Moving to Hell

When the lights are out...

I'm in my room, laying on my bed, with my face in the pillow. I'm still crying. My whole pillow is wet from tears. I start screaming and throw all my stuffed animals at my wall. I'm mad and upset at the same time. After I'd thrown all my stuffed animals, I kept sitting on bed. Panting. Suddenly the lights start to flicker. I look up to my lamp. I frown. It makes a weird sound as it flickers. Then it stops flickering and my room turns black. I slowly step off my bed and go to the hallway. The lights are off there as well. I swallow and slowly walk downstairs. If I didn't know where the stairs were, I would've fallen off them because it's too dark to see anything. With my hands in front of me, I try to find the living room. There I see the bright light of a flashlight. 'Johnny?' I softly ask. I keep standing at the doorpost. 'Johnny, is that you?' 'Who else would it be?' I hear the annoyed voice of my brother from after the flashlight. 'Come here, I have a flashlight for you as well.' I walk over to my brother, and he hands me over a flashlight. I put it on. I feel much more comfortable with the flashlight in my hand. At least I can see what now, although it's still not much. 'What happened to the lights? Why are they off?' I ask a little scared. 'It's nothing to worry about. The stops are probably just broken. We have to go to the fuse box and turn on the power,' Johnny tries to raise my mind. 'And where do we find this... fuse box?' I ask. 'Err...' My brother shines through the room with his flashlight. 'Probably at the attic.' I swallow. I've never been there before, but even the thought of going there gave me the shivers. The place gave me a bad feeling. I felt my brother's hand on my shoulder. 'Like I said, sister, nothing to worry about.' I wasn't so sure of that, but I didn't want to argue again. 'Come on, let's turn on the power.'

I follow my brother to the attic. It's even scarier with the lights off. 'Are you sure the fuse box is here?' I ask uncertainly. 'Positive.' I don't like that answer. Johnny turns around to me. 'You don't have to come in there with me. You can stay here if you'd like.' That idea scared me even more, so when Johnny opened the door of the attic, I followed him inside. It's cold at the attic, much colder than in the rest of the house. I hear a loud sound behind me. Johnny and I turn around. 'What was that?' I ask. 'Probably the door. Come on, let's find the fuse box.' Johnny wasn't scared at all. After a few minutes, Johnny finds the fuse box and turns on the power. There isn't any light at the attic and that doesn't give me a good feeling. 'So, that's that,' my brother says. Suddenly I feel something tickling on my feet. I look down and start screaming. 'Whoa- stop the screaming already. You're making me deaf!' Johnny says annoyed. 'I'm sorry!' I say panting, 'but don't you see those maids crawling over our feet?' 'What are you-' Johnny looks down and sees what I mean. The whole floor of the attic is filled with maids. Brown, thick, slimy maids who smell worse than garbage. I try pulling up my feet, but nothing works; the maids are everywhere. 'Err... Can we leave, please?' I beg my brother. 'Yeah... good- good idea,' Johnny says. I know he doesn't like it either. We make our way back to the door we came from, but another loud screams escapes from my mouth when I see what's on it. Thousands of spiders. They're small and black and cover the entire door. Johnny and I slowly move backwards from the door. 'Ehm...' he stops to think for a moment and looks around the attic. I feel how the maids have bitten through my shoes and are now chewing on my feet itself. 'We just try the door in the back,' Johnny says.

We go as fast as we can to the other door, but this one's covered as well, only not with spiders, but with ants. I've the feeling I'm going to faint. The ants are even smaller than the spiders and also black. 'What do we do know?' I say with a high pitch voice. 'Johnny needs some time to come up with a solution. I can feel the maids crawling up, eating me. 'Johnny?' I ask scared. I'm panicking. In an impulse of how scared I am, I grab my brothers hand. He looks at it, but surprisingly doesn't retreat his hand. 'Okay, don't panic,' he says. I raise my eyebrows as high as possible and scoff. 'How am I supposed not to freak out right now?' My brother rolls his eyes and ignores me. The concerned look on my face returns. I swallow. 'We can't stay here,' Johnny says. 'We're stuck!' I shout. 'You've seen the doors!' 'Damn it, Jackie!' Johnny shouts annoyed at me. 'Do you want to stay here and get eaten by these damn maids?!' 'N-no...' I softly say. The thought of it makes me want to puke. 'Johnny,' I say. He ignores me. I'm panting and shine my flashlight around the room. Maids are coming from everywhere. 'Johnny,' I say again. 'What?!' Johnny says irritated. 'I...' I don't know how to say it. 'I'm sorry!' I feel how tears are coming up again. Johnny looks frowning at me. 'Are you-' 'I'm so sorry for what I said to you earlier!' Tears are streaming down my face. 'I don't hate you! I don't hate you at all! In fact, I- I love you!' Johnny's startled. 'I don't want to die...' I whisper. Johnny hears how afraid I am, and it breaks his heart. 'Hey, listen to me, okay? Listen to me, Jackie. You're not going to die, neither of us is. We'll get out of here.' He squeezes my hand. I bite my lip. I'm sweating and tears are still rolling down my face. I feel the maids chewing on my feet, biting their way up. 'We have to go through one of the doors,' Johnny says. My eyes turn big. I look at the doors. The thought of going through one of them makes me even more scared than I already am. 'Eh... no thanks, I'm good,' I chuckle nervously. 'You said yourself you didn't want to die in here, alright? So we need to get out of here, and the only way to do that, is to go through one of the doors. We don't have a choice!' I know my brother's right. 'Which one we're going through?' I ask then. 'Well... spiders can use cobwebs to trap us so that doesn't seem like a good possibility... err... these ants aren't harmful, so I guess we go through that one,' Johnny thinks out loud. 'You sure this is a good idea?' I ask. I feel blood streaming from my feet, and I feel how maids are ripping off the flesh. Johnny looks at my pale face in the poor light of his flashlight. He can see how terrified I am. 'We have to.' I make a squeaky sound and moan loudly. 'Hold on to my arm, okay?' Johnny doesn't wait for an answer. He drags me to the door. He sticks his arm through the ants, who immediately starts crawling all over his hand. At least they don't eat his flesh like the maids. He tries to find the doorknob. It takes a while, but when he's finally found it, he opens the door and pushes me outside the attic. He follows me, and I close the attic behind him. We're both panting and trying to take a hold of our breath. I'm leaning against the door and slowly sink down to the ground. My shoes are full of holes, and they're covered in blood. My feet burn and hurt, but I don't pay attention to it. I'm breathing heavily. Johnny has a worried expression on his face. He kneels down beside me. 'You okay?' He asks. I nod slowly, but it isn't very convincing. How could it be?

Suddenly I start crying. I think I've never cried so much in my life as today. I lay my head on Johnny's knee. His pants get wet of my tears, but he doesn't care. He places his arm around my neck and tries to calm me down. Neither of us says a thing. We stay sitting like this for a while. Johnny's legs are getting stiff of it. 'Maybe we should try to convince Mom and Dad to leave this Hell Hole of a town...' Johnny says.