Untitled

It was a fairly normal day during Christmas break. I had gotten up at the normal 6:25 a.m. to my alarm, Johnny Cash's cover of "You Are My Sunshine". I grabbed my phone off of the pillow beside me. Then I disconnected it from the charger, turned the alarm off, and texted you good morning. As always, I tried to make it unique in comparison to the previous day's text, whether it be by changing the combination of emojis, or expressing how much I love you in a new set of words, or changing the order of things I try to tell you every day, or all of the above. I turned the volume down on my phone, trying not to wake Olivia, and played the song again so I could hear the rest of it. I turned over to my left side, facing the bedroom window, and pushed the translucent white drapes to the right. I peered out the frosty window for a long moment and noticed that it had snowed probably almost two feet the night before. I let go of the curtain, grabbed my glasses from under the pillow I charge my phone on, and got out of bed. I went and told my parents bye before they left for work and then I started getting ready for the day. I bathed, pulled my hair back, and got dressed. I knew I was just going to hang out with friends later that day, so it didn't have to be anything too spectacular. My darkest pair of blue jeans, grey hoodie with thumb holes, and blue tennis shoes would suffice I decided. I had a bowl of cereal for breakfast. By the time I finished, it was about a quarter till nine, and Gavin and Olivia were still sleeping. Gavin usually didn't get up until noon or after on breaks and Olivia usually gets up after eleven. These moments were always the best part of waking up the earliest. It was an opportunity to be alone and do whatever I wanted without anyone else knowing about it, as long as I wasn't too loud. It was like having the whole house to myself, and I loved that. So what did I fill this alone time with? Song! I love singing, especially when I'm alone, even though I'm pretty terrible at it. There's just something about it that makes me feel good. I went into the office, which is about as far from the bedrooms as I could get, and sat down in a spinny chair. I opened the hymnal app on my phone and scrolled through the alphabetized list of songs. I sang a bunch of hymns on my own and then opened Spotify. I covered Johnny Cash's cover of several more hymns, and concluded my jam session by singing "You Are My Sunshine". I sat in silence for a moment, just smiling, embracing the good fuzzy feeling. I verbalized a prayer afterwards, also something I rarely do unless I'm alone. Then I heard Olivia's bed creak and knew that alone time was over. I walked back into our bedroom, told her good morning as she groggily walked out of the room to go make herself breakfast, and I crawled back in bed for a little nap. I tucked my glasses back under my pillow, put my phone back on the charger, and pulled my cyan-grey-and-white-zigzag-striped cover up until my cheeks and nose were hidden beneath it. I turned on my left side to face the window, and fell asleep. A little later, I woke up from my nap smiling. I grabbed my phone from beside me and checked the time. It was now noon. I had been out for an hour. I got a text from a group chat I was in with five of my friends. The six of us decided to meet at Lily's grandparents' house on Cliff Drive at two o'clock. Two hours came and went quickly. We all got there only to find out that her grandparents were on vacation for the week. I'm sure that detail would have prevented me from being allowed to go. We all sat down in the front room. The house smelled of vintage wall paper (dust), and old lady perfume, a smell better described as mostly baby powder, floral shop roses, and then whatever they could think of after that. I pulled out my phone and was going to let my parents know that there weren't adults home, but Lily stopped me. "We're just hanging out, its fine." I put my phone back in my pocket and sat back in the old, floral print couch. "So what all are we going to do today guys?" I asked the group. Tyler recommended watching a movie. Alex and Cassie wanted to play board games. Lexie wanted to play with the Ouija board we found behind the couch when we were looking for the remote. Alex volunteered his tarot cards in case she didn't want to mess with the board. Lily said we could do all of the things everyone wanted to do, though she had this look on her face that said she was up to no good. First we played Monopoly, then Scrabble, and then someone brought out Cards Against Humanity (the most awkward game in the world, even when you're among friends). Then we voted on a movie to watch from the sparse collection of movies, all children's movies, that her grandparents had. We all love Disney movies for the music if nothing else, and there weren't many good selections aside from them. It was a tie between Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. Tyler, Alex and I were for Beauty and the Beast, and Lexie, Lily, and Cassie were for The Little Mermaid. Hoping there wouldn't be any time left for Lily's unspoken mischief, or tarot cards or the Ouija board, I suggested that we could watch both. Alex agreed with me, Cassie didn't seem to care, and the others objected. So, we did what we always did when there were disagreements, we each picked a person from our group and then they played Rock Paper Scissors. It was Tyler against Lexie, and Lexie won three out of five games. So, The Little Mermaid it was. Lil ordered pizza while we watched the movie. We took an intermission for dinner when it arrived and then finished the movie, all lazing about the front room as though we were at home. Someone pulled up the playlist from the movie on their phone. We all