Questions

• Priya Johnson, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2013

Every house has its mysteries, walls filled with secrets, a picture on the mantelpiece of an unknown relative, a name never mentioned. A locked door, at the end of a deserted hall, never opened.
Imagine you found a key, under a floorboard, in a musty old attic. Would you let the burning curiosity, deep inside you, take hold? Would you let it lead you down the hall?
Past the faded pictures hanging forlornly on the dirty white walls, clasping it in your clammy hand? Feeling your heart beat harder and harder, faster and faster, like it could break free of your chest at any moment, like a single noise could make it stop completely? You reach the door. The wood is scratched and rotting, the doorknob rusty and stiff. Everything about it screams danger! Danger, it might as well be painted in blood on the wall. But your brain is filled with a voice, a voice that tells you all the wrong things, a voice that is not your own.
“Do it!” It orders.
Would you listen?
Would you raise your trembling hand and place that key in the rusty old lock? If it fits, would you turn it? Would you grasp the doorknob, hear the hinges creak as you opened that door? Would you feel your breath catch in your throat as you gasp? What would you see? What would await you? Your greatest hopes, your hidden dreams, your worst fears? Would you face them? Or would you turn and flee, slamming the door behind you? Your heart beating in your head, breathing in sobs, tears running down your face, where would you run? When the banging in you head goes and the tears stop falling would you return?
Or would you go back to the attic and leave the key where you found it? Under the rotting floor board with just the woodlice for company? Waiting for the next poor victim to find it?
The question is, would you enter that forbidden room?