“I walked down a dark hallway, barely able to make out a rectangular box, a closet. I heard whispers from inside.
‘Sssssekdjaboyweneead.’
I couldn’t make out what they were saying. It was an old-looking closet made of wood, and I had a mysterious urge to open it.”
Chapter 1: The Closet, Part 1
I walked down a dark hallway, barely able to make out a rectangular box, a closet. I heard whispers from inside.
“Sssssekdjaboyweneead.”
I couldn’t make out what they were saying. It was an old-looking closet made of wood, and I had a mysterious urge to open it.
An icy hand touched my shirt when I woke up. I was lying in bed, staring up at a spider web in the corner of my bed. I looked down at my nightshirt to see that it was soaked and that the glass of water I had left there before I went to bed had spilled onto my shirt.
I looked at my alarm clock. 2:58 AM. Friday the 13th. August 2020.
I got up and looked out my window. I thought there was a strange rectangular box sitting in the backyard, and again I heard whispers like in my dream.
“Sssssekdjaboyweneead.”
I had a strange urge to go downstairs, outback, and open the closet door.
Suddenly, I was no longer in control of my mind. I was looking through the eyes of a person I didn’t know, their memories. This person had stepped into the closet and was screaming as he fell into a dark hole. The words Friday the 13th. August 1913. 3:00 AM flashed into my head. Everything blacked out, and then it showed another person — a girl this time — looking out of the window of a room the same shape as mine but decorated differently from the same dark closet. She looked around, and I saw a calendar in her room.
It said: Friday 13th. August 1957. 63 years ago. An old-fashioned alarm clock in her room said it was exactly 3:00 AM. She stared at the closet and seemed to make up her mind as she stepped out into the cold night air and went to open the closet door. She was just about to open it when I came back to my senses.
It was 3 days later at 7:30, and my mom was calling me.
“Aidan! It’s time for school. Wake up!”
I got dressed and went downstairs to find my younger brother already sitting at the dining table eating his breakfast.
“Did you sleep well?” asked my mom.
“Yes,” I lied. I had actually stayed up all night like on Friday and Saturday, thinking about the closet. “I need to go to the backyard to check something.”
“Can I come?” asked my younger brother, Jacob.
“No, it’s not something you want to see,” I said.
“Just take him,” my mom said.
I sighed. “Fine.”
“YAY! We’re going on an adventure,” shouted Jacob.
We stepped outside and walked to the backyard.
There was no closet there.
I bent down to where the closet should have been, but there was nothing except a few lines where my family had stepped, like everywhere else in the yard.
“Nothing,” I muttered to myself.
My brother frowned. “What?”
“Nevermind, you go to school. I’m coming.”
He jogged off to the garage to get his bike. I was about to do the same when I realized it wasn’t lines on the ground but 12 numbers.
191319572020.
“Odd,” I said aloud.
“AAAIDANNN!” yelled my brother from the garage.
“Coming!” I said, casting a final glance at the 12 numbers.
Middle school. The most boring possible place I could be. My history teacher, Mr. Hamilton, was giving us a dull lecture about the war of 1912.
“It dated from October 8th, 1912 to July 18, 1913, and it was part of the Balkan wars,” he said, but I didn’t hear the rest of his lecture. I was once again looking at the old closet and had the strange sensation of opening it.
“Aidan! AIDAN!!! Time for lunch,” I looked up to see my best friend, Nicholas Smith, shaking me hard.
We walked down to the lunchroom and waited in line to buy our lunch. Nicholas had bought his food, and it was my turn. I glanced at the lunch lady and realized with horror that she looked exactly like the same closet I had been thinking about all day.
I closed my eyes. When I open them, I thought, she’ll look the same as she always looks, not like a closet.
I opened my eyes and there was nobody there, no closet or lunch lady. Only the students eating lunch. I looked down at my tray of food and realized I had a hamburger and fries on my tray already. This was odd, I didn’t remember getting any food. I looked around and realized everyone was staring at me like I was a freak, and that I was the only person in line. I walked over to Nicholas’s table and started eating.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I muttered to him as he continued to stare at me.
“Are you feeling ok?” he asked
“Yeah, fine.”
It was after school. I had just come home and started doing my homework when again I saw the closet outside my bedroom window. I had the disturbing sensation that I had to open it.
I stepped out into the hot afternoon sun and was halfway through the backyard when my mom said, “Aidan???”
