Prompt 44 - Awake

I awoke in a hallway. My older half sister, my little brother and my niece all together. We had gone to the fair and had decided, while I was sleeping, to enter the scariest looking haunted house I had ever laid eyes on. Here we were though, walking through the creepy halls, waiting for the scare to jump out and frighten us right out of our shoes.

I became truly frightened, however, as we passed what looked like a tiny nursery with pink walls and filled with small kids and a singular caretaker holding a baby and teetering in a wooden rocking chair. The goosebumps all over me bubbled up. I tried to tell my siblings that this was a bad, bad idea. That we should not have gone on this ride. But they didn't even seem to acknowledge my appeals. We turned a corner to our right and entered a larger, dark room which had three circular crawl tunnels on its far wall. We stopped and discussed which tunnel to take. Screams reverberated through the pitch black passageways and I became as petrified as a Triassic forest.

I begged my sister and brother and niece not to enter the tunnels but to back out of the haunted house and go on another ride. They didn't listen, however. They didn't even look at me and dove, head first, into the tunnels, crawling into the darkness. I was left standing in that empty room, all alone. Suddenly I heard a terrifying noise and I didn't waist any time. I ran back down the hall.

I then heard large, lumbering footsteps behind me. The hall seemed to grow longer as I ran back toward the entrance. As I realized that I might not escape, I swung through door of the nursery and hid behind the doorway. I found all of this to be truly terrifying as just like my siblings, none of these children or their attendant even looked at me. It was as if I were not even there.

Then suddenly, through small slit at the hinge of the door, my eye captured a giant shape passing by and leaning through the pink door. It seemed to me like a giant minotaur, but I was not about to take the necessary steps to make that a certainty. I stayed there behind the creaking door, watching the beast with a single opened eye through the narrow crack. It's massive lungs quickly breathed out of its nose causing me to flinch ever so slightly. My heart pounded like the Tell Tale Heart, working so hard at giving my position away. I sat for what seemed like an eternity, curled up in the fetal position. The giant beast then leaned back out of the pink doorway and stomped away back towards hell. Immediately I jumped up an ran towards the exit.

I ran right to my mom and dad who were seated at the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.

“Why are you crying,” my mom asked she hugged me close.

“I had a dream,” I said, the terror of being chased down that dark hallway as my siblings were being devoured still lingering strong in my mind.

“Your first nightmare,” my dad said as my parents sat me down at the table with a hearty bowl of cereal.

I was simply glad to be awake.