got up and did the dance we did when we had to play "Under the Sea" for our marching show our freshman year. Alex fell over, just like he did on the football field, and we all laughed. Then Lexie and Alex started doing tarot readings with Tyler and Lily shortly after that. Cassie and I decided to listen to music and play cards until they were done. They never cracked the Ouija board, which I was surprised by, but it was a good thing. "What are we going to do now?" I asked. Cass suggested watching Beauty and the Beast again, though it was shot down. "There's a creepy old house four doors down. Nobody has lived there for years. Rumor has it that people died there. Who wants to go?" Lily asked. Immediately four hands went up, and Cass and I were the only ones whose hands weren't. Tyler asked if we were chicken and we both said "No" at the same time. "Come on you guys!" Lily whined. Hesitantly, I got off the couch and pulled Cassie up. The couch's dismal pink flowers looked as excited as we were to go nosing around in an old condemned mansion in the snow. Lily broke out in song and sang "Under the Sea" the whole way over to this house. Everyone joined in and then Tyler made the crack about it being a good thing that we aren't in choir. Everyone laughed, though it died abruptly once we all started scaling up with our eyes the deteriorating abode that had very obviously been left long ago. At one time it may have been an absolutely gorgeous estate. In everyone's silence, I enjoyed comparing what this place could have been in it's prime to the lavish living of Mr. Gatsby of The Great Gatsby, a book we had to read with our American Literature class last fall. But this place's time of splendor appeared to be long gone from what we could tell on the outside. Then it started creeping into my mind that "Oh, yeah, people probably died here. Great. Who knows what we're in for." I felt okay for a moment though, because I realized that we didn't have a way to get in. That meant my adventurous friends were probably going to raise Cain to get inside and get us all caught and sent to jail in the process, but you know, at least we might get to be roomies. We checked all of the doors and windows we could reach, and they all were locked. Lexie was observant enough to ask Alex what he'd packed in his backpack, but I knew him well enough to be able to tell you it was probably useless. And I was right, well, mostly. He had the Ouija board, tarot cards, a pad of paper, some pencils, his phone charger -he was the only one with a Samsung, again, useless- a bottle of water, and a flashlight without batteries. Nothing really useful for getting us in, which I was still fine with. Tyler decided that he was going to ram into the door until it opened. We all stood and watched, cringing a little each time we heard his body slam up against the door. It was black and had a large metal door knocker on it. I guess whoever used to visit here had enormous hands, because the knocker was just so excessively big. Anyways, Tyler grabbed it and continued to hang on it as he slammed himself into the big old door. The seventh and final time, he went head on instead of shoulder checking the door. He burst through the doorway and face planted. We all laughed, though he didn't find humor in it at the time. No one had any kind of first aid kit on them, so he was out of luck on getting cleaned up. It was just a few scrapes anyways. Lexie was the second person to go into the house. Lily followed her, and then Alex. Cassie and I stuck together, like always. She was more hesitant than I was, so I waited before going inside. Lily said to Cassie, " You're going to have to wait in the snow all alone! Who knows what's out here! Don't talk to any escaped patients!" (If you follow Cliff Drive long enough, after the railroad tracks keep going and then right after the highway overpass turn left and you're at the state hospital). Cassie stayed right behind me and came into the house. No one moved for a minute. We were all still right inside the door way. The door we broke into was to a tiny pantry. There were two bulky chests standing up -I later found out that they were freezers- and nice wooden cabinets lining the wall. We were all practically standing on top of each other, but we couldn't see enough to move. "Someone turn on the lights!" Lexie said. "This place is so old they probably don't work. Anyone have any matches? I've found a candle." Lil replied. Alex, the youngest of the six of us, a freshman, pulled out a zippo and lit the candle, pretending to be cool. He tripped and he dropped the lighter. He was just lucky it shut before it hit him in the foot. With the candle now lit, everyone could see that dropping the lighter scarred him, because he looked as though he nearly wet his pants. We giggled and Alex's face turned all red. The laughter faded and we all grew quiet again. I cleared my throat. "Alright guys, I think before we go exploring, we should set up some guidelines. 1.) No one is ever to be alone. We can do three sets of two, or two sets of three, or we could all stay together, which I would prefer. But, no one should be alone, and no one gets left behind. 2.) No illegal stuff. No stealing anything. No raiding alcohol or whatever other paraphernalia you come across. No weapons. We don't need to be packing-(Lexie and Alex break into "Pumped Up Kicks"). Anyways, use common sense. 3.) If anyone needs medical attention I say we should all reconvene. Also, try to preserve your phone battery for emergencies. 