I looked back and saw my mom looking at me from the kitchen window.
“What are you doing out there?”
“Oh, uh,” I thought quickly, “I’m trying to get the soccer ball that I kicked into the backyard at night.”
“You can do that later, come help your brother with his homework,” she said.
I looked back at where the closet should have been. It was gone as I had expected, so I did as she had asked.
Chapter 2: The Closet, Part 2
I was lying in bed 5 hours later thinking about the closet and what I should do with it. I was afraid to fall asleep in fear that I would have more horrible nightmares. Should I open it or not? What was inside it? What did those 12 numbers mean? What were these visions I had about?
I awoke the next morning with bags under my eyes. I had gotten only about 2 hours of sleep that night, and those 2 hours I was asleep were full of nightmares and visions.
I ate my breakfast and walked to school, still thinking about the closet through my first lesson, science, while my teacher Mrs. Daniels was giving us a lecture about the mathematician Isaac Newton.
I kept thinking about it even at lunch, but thankfully I wasn’t stared at again. It seemed that everyone had forgotten the little “incident” that happened yesterday. Everybody, including Nicholas and the teachers on duty, seemed to be going about their days as though nothing odd had happened just yesterday.
Fortunately, nothing weird happened today. In fact, it was a relatively good day. We played soccer in gym class, and I helped my team win 7-3. The only thing that went wrong was when I got home again, I saw the closet in the backyard and had the mysterious urge I had been having for days to open it.
This is it, I thought. I was going to find out what was inside once and for all.
I took a step towards the closet then a tiny voice in my head cried, NO!
But then again, the urge to go open the closet filled me.
I made up my mind and started walking carefully towards it. When I was only a few feet away I reached out to touch the handle, just another inch…
I bolted and sat upright in bed, panting hard as I looked around the room and realized it was again 2:58 AM. Was all of that a dream? Including the school day? Or did I perhaps take a nap when I got home? My mind was buzzing with questions, all of them about the closet and what lay within it.
Then I saw something out of the corner of my eye, outside the window.
A half-robot girl had walked out of the closet!
I jumped out of bed and got a baseball bat from my closet just to make me feel safer, even though I knew that if I did meet that disturbing-looking girl, I probably wouldn’t stand a chance.
I walked out into the cool night air and looked to where the closet had been.
Unlike other times, it was still there.
Suddenly, two hands grabbed my shoulders, and I whirled around to find myself face to face with the very girl I had seen outside. I did what most other people would have done: screamed.
I awoke to find myself in a dusty chamber made of gray stone. I looked around and found an open door. I stood up and walked towards it, my knees shaking hard as I built up the nerve to look through it.
Nothing. It was nothing but a dark hallway. The closet was sitting in the middle of the hallway.
I stepped closer, put my hand on the ice-cold handle, pulled, and looked inside. I almost passed out as I jumped back to see a chair with a bunch of metal scraps in it.
No, not metal — a half-robot girl.
She looked up.
“Hello,” she said.
“Wha — what do you want?!” I stammered as she arose from the chair.
She breathed in. “Finally,” she said. “A new test subject for DOOM.”
“What???” I asked in horror.
“This,” she said. “This is the Closet of Doom. It was made in 1911 and holds anyone who goes inside it captive so we can test potions on them. I’ve been trying to find a subject for more than 60 years. There was a new hope when you were born in 2007 and your parents moved into the same house in which the maker of the Closet of Doom lived. I gave you terrifying visions of this closet — yes, I was the girl in the vision when it was 1957, and that boy was the first subject two years after it was created. Now, you will stay here while I return to my factory.”
“N-no, I’m leaving now, I’m not being a test subject in this Closet of Doom,” I said as I took a few steps back toward the room I woke up in.
“How are you going to get out of here?” she asked with a twisted smile as it dawned on me that I couldn’t actually get out of here.
“I-I’ll find a way,” I stammered.
“Good luck,” she said and disappeared.
“Hey! Come back,” I waited a minute.
No response. I wanted to start crying.
I was trapped in an underground chamber where nobody knew where I was, and I could only leave when someone came across this creepy closet, and who knew how long that would take?!
