Alexie was home alone for the first time, finally. Her parents were away for a few hours doing… ah, whatever it was, Alexia couldn’t remember She had paid more attention in that conversation to the fact that she would be home alone. She figured 15 was plenty old enough to be left home alone. The law where she lived in Hooppole, Illinois, agreed with her. The law was 14+ kids are allowed to be left home, but her parents still hadn’t trusted her and were weird about it in general, so 15 it was.
Alexie was upstairs, lying on her bed, reading a book. It was a collection of short stories and poems by various authors. At that moment, she was reading some from Edgar Allen Poe. She had just finished reading “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and was starting to read “Alone”. The idea of the previous story was interesting to Alexie though, a man driven to insanity by his own conscience. Karma’s way of presenting itself, however its brutality is needed.
Suddenly, a noise interrupted her reading. The noise came from downstairs, it sounded almost like… laughing? Did her parents come home early? She hadn’t heard a car, the front door opening, nor any “We’re home!”s, all sounds her parents would have made.
She closed her book, not before forgetting her bookmark in her curious, but weary, state of mind. She got up and made her way to her bedroom door, opening it slower than normal, as if a monster was about to pop out from behind it. The door completely open, and no monsters, Alexie continued her way around the top floor and down the stairs. Her trepidation was obvious in the way she was walking, slowly and cautiously. To anyone else, it might have looked like she thought one wrong step and a hole would open in the floor.
At the end of the staircase, she could hear more laughing, louder this time due to, assumingly, her propinquity. The sound continued, and Alexie crept closer.
The sound led her to a door. Not just any door, the door. Alexie’s parents always told her not to open it, and while Alexie was inquisitive of it, she didn’t care enough about it to risk getting in trouble. Until now, that is.
The laughing sounded female, about Alexie’s age. But it wasn’t normal laughter you would hear as though someone told a joke. No, this was worse, like a deranged, insane sound of lunacy.
Alexie decided, against all of her instincts telling her to run, get out of dodge, call her parents, the cops, someone, that she would open the door.
Her hand reached for the handle, and she gave it a slow turn. She was more cautious and slower than the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” when opening the old man’s door, slow and steady every night for a week.
It was locked from the outside, as though there was a horrible secret behind the door. The laughing had ceased, oddly enough, but Alexie was curious now. Alexie undid the lock, turning the handle yet again with the same amount of caution. Then she opened the door, hesitant still.
She was met with an anticlimatic storage room. That’s it? Her parents banned her from the room for this? She went into the room, her fear was practically gone. Just as she reached the center of the room, her fear spiked yet again, as the door behind her shut with a loud THUD!
She zoomed around, terrified, to stare at the door. She tried to run to it, but something grabbed her by the ankle, causing her to fall flat on her stomach. She tried to turn around, only to be met with… a mirror? No, it was her face, her features, her clothes, but it wasn’t a mirror, this girl’s hair was tangled and messy, and she appeared as though she had been trapped in the room for months, no, years.
Alexie tried to scream but the girl covered her mouth. Alexie tried to run, move, get away, but the girl had her pinned. The girl started to cover Alexie with dirt and such and mess up Alexie’s hair, all while Alexie tried to scream and scream. Rivaling the muffled sounds of her screaming, was the girl’s maniacal laughter, coming from her mouth the most horrifying smile Alexie had ever seen.
After a few seconds, Alexie figured out what the girl was doing, she was trying to make them look the same, scratching her in the process.
After a few minutes of screaming, laughing, and dilapidation, the girl shoved Alexie into the corner, or was it the opposite? Did Alexie shove the girl into the corner? They really did look very much the same. The one who did the shoving ran to the door, opening it, leaving, and locking it with urgency before the other could escape. The one having been shoved, ran to the door, screaming “No!” desperately, but at last, being unable to escape.
The girl outside of the room went to go take a shower, brush her hair, clean herself up, after all, her parents would be home soon. Maybe after her shower, she would go upstairs to “her” room, maybe reading a book. Edgar Allen Poe seemed like a good idea, maybe some of his works. It would be difficult to read with her twin sister banging on the door, but Athina would simply ignore it. After all, who knows what dangers could come from opening locked doors people told you not to open?