Make Believe

It was a tuesday afternoon in the middle of the summer. School was out, all of my friends were off getting settled in their colleges since we had just graduated high school. Dad asked me to go down to the basement and find some tools. We decided to attempt to fix the front porch stairs. The key word is attempt.

The Peterson household is usually a very quiet place. My dad works almost every day of the week and I usually spend my days at the library studying for my retake of the SATS or reading the news paper.

Sure, I have friends but like I said, they already have plans for their futures. They already know what they want to do. I, on the other hand, have no idea.

I slipped my black, old converse on and began my walk down the creaky, unstable stairs of our basement

And that’s when it hit me. Or, I hit it.
 
That one stupid nail that has always stuck out of the third to last stair caused me to tumble forward, rolling down the last two stairs, hitting my head hard on the floor at the bottom. Needless to say I was in a shit load of pain and aside from that, I knocked over a couple hundred of boxes that were piled up against the wall. I groaned and picked myself up from the ground, gaining my balance against the wall.
 
“Awesome. Now I have to clean this up.” I mumbled to myself, getting back down on my knees so that I could start cleaning. I tired my brown hair up in a pony tail, brushing my bangs out of my face. The boxes that were closest to me were easy to clean, just some old children’s toys that were covered in dust.
 
The box that caught my eye in particular wasn’t one that fell. It was a small brown box, covered in dust and sealed closed in tape. I tried my best to ignore it and just continue cleaning as quickly as possible but something inside of me drove me to want to open it more and more as the seconds passed. ’Don’t. It’s probably some old photo albums or books or something.’ I thought to myself.
 
Soon my curiousity got the best of me. Who knows, it could be a box full of my mom’s old text books. They could come in handy for all the studying I’d be doing the rest of the week.
 
The brown tape on the top of the box was already ripped a bit. It took little effort to tear the box open. Clouds of dust came flying out into my face and I coughed and rubbed my eyes a couple of times before the content became clear.
 
And there it was. The Big Book of Fairy Tales. It sat on the very top of the box, a big, fat book that I hadn’t seen in ages. I rolled my eyes, pushing the box to my side and going back to cleaning up the rest of the boxes.
 
Once again, my curiosity got the best of me. I picked up the book from the box, only now remembering how heavy it was. How the hell did my mother read this thing to me if I can’t even lift it?
 
It’s weight was becoming overwhelming and my fingers were beginning to turn red. Suddenly, they gave out and the book dropped in front of me, opening with a loud bang on the floor.
 
And that’s where things got weird. Everything around me started to change colors. The room began spinning. I seriously thought that I was having a concussion or something but I felt fine. Well I did until I started feeling myself being sucked down. The book became almost like a black hole, sucking the floor in around me. The first thing to go was my left shoe and then the rest of me.
 
For a second, all I could see is what looked like a nighttime sky. I tried to scream but I couldn’t. Panicking, I began trying to climb out of the hole going back towards the light of the small basement window.
 
Suddenly, the hole above me closed up.