4.) No posting to social media. I feel like the six of us might have a tiny bit more common sense than our other friends. If you're going to do something illegal and obviously a bad idea...Well, if you post it you're asking for trouble. " Everyone agreed with everything that was said. We decided to split off, an idea I was not particularly fond of. "A sixth rule then, since we're splitting up. One person from each group texts someone from the other group every 20 minutes. Oh, and if anything scary or bizarre happens, let someone know." Again, everyone nodded in agreement. Cassie, Alex, and I were a group, and then Tyler, Lily, and Lexie were a group. We all walked through the pantry doorway and into a huge kitchen. I was amazed by the carpentry of everything I saw. The cupboards, the doors, the trim. Everything has intricate carved designs. Beautiful. There were a bunch of metal platters, dishes, and silverware strewn about. Alex found out that there were exploded cans of rotten fruit on the floor by stepping in a gloopy gush of the remnants. He slipped and fell in it and Cass asked him what it smelled like. He said mostly acrid rot, but decided that peaches were beneath it somewhere. Tyler led the first group through the kitchen doorway. I realized we really should have found a second candle before splitting off, but hindsight is 20/20. I asked Cassie and Alex where they wanted to go. Alex, now apparently in a snarky mood after being embarrassed, informed me that if we went through the kitchen door we were following the other group. So, I opened this huge, dark, heavy wooden door off to the side of the sinks. It opened up to what we later found to be the second staircase. "Up or down guys?" I asked, now shining my cellphone flashlight into the dark unknown. "Haven't you seen horror movies? The killer is always in the basement, or attic, or closet, and there are always bodies in the garage or basement or bathtub or strewn about the kitchen. " Cassie said looking ghostly pale, more so than normal. "That's the whole point of us being here." Alex said. "To explore! What if we solve the mystery as to the alleged deaths and what happened to those people?" Alex asked with stirring curiosity. "I don't know, Alex. I don't even know if people truly did die here, or if it's just Lil being Lil" I said. With no input from Cass or Alex on direction, I began descending the basement stairs. They groaned and creaked in complaint of our presence, each step a little sketchier than the last. The basement was huge. One room led into another room, and that one to another and so on. It wasn't a finished basement though. Just a dusty bunch of rooms that led into other rooms. It was an eerie place though, to say the least. There were old medical instruments strewn everywhere, some recognizable and others, well, I just hope the people that got treated with them survived their visit. I don't know what they were used for, and was glad not to have to know by experience, because I'm sure they hurt. In one of the rooms we found a vintage gurney. Not to discredit its former resident(s), but this was surely a quack-shop. I warned Alex and Cassie not to touch anything medical related, because who could tell if these odd instruments were cleaned after they were used last. All of the supplies in basement, the whole weird setup, was perfectly preserved in a thick layer of dust. It was like a weird time capsule with vintage medical relics of the past. In one of the rooms there were glass cupboards with jars of what appeared to be pickled organs. Some animal, most were human by the looks of them. They had canvas and twine for lids. They were in old mason jars and other containers all separated by what they were. We began looking through desk drawers, other cabinets, and every space in between to see if we could find anything that said what kind of medicine was practiced here. In the search, we found restraints, clamps, scissors, scalpels, other random things. We continued going through things and it came time for the first check in text. I texted Tyler. Five minutes passed and still no reply. I then texted Lexie and Lily. We continued scavenging through this museum of medicine as we waited for a reply. I could feel tension rising in the room. You could cut it with a knife. It didn't even sound like anyone was breathing anymore. Even our steps became suddenly silent. Then, we all jumped. I sat my phone on a metal tray after I texted the others. The vibration of Lexie's reply made us all scream. I grabbed my phone and looked at the text, hands trembling and heart racing. "U need 2 get up here rn!" I told Cassie and Alex that we had to go reconvene and they followed me hurriedly up the steps. I should have asked them where they were instead of searching. We went through every door we saw and didn't see anybody. I was freaking out in my mind. What happened to them? Where are they? Then, we came upon a door that looked as though it was left in the pouring rain for years. It was so much older than the rest. It was very out of place in this mansion of master carpentry, among other things. I looked at Alex and Cassie and saw fear in their eyes. I had that feeling, the feeling that we were those kids in all of the horror movies that everyone in the theater screamed, "DON'T GO IN THERE!", at as they opened the door. Except I didn't. Not at first anyways. I looked back again expecting Cassie and Alex to object to going in, or say something reassuring, but they were gone! I called their names and no reply. I called their phones and no one picked up. I texted and didn't get a response. Guilt automatically hit me like a brick wall. Hard, and all at once. This was a terrible idea from the start, and I went against what I thought was right. Here we are, six high school kids, breaking into an abandoned house that appears to be left abruptly, and was said to have death(S) occur here, which I could definitely believe after my findings in the basement up to that point. And we walked in