Chapter 3: My Discovery
1 YEAR LATER
I had been stuck for over a year now and was getting used to life down here. Only another 49 years or so, I thought gloomily. My family had probably moved on from the mysterious disappearance of Aiden Hawkins. I had figured out over the years that you do not age or need to eat when you come down here. Down here, you just wait for time to pass, doing nothing except watching the gray stone walls. The only source of light down here was a little crack in the top with sunshine coming in. That was also my only way of knowing if it was day or night, and to make it even worse, there were dirty puddles, leaves, and sticks all over the floor.
I didn’t know how I didn’t even go insane just staring at the walls and sleeping for a whole year. I occasionally heard footsteps overhead from my family playing in the backyard. The first time that happened, I tried shouting to them.
“Help me, I’m down HERE!!!” I’d yell until my throat was sore. But I had learned this dungeon was sound-proof — or something of the sort, even with the hole in the top.
I walked around, counting how many steps I walked, tapping the wall.
Suddenly, I heard a creaking sound, and the wall in front of me opened like a door leading to a long, dark hallway. My heart beat super fast, and I stepped into the dark hallway.
It seemed endless from my point of view, pitch-black and vast. I didn’t have a flashlight or anything of the sort, so I was hesitant to go inside.
I looked around the room. Something caught my eye: a pair of glasses.
Something clicked in my mind like two pieces of a puzzle. I remembered from a science lesson I had in sixth grade that you could make a fire with sun, glasses, a leaf, and water. I strained my mind to remember. Then, click. It was as if someone in control of my mind could hear me. Put a drop of water on the inside of the lens and let the sun shine down through it onto the leaf below.
I tried it once. Tried it again. The third time yielded no result. Growing more and more upset, I adjusted it to face the sun, but to no avail. A fourth time let up smoke but nothing more. Only on my thirteenth try did I start the fire.
Now carrying my makeshift torch — a stick stabbed through a leaf with fire on top — I walked down the dark hallway.
I put the glasses in my pocket, knowing they might come in handy and get me out of another sticky situation like this one.
As I walked, I passed disturbing things: skeletons, dead rats, and mold.
I walked and walked until I found a big stone door.
I pushed. It stayed shut.
I pushed harder. It stayed shut.
I pushed my hardest. It stayed shut.
I kicked it. It stayed shut.
I was about to kick it harder when something caught my eye.
A keyhole.
I knew there must have been a key to unlock this door but didn’t know where it may have been.
Suddenly, an idea flashed into my head. I rummaged around through my pocket and found the glasses. Carefully taking them out, I pushed them slowly into the keyhole.
I turned it and heard a click.
YESSS! I thought to myself. I took the glasses out. But I must have taken them out too fast because when I pulled them out, the part I had stuck in was no longer in one piece.
I put the glasses back into my pocket and pushed the door open, ready to punch anyone I saw.
Chapter 4: DOOM HQ
When the door creaked open, I saw a room. It looked like it had just been grabbed from an old-fashioned house. There was a moth-eaten couch that looked at least 100 years old, one of those old-fashioned black and white TVs with a long antenna, and a box with some fruit and potatoes — which looked as though they were very fresh and had just been bought from the store.
However, there was a modern-looking desk with a Lenovo computer sitting on top of it.
I took a step into the room and looked at the computer. It showed live security footage of a small stone room — no, the room I had been in less than 10 minutes ago,
Who lived here? I wondered. Why did they have old and new stuff put together, and why on earth would they keep an eye on people that were trapped like me? Did they create those rooms?
I looked around again. There was something else. A sign: founded in 1911, DOOM testing area A1.
Was DOOM a company of some sort? I thought. What did they test? Why did they test humans? My head was exploding with questions.
On the desk the computer sat on, I saw a box with glass beakers full of green liquids. They were labeled: foodless life potion. I put one into my pocket.
Suddenly, I realized what they were for. I didn’t have to eat down there because they had tested the potion on me. But that still didn’t explain why I didn’t age.
There was a door in the back of the room. It blended in so it looked almost invisible, and I approached it cautiously.
I pushed it open to find myself in a room exactly the same as the last one. I walked over to the computer on the desk. It showed live security footage of the same chamber I was in but from a different angle. I looked in the box to find even more glass beakers holding purple liquids labeled: potion of age-less life. That explained why I hadn’t aged in the chamber, either. I put one of these in my pocket as well.
I looked around and found a door beyond it.
I opened it and found myself in a big room I suspected was for meals because of the tables and trays.
