The Basement (10/26)

On a calm Friday night my older brother, Joey and I were going to stay up late and watch a movie. Of course before we watched the movie we had to make a fort. We took all of the pillows, sheets, couch cushions, and blankets we could find. We had to clip/ tie it together somehow so we stole my dad’s rubber bands from his office and his big clips. We somehow managed to get a standing fort.

We changed into our pajamas and went back downstairs to my mom making popcorn and opening juice boxes. She asked what movie we were watching. I exclaimed “Finding Nemo!” However, my brother hesitated. His slightly annoyed face, showed he wasn’t interested in watching Finding Nemo. He stayed quiet, grabbed the popcorn and headed downstairs. By the time I got downstairs Joey had the remote in his hand was looking up movies. I asked him what he was doing and he replied “Looking for scary movies.” My heart had dropped. I was 10 years old and not ready to watch a scary movie.

So I had to think fast. I told him that if he bought a scary movie off of “On Demand” without Mom’s permission, he would get into a lot of trouble. He stopped. He looked disappointed. He agreed to watch Finding Nemo, but as I was putting the disk into the TV, he stopped me. He grabbed the remote and flipped through a bunch of channels, until he reached Lifetime. It was Halloween time and Lifetime was playing a bunch of scary movies. Of course a Bloody Mary movie was on in 15 minutes.

He was ecstatic, but I was not. Pale faced, he could tell I was scared and asked if I wanted to watch Jessie until the movie started. I said yes, but the whole time Jessie was playing, I was thinking of a way to watch Finding Nemo, without my brother calling me a wimp. I knew that if I told my mom we were watching Bloody Mary, she wouldn’t let us watch it, but my brother would hate me. So with no options left before the movie started, I blurted out that I was scared. Joey told me it was all fake and we could stop watching it, if it got too scary. My brother turned off the lights and the happy basement turned into a quiet, haunted dungeon.

We watched the movie. I made up some excuses to go upstairs and “get water,” or “use the bathroom,” but those only worked once. So I was forced to watch the movie. I was happy as the hour and half came to an end. As the last scene approached, I heard a sound somewhere from outside the fort. There was rustling near the bags in back. My brother and I looked at each other, but he said it was probably nothing and continued to watch the movie. Than we heard a ping pong ball bang against the wall as the girl got sucked into the mirror.

My natural instinct was to run upstairs and start crying. Annoyed my brother followed me and we both had to explain what had happened. My mom went back downstairs to see my cat playing with a ping pong ball. There was nothing to worry about. Still what I had watched that night had scared me and I couldn’t fall asleep. It was a rough night.