expecting to what? Solve the mystery of who, what, when, where, why, how died? Disturb whatever or whoever is not at rest in this house? Why did we come? I knew better. I SO knew better! And now, what if I'm the only one left?! How do I explain all of this to...anyone? I become so self-conscious of even the littlest things, so there was no way that I could conceal the fate of five of my friends without it driving me insane. I needed help. I had to tell someone. I had to get help. I took a moment to just breathe. My anxiety stopped enough for me to think clearly for a moment. What if it's all some sick joke? What if everyone is hiding in this house somewhere and I have to solve the mystery AND find all of them. Worse yet, what if I have to solve the mystery in order to find them. And then moments of brainstorming what was happening was clouded out by just grief. What if I had just lost five of the closest friends I had that were my age. Thinking was putting me in a dark place very quickly. I needed to start figuring something out. I was pacing and it got to where I felt as though I wasn't allowed to breathe anymore. I felt like something awful was about to happen. I stopped and scanned the area without moving my head, using only my peripheral vision, which was pretty much inexistent since all I had was the phone light of my lock screen. I didn't bother with the flashlight anymore because I couldn't afford for my phone to die now that I was alone. For a moment it occurred to me that I could go back to Lily's grandparents' house and call for a ride home, but then what about the five? It was a selfish thought if nothing else. I don't know how I expected to walk back there anyway seeing as though I felt the way that I did. I don't even know what words you might put to that feeling. I felt like I was waiting to be shot I guess. Impending doom. Heart pumping out of my chest. I was alone. In the dark. Except I wasn't alone. The house had eyes from within. I may have been the only physical body around at the time, but someone....unsettled was there, and they didn't like me. Panic continued washing over me, crashing like waves of a roaring tempest against the once peaceful shore. I couldn't move. I couldn't talk to myself, because something was bound to happen. I couldn't walk into another area because what if it chased me. I was just panicking. That kid that everyone yelled at in the movie "Don't go in there!", that was me...everywhere in this house. But especially now that I was stuck. I was standing in the middle of this big foyer once I entered through the oddly aged door. There was a chandelier that hung from the ceiling, it was probably as long as I was tall, but the ceiling was incredibly high, so it wasn't in the way. There was a chair in one corner of the room, and several doors lining the walls. In the front of the room, there were big windows and a unique glass door. It didn't slide, but was hinged like the rest. Still it looked odd. It reminded me of the glass chess set we have at home. It was oddly textured and very opaque. I couldn't look at the front of the room anymore. What if whatever the cause of my impending doom was, was outside? What if I had to see it coming? Insane doesn't begin to describe how I felt. I couldn't get out of my own head. No matter what movement I made or what I did, there was no escape. The air became even more intense. I didn't know what to do. Overwhelmed, I took the risk of moving for a moment. I sat down on the floor, quietly. Head in my hands, I rubbed my face. I let go. I didn't care. It was the realization that whoever or whatever was coming, was going to come no matter where I was, or how ready I felt. I stayed and just listened for what felt like ten minutes, who knows how long I was really there for though. Someone once told me that it's important to take time to just listen, and to think as though whatever was needed had already appeared. Whether it be lifeless corpses, or dumb, cackling kids pulling a morbid joke, I was going to find them. So, I went back to where we broke in. I was going to start there and work my way through until I found them. The pantry was as we left it. The howling wind whistled through the crack in the door, torn from its hinges, unsure of how it was still standing up in its frame. I walked into the kitchen, looked through every space one of those dorks could fit into, and continued on. I went back down into the weird medical mystery that was the basement. Maybe they went back there, I thought. I looked through everything. Even the stuff I hadn't gotten to go through the first time I was down there. At this point I kept verbally telling myself that I was okay, a mantra that never really calmed me down, but I always said it when I was *really* alone. And I was. It also was something to hear besides the silence and all of the things that lurk somewhere in this overwhelming darkness. I looked in the direction of every noise I heard. I went into the very last room in the basement. There were no other doors, only odd looking cubbies lining the four walls of the room. In the middle was another gurney. On it was an old, old straight jacket, a worn, deteriorating leather belt with spikes on it, and a spit hood that would fit in well among the oddities of Long Cliff's museum. (The state hospital once had home for special needs kids called Long Cliff. People today, mostly among my great grandparent's generation, still refer to it as Long Cliff). Anyways, know the saying, "They have skeletons in their closet"? Well, I have never had a dream... or I guess a nightmare, about ever having to actually see one for myself. I had a terrible, ill feeling about opening any of the "cubbies". But again, going against my better judgement, I did. I