I heard loud voices and lots of footsteps walking towards me from a hallway on the left of the room. I quickly looked around for a place to hide and leaped behind a trash can a split second before a group of robots had arrived — about 50 of them, all metal skeletons.
There were signs all around the room that read “DOOM testing area,” and the robots stepped up to megaphones. Suddenly, I heard something from the megaphones.
“TEST DEATH POTION TO SUBJECT G67 AIDAN HAWKINS.”
“YES, MASTER,” said all the robots at once. They sounded hypnotized.
I shuddered. They were going to discover that I had escaped the chamber, then capture me and test this death potion on me! Whatever that was meant to do, it definitely wasn’t something good.
I was looking for a place to run when I realized that the voice coming from the megaphone was the voice of the girl I had seen in the closet.
Was that girl the one leading DOOM?
One of the robots started walking towards me, and I half ran-half crouched, trying to escape without them noticing me. But as I passed the overflowing trash can, I tripped over a banana peel and fell forwards as everyone turned to look at me.
I did what everyone would have done: RAN!
I ran for the door I had come through, but I was stopped by a red transparent laser fence.
I looked around. One of the robots was projecting the light from its hand. I knew well enough not to run through the laser and get myself killed. The robot who had stopped me seemed as though it was the boss.
“STATE-YOUR-NAME-AND-YOUR-BUSINESS-AT-DOOM-TEST-AREA-980,” it said in a very slow voice. It stuck out a hand, and I saw a machine come out.
“Uh… I’m-I’m Nicholas Smith,” I said a little bit too fast. The robots all tensed. They had mechanisms on their hands that looked disturbingly like razor-sharp knives.
“DO-NOT-ATTEMPT-TO-BYPASS-OUR-LIE-DETECTORS-HUMAN.”
I grimaced. So the machine was a lie detector. They probably trusted me even less now that they knew I had lied to them.
“I’m Aidan Hawkins.”
“Your business?” the bot asked.
“Ummm, I got trapped here,” I said. They let go of the laser, and I took my chance and ran for the door.
I ran into the next room and slammed the door shut behind me. I could hear the bots shouting, “SECURITY BREACH. SECURITY BREACH. SECURITY BREACH. TESTING LAB A2 AIDAN HAWKINS.”
I ran to the door that led to the first room. It was closed and locked from the outside.
I was cornered. I looked for a place to hide and found a big box that was big enough to hold me.
I stepped inside and closed the flaps. The air circulation inside was bad, and it was very dark. The only light came from the crack between the 2 flaps.
I had gotten in mere seconds before the bots broke down both doors and stormed in.
“Where is he?”
“Search under the desk and inside the box, behind the door as well.”
I was doomed.
Chapter 5: Saved by HOPE
I thought desperately of a plan to get out of here, but I couldn’t come up with one. I hid there, waiting to be captured and taken to the creepy girl.
Why me? I thought. Why couldn’t someone else have discovered this closet? Why couldn’t it have been a stranger who had to fight this future-tech evil mastermind?
I looked around the box and saw a dark figure hiding there. I almost screamed, but it clapped a hand over my mouth.
“I’m hiding from them as well,” he said.
“Who are you?” I whispered anxiously.
“Benjamin Smith,” said the boy.
I fell over in surprise. “Wait a second, you’re Nicholas’s brother?”
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Aidan Hawkins, his best friend.”
We shook hands.
“How did you get trapped in here?” I asked him.
“I found this closet and got pushed inside it, into a dusty chamber.”
“Really? That’s exactly what happened to me!” I exclaimed.
“Shhh, keep it down,” he whispered urgently. “The robots are coming to search this box, we’re sitting ducks here.”
“I’d like to live in freedom another minute or so, then,” I replied quietly. But there was no need. The robots were gone.
I peeked out of the box and saw an ice-colored figure standing in the middle of all of the broken DOOM robots, holding two long ice-colored swords at their sides.
The moment it saw me, it vanished into thin air and reappeared right next to me with its swords raised.
“Who are you?” they asked.
“I’m A-Aiden Hawkins. I was trapped down here by some weird closet. Who are you?” I asked them.
“I am part of the HOPE military, BOT DC 129. We are taking part in the war against DOOM. It has been going on for 134 years now.”
“The war? What is all this, and why are you here?” I asked.
