basement? Hannah asks herself. She chuckles at the irony.

Hannah heaves the door open and peers down into the darkness past the trap door. From the faint glow from the miniature lightbulb in the basement, she can make out the start of a ladder.

Instead of going towards the ladder, she rushes past it and grabs her phone from the living room table. Hannah hastily turns on the flashlight and directs the beam downwards, into the hole. Surprisingly, she was able to see the bottom. Balancing her phone and herself, she climbed all the way down to the bottom.

There was a door that was slightly ajar. This is your last chance to turn around, she says to herself.

"Screw it!" Hannah whispers and opens the door.

Inside the room were photos of her. They were plastered everywhere. There were framed ones and ones that were simply pinned against the wall.

Inside, she met me. "Who- who are you?" she asks.

"I'm the author. You have entered my brain. It's a crazy place. I don't recommend exploring it. It gives too many bad experiences."

Hannah slowly backs out the door. "I'd be scared too, kid. I'd be scared too."