don't understand how the smell didn't escape them or, how the smell didn't resonate through the entire house for that matter. Looking in them reminded me of learning about the slave trade, and the ships. In world history class my freshmen year, Mrs. Harmon told us about how all of these people were stacked on each other on wooden shelves and some of them were violently ill. Those people got the people they were surrounded by or stacked on sick and so on until many people were gravely ill. Some even died before they got to America, though their life here might not have been much better, since it wasn't really a way of living at all. But these cubbies....This was a morgue. A really twisted morgue. I don't know how long ago these people were alive. I still couldn't decide how old I thought the furnishings of the mansion to be. In the first cubby I opened, it was five little girls. I don't even know how they got all of them in there. It was all a nightmare I decided. I tried to shake myself awake, pinch myself, and nothing. This was real no matter how much I wished it wasn't. I've had to watch the process of someone dying. I've been to funerals of people who lived long lives. But nothing could ever prepare someone for this moment. I was just staring into a compartment of lifeless little girls. Nothing I could say or think or do could make this any better. Even so, part of me wanted hold those girls. I couldn't do it though. I couldn't. Not only because I would have to figure out how to put them back, but because of the fear of what the rest of their bodies looked like, considering what I saw in their faces. One girl's face wasn't as bad as the rest of them. I wondered why for a moment, and then I stopped. It suddenly struck me that the girl whose face was okay looked a lot like Olivia. The only significant differences I noticed were her age and her eyes. None of the children's eyes were closed. Her eyes were a really dark blue, a color that I've never seen in anyone's eyes before, They shone like a dark, rich sapphire. Olivia's eyes are light brown. This girl couldn't have been older than five or six years old though. I felt all of the hair on my arms stand up. A chill went down my spine. I was trembling a little bit, I noticed. Suddenly, tears stung my eyes. Holding them back as best I could, I stroked the hair of the girl who looked like Olivia. I realized then that the only way to make sure that none of my friends were down there was to look in all of the compartments. I opened a few more and realized that everyone in this room was too young. Everyone was a child. It's hard to reconcile the death of a person who has lived an entire life time. There is nothing that reconciles the death of a room full of children used as test subjects to some malevolent medical practice. They had their entire lives left to live. With all of this running through my mind, I slowly continued opening up the compartments in search of my friends or an answer or I don't even know what at this point. Holding back tears for that long was starting to give me a migraine. Finally, I just let go. Tears streamed down my cheeks steadily. I didn't wipe them away as they continued to silently fall. I just kept going. I went into the other room to grab the ladder I saw so I could check the top two or three rows that I could not reach, or see in, from standing on the floor. The last time I climbed up the ladder to clear the first wall, I began to fall backwards. Before I could fall off of the ladder, something suspended me in the air for a moment and slammed me into the wall of cubbies behind me. I mean I flew across the room backwards. I screamed some blood curdling shriek as I went back. I stayed down for a minute, and then I got up and walked back over to the ladder. I climbed up it and waited to see if it would happen again. It did not. I checked the last few that I hadn't opened on that wall, and it was clear of anyone I knew. One wall down, three to go. Tears were still streaming down my face, inaudibly crying. I grabbed the ladder and walked over to the far side of the second wall. I began opening more spaces. The more I looked, the younger these kids were getting. These children looked to be three or four years old. A minute later, I about had a heart attack. Lexie grabbed my foot. I screamed again. She screamed because I screamed. Then we both laughed. I got down off of the ladder. She wiped the tears off of my cheeks and asked what was going on. I explained that I lost the rest of my group and that no one responded to texts and I thought everyone was dead. She said she couldn't find anyone either and thought the same thing. I've never been so happy to see a friend in all of my life. We hugged, and then she helped me look through the rest of the compartments. She quickly understood the tears and began to shed many of her own. We got through the third wall, they were babies and two year olds. Still, none of our friends. We got to the fourth wall. These kids were anywhere from ten years old to close to our age. If we would have started at that wall and went around the children would have been in order by age. Lexie continued doing all of the ladder ones. She was lifted and also thrown across the room, slammed into the three and four year old children. It left her winded. I went over and made sure she was ok. Once she could breathe we just hugged for a really long time. Watching her cry made me cry more. We broke away and then started opening more compartments without saying anything. Lexie's legs gave out and she fell down the ladder, sobbing. She pointed up. I didn't want to go up there. One of us were up there. I just knew it. I ascended slowly. I felt really ill all of the sudden. I hadn't even got up there yet. I never