“I’m a spy, and this war started like this: HOOM was a very happy place, until one of the rulers got into a fight with one of the very rich men. HOOM broke into two and started a war. There is no longer any peace. HOPE supports the king, and DOOM supports the rich man. The wealthy man in charge died two years ago, and his wife has taken over. You’ve probably seen her before: white dress, half-robot, insane smile, looks like a kid because of their ageless-life potion. I come to figure out what they’re doing,” he said all in one breath.
“They’re testing potions on humans,” Benjamin and I said together.
“What potions?” BOT DC 129 asked.
“Ageless potions and foodless potions,” I said quickly.
He eyed me suspiciously as if I was the enemy.
I looked away. “How did you teleport like that?” I asked, trying desperately to change the subject.
“We have very advanced technology. Years ahead of humans.”
“So, can we go to your base or whatever?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “but be careful.” He waved his hand and I became invisible.
“WOW!” I exclaimed. He did the same to Benjamin, then set off, and we followed him obediently.
He led us through a wall that looked so solid that I braced myself for impact. But I walked through the wall, and when we came through, I saw more than 100,000 HOPE soldiers lined up together.
“Why are they lined up?” I asked, amazed.
“We are preparing for the great siege,” our guide answered.
There were cryo-tanks and rocket mechs all around the huge courtroom. A big chair stood in the middle of it all, and in it sat a man with a big beard and glasses.
I suspected this was the king.
“60 seconds till we fight!” he announced. “50-40-30-20-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, charge!”
Chapter 6: The Attack on DOOM
The sound was deafening. I saw all the 110,000 or so soldiers charging our way. I moved out of their path just as the first scouts moved in to clear the area. More and more stepped through the barrier after the scouts, ropers strapped on jet packs, and flew through the roof. Benjamin and I went through the barrier after them.
What we saw was complete chaos.
Robots were being destroyed, blue troops appearing everywhere, ropers dropping and sliding down ropes through the roof. Explosions were going off everywhere, and there was a 90% chance that Benjamin and I, if we headed onward, would trip over a DOOM robot head or arm.
“10-9-8-7…”
I didn’t know if that was a bomb timer, but it didn’t sound good, and all the remaining HOPE soldiers were retreating.
“5-4-3-2-1…”
As Benjamin and I burst through the wall, we were knocked forwards onto our stomachs by the impact of the explosion.
I looked around. DOOM soldiers were streaming in and rounding up the remaining HOPE soldiers. The king had vanished.
Benjamin and I were running towards the exit when a red laser struck Benjamin on the back and he fell to the ground, stunned.
I stopped and shook him hard “Benjamin!!! GET UP!”
He had been knocked unconscious.
I dragged him to the door and kicked it open, slamming the door shut after us.
Benjamin opened his eyes. “Hello? Where am I?”
“Come on, Benjamin, we’ve got to go!”
“Huh?” The last few seconds dawned on him. “Oh, shoot, let’s go!”
We ran down a long hallway and arrived outside on a huge grass field. I saw a big building with an electric fence surrounding it. I turned and saw DOOM soldiers running after us, firing lasers at us.
We ran to the building’s huge electric gates and shouted for someone to open them.
“Somebody open these gates! We’re getting chased by DOOM soldiers!”
Two HOPE soldiers opened the gates and shoved us inside. Then they took out two big guns and shot them through the wall, ricocheting off all the DOOM soldiers and breaking them apart.
It was 2 hours later and we had explained our story to the HOPE soldiers that were in the huge building. There were at least 1,000,000 remaining HOPE soldiers. Most of them were guarding the building up top with sniper rifles we learned they called the “AntiVirus.” The building was amazing
There was a weapon room full of weapons of all kinds and a giant dining room big enough for at least 3,000,000 HOPE soldiers. I asked where the king was, and they said that they didn’t know. I told them he wasn’t at DOOM’s base, and that he had disappeared. They then said that he was probably captured by the DOOM troops.
They told us that they planned to attack DOOM’s fort. I asked how many troops would be going, and they told me that 10,000 would be heading in first and clearing the harder DOOM troops, and then another 100,000 would be taking out the troops guarding the king. Then they claimed that DOOM would send reinforcements and that they would then send in 1,000,000 troops — 200,000 to secure the king and the other 800,000 to take on the reinforcements. Then, if everything went right, they would go back to the HOPE HQ and bomb the entire DOOM fort.
TO BE CONTINUED…