Basement

The sun was about to go down, and he decided in the short amount of time he had left before dinner, he would finally explore the basement. All summer long, the boy had played in the apple orchard with his friends. This past summer was particularly torrid and the orchard became a refuge of shade for the youngsters. Now his friends had gone, and there was only a short time left before school. His aunt and uncle had been lenient with him throughout his stay, but their one big rule was that he shouldn’t go in the basement without them. He had refrained from exploring over the past two and a half months, but now his curiosity was to the point of almost making him itch.

There were two entrances to the basement that he could enter from. He could either enter from the inside the house and run the risk of being caught by his uncle or try to use the hatch that was by his aunt’s hedges. The hatch was unlocked, but while he was opening it, it creaked and made an unimaginable amount of noise, and yet his aunt and uncle didn’t seem to notice. The steps leading down to the basement were wooden and filled with cobwebs. The basement was musty and humid and it took the boy’s all not to sneeze. He found a light switch, switched it on, and subsequently closed the hatch. A small dim bulb towards the far left of the basement turned on, and the boy followed it. As the boy drew closer to the light source he noticed that it was flickering and much brighter than he originally thought. Not only that, but there were two bulbs and the bulbs were shaped like halos. The halo-bulbs were upright, and the flickering of the bulbs took place in the space inside the halo. The boy felt an urge to touch the bulb; the same urge that draws flies to lights, and children to touch stoves. He took his hand, callused from months of outdoor play, put his hand on the halo-bulb and felt the electrical energy pulsing through the metal. Suddenly he thrust his hand through the first halo, and to his horror it appeared in the space between the second halo-bulb.