thought that I would have to see one of my best friend's dead body, but I did. Alex was in the top space in the second to last row. It looked like someone took an enormous drill bit to his forehead. His eyes were closed, unlike anyone else's. It also looked as though he was punched in the eyes several times, both swollen and purple. I put my hand on my cheek, wetting it in the not yet dry trail of tears. Then, I tried washing his face with them, slowly. It was still warm. The blood on his face. His skin. Whatever happened to Alexander Knowles had just happened. I didn't understand. I couldn't leave him up there. It occurred to me that whatever injuries his body had sustained I was about to make worse by moving him. But he was not going to stay in this wooden cubby. I stuck my hands under his shoulders and drug him out, wobbling on the ladder, nearly falling back. He was taller than me, so trying to hold him was awkward. I yelled at Lexie to bring in a gurney from the other room, and she did. When she came back in, she grabbed Alex's legs and I still had his shoulders. We managed to get him on the stretcher, though he made a bit of a thud. I checked his pulse, of course there was none. But I was in denial. He was like my little brother and I just dragged him from some early 1900s morgue. It didn't stop me though. Lexie got back up on the ladder to open more compartments. I gave Alex compressions. There was blood on his moth so I didn't give breaths between sets. Nothing. Even if I did somehow get him back, there was no way that whatever went into his forehead did not cause brain damage because the frontal lobe was exposed, skin torn away, skull mangled and brain matter missing. I tried anyways. It was too late. He was gone. But now at least I could tell his family that I did everything within my means to save him. We left him on the gurney and wheeled him across the room out of the way as we continued fearfully searching for three more friends....three more bodies. Tyler, Cassie, and Lily. We both checked our phones, though we knew there would be no new messages. Suddenly, we heard gunfire above us somewhere. The shots echoed loudly, so I thought the gunman was in the foyer. The only time I have ever heard a gun was during 21 gun salutes and every round made me jump every time. Guns in general make feel really uneasy. Shots still ringing in my ears, I heard a thud and some things crashed to the floor. Someone was undoubtedly dead at that range. Lexie looked up at me "And then there were four." she said. "Maybe one of the others shot whoever killed Alex. Maybe it wasn't one of us." I tried to stay hopeful. Lexie and I both cowered under the gurney, obviously unhidden. We looked at each other as we both heard really heavy footfall above us. It sounded like someone was running toward the kitchen. I could hear my heart beating in my ears. They were getting closer. They were only a staircase away now. I crawled out from under the gurney and ran into one of the other rooms in the basement. I grabbed the spiky belt and the mallet I found while looking through medical tools. I took the mallet into the other room with the gurney in it. I beat the wooden gurney until the wooden board people laid on was separated from the legs and wheels of the stretcher. I laid the board back on the frame as a temporary table. I grabbed a few scalpels, the spiky belt, the spit hood, some long, rusted metal pins, and the mallet and put them onto the gurney. I wheeled it back into the morgue. I heard footfall descending the stairs. I put all of the other supplies into the spit hood and cleared the gurney. I put the board up against the door and started securing it with the metal pins and the mallet. I took a few extra metal pins and the metal belt next. I hammered one side of the belt to the left of the door frame, left some slack, and hammered the other side of the belt into the other side of the door frame, spikes facing the door. It was a shaky attempt at protecting ourselves, though by the sounds of it, they might still make it in. I took the mallet and broke apart the rest of the gurney frame. I handed Lexie a leg of it as well as the mallet and a scalpel. I took the other main leg and the second scalpel. There were a few other metal pins left and I put them between us as I crawled back under the gurney Alex was on, next to Lexie. They were definitely in the basement somewhere now. I couldn’t hear the stairs whining anymore. Then I heard glass shattering. They were probably smashing the jars of organs two rooms over I thought. I heard a few shuffling footsteps and then metal clattering around. They were in the room beside us pillaging through medical supplies. I got up and opened the rest of the compartments. I needed to know that no one else was down here. Lily was in one of them by herself, covered in blood. The space below her was empty. I had Lexie wheel Alex over and she helped me put him in the empty compartment. I shut Lily's compartment so she wouldn't scream. I think she knew though, because she started crying again. I realized that either Cassie or Tyler were still out there, hopefully alive. The six of us turned into three or four. Whoever was out there was at the door now. They started pounding on the door with their fists. Then they opened fire on the door. Lexie screamed and I jumped back. I motioned for Lexie to come out from under the gurney. I pushed it up against the wall and she came and stood next to me. I cupped my hands and she grabbed my neck while stepping into my hands and then up onto the gurney. Gunfire stopped and I quickly wheeled her over behind to door. I told her that when the door opens she needs to jump on whoever it is and start hitting them with one of the tools I gave her. I stood to the other side of the door, wood in hand, ready to bat down the gunman. He burst through the door. He was about six feet tall and very broad. I don't know how he could see though because he was completely covered in black drapes. He yelled in pain when he tried to remove the spike belt he ran into when he entered. When he was trying to pull it out of his torso, Lexie jumped on him. He reached for his gun, the handle reflected the light from my phone which was clipped to my pocket, and I swung at his head. I swung again, knocking him to the ground. Lexie pounced on him again. I dropped the wood and picked up a scalpel. I started cutting his garments with one hand and reached for the gun with the other. He had both of his hands on Lexie, so it wasn't a difficult grab. I froze for a second though. I've never seen a gun up close, let alone held one.... I've also never needed one. I slid the gun to Lexie and put my knee in the man's torso. She got off of him and I pinned him down. I could hear the stairs again. I was just hoping it was Tyler and Cassie and that maybe the four of us would escape. It wasn't though. Another man in black came barreling through the door. He yelled at us to get off of the man. Before she could move, the second man shot Lexie point blank. He grabbed the gun from beside Lexie and they both left and ran up the stairs. Lexie, the daintiest girl I know, probably only weighed a hundred pounds, barely. I picked her up and put her in my lap. They got her in the chest and there was just no way that I could save her. There was an exit wound in her back and there was blood pouring out of both gunshot wounds. I was soaked already. I felt her wrist. Her pulse was slowing down. I held her, and told her I love her. She couldn't say anything but I knew she would have said the same. I hugged her and just looked at her, crying again. I felt her pulse stop. She died in my arms. I was with her till the end. She saved my life. I don't know why they only shot her. I automatically felt guilty that it was her not me. If nothing else, at least she didn't die alone, and I'd venture to say it was quicker than what happened to Alex and Lily. That didn't make the evening's events okay though. Nothing would. Then I was left with a decision. Do I find Tyler and Cassie, or do I try to escape. Alex would have looked for me. So I decided to go look for them. If the men that were here were still upstairs, I might have met my end. I went through the kitchen. I went through a dinning hall. I found the grand foyer and went through it. Suddenly I realized that even though looking for them was the right choice, I should have called the police a long time ago. I pulled my phone off the clip and started to call. My calls wouldn't go through. I had no service. So I guess it didn't matter that I didn't think to call sooner. I kept searching for Tyler and Cassie. I opened a door that led into a huge bedroom. I searched through everything and found no one. Then I found a bathroom. I opened the door. I looked in the shower first. No one was in there. I moved the navy blue curtain to the side. There was a huge tub. All I saw was red. If there was any water in the tub at all, it was no longer clear. It was just like Alex said in the beginning. "Kitchen, attic, basement, bathroom, closets..." I stuck my hand in the tub, searching for a shirt. Even though it was soaked, I could tell by the texture that it was Tyler's shirt. I pulled him up and dragged his lifeless body out of the tub. I hugged him as I did Lexie. He was long gone though. It may have been staged I guess, but I was 99 percent sure he took his own life. When I pulled him out of the tub, he still had the scalpel in his hand. He bled out and drowned. That's how he died. It broke my heart. We were close friends. I knew a lot of things that no one else knew about Tyler. I knew that he tried to kill himself freshman year. I knew that he used to cut himself a lot. I remember we used to count the days he was clean of cutting. I knew that he went to counseling and was supposedly doing a lot better this year. But there we were. I was holding my lifeless second brother, soaked in his own blood, three inch long cuts all the way up his left arm and some really deep but less clean cuts in his right arm. That was something everyone that had ever tried to help someone recovering from self harm knew to look for. Always look at the non-dominant side first. He always used his right hand to cut because he was right handed. It's not that he couldn't with his left, in fact he proved it multiple times throughout high school. But there isn't a lot of control in those ones. I couldn't believe he did it. He killed himself. He was gone. Hopelessness, anger, and depression came in waves. If I still felt it meant I was still alive though. I got up from the bathroom floor which left a puddle of Tyler and Lexie's blood from my clothes. I started yelling for Cassie. I tried to text and call and still no service. I finished searching the first floor and didn't find her. That meant I was going upstairs. The staircase was at the end of the hall. It was a huge wooden spiral staircase. Then my phone died. The house was pitch black. I kept slowly walking forward. I got to the bottom of the stairs finally. I stumbled up a few of them and then I felt something hard graze against the side of my head. I put my hand up to feel it. It was a shoe. I slid my hand up and down it. I found Cassie. I could feel that they were her silver glittery Chucks she wore to school. Based on how she was attached to the stairs and ceiling, she was murdered, not suicidal, but I couldn't see well enough to know. I then walked back to Lily's grandparents' house. I called the police and then my parents. The police got to their house first. They said they would notify all of the families after the investigation. They found all of them and made the dreaded calls to their parents. Why was I still alive I kept wondering. There was a funeral every weekday the following week. Recurring hell over and over again. I had to face all of the families. I knew most of the answers. Each time someone had a question I pretty much had to retell the whole ordeal. I was the only one who survived, though there was no surviving or escaping the aftermath. Nothing was okay after that and that's what put me out at Long Cliff. The end.

Ithaca Adventures

Alex Nelson is a twenty-something-year-old guy who works at the public library in Ithaca, New York. He's an incredibly intelligent young man who enjoys studying everything. He writes a journal of his studies as well as a personal journal. One day Alex was hanging out in the library despite it being his day off, and a young lady whom he had never seen before was there. Alex watched her silently as she perused the stacks, but didn't go talk to her. She walked past Alex to go check out with many medical books in hand, and then she left. She returned the following day and everyday for weeks to follow. He noticed that she grabbed books from the same section of the library, and always sat at the same table and seat to study. She always kept to herself and was softly spoken when someone occasionally approached her. He noticed that she was always very polite when people asked her to help find something. As the weeks went on, Alex tried to get closer to her, but still never said a word. He decided that he would wait until his next day off to try to talk to her, and that's what he did. It was a chilly Saturday in late October and it was around three o'clock in the afternoon, the normal time for her to come in. Alex decided that he was going to sit in her seat and see where things went from there. When she walked through the door, she went straight for her normal section of choice. She picked up a few books and made her way toward the table she always sat at. She studied Alex from behind for a moment. Alex hadn't noticed that she was behind him until he felt her eyes. Alex got up "Am I in your seat? I'm sorry miss!" "That's alright!" She whispered with a smile as she sat next to Alex. "What's your name?" he asked her with a grin. "Talitha Adams! What's your name?" "Alex Nelson. Nice to meet you!"he said. "Nice to meet you!" She chirped. "So tell me about yourself." he said. "Well, what do you want to know?" she asked with a giggle, seemingly nervous. "Anything, just tell me about you!" He said. She hesitated for a long moment and finally said "Well, I work as a licensed practical nurse at the Cayuga Medical Center. I'm 20 years old, fresh out of college for my associates in nursing. I have a German shepherd pup named Lily. I'm single. My favorite color is dark green. I love all kinds of music. My hobbies are writing poetry and singing. Now you tell me about yourself, please." She said. He gave a brief description of himself and then they discussed each other's studies until the library closed. When each of them got home, they immediately began writing in their journal. He wrote: "Her beauty is mind blowing. You can almost hear the choirs of angels singing and almost see the beams of light raining down on her from the heavens. She is absolutely stunning. The even more amazing thing about it is that she's the type of lady that doesn't know how beautiful she truly is. It's so wonderful and yet kind of sad at the same time. It's wonderful because she doesn't have the haughtiness that often comes with great beauty. She's very down to earth and an absolute joy to be around. It's sad in the sense that she isn't confident in herself and sees herself as flawed in many ways." And she wrote: "His exceptionally handsome physical nature is incredible! You can't help but stare at him when he talks to you and just look at him from head to toe and back up again. He is absolutely ravishing! The even more amazing thing is that he isn't arrogant! And he's insanely intelligent! I just wish he would have believed me when I told him how awesome he is. He's very modest, especially for being the most handsome spectacle in the world!" The next day, they met at the library and Alex decided to take Talitha on a long stroll. "Are you crazy?!" She asked as they stood outside the library in the pouring rain. "I just might be!" He said with a grin. "But sometimes you have to walk through the rain to find the rainbow. So what do you say?" "O-okay!" She said, already practically soaked. They walked along Falls Creek for a long time. "Where are we going?" She finally asked. "To find the rainbow, Talitha! You'll see! We're almost there!" They continued walking through the cold downpour. They made it to Ithaca falls and then they stopped. "Look there!" Alex said. "See the colors in the mist? The rainbow!" "I do!" She was so excited! "Are you ready?!" He asked. "For what?!" She replied. "Hold on!" He grabbed her hand and they plunged into Ithaca falls. "You're insane!" She exclaimed. "Come over here, there's something even more crazy!" They both laughed. Talitha swam to Alex and then he lead her to where they were both standing right under the water fall. He kissed her and then time seemingly stood still. They looked up into each other's eyes and then kissed again and again. They stayed in the water for a while and then they walked back to the library, cold and drenched, and parted ways for the day. Alex and Talitha walked along Falls Creek together every day at the same time, rain or shine, as they did that evening. A year later, Alex Reid Nelson and Talitha Winry Adams got married. They both lived happily ever after. The end.