Shattered

Maggie and I always hung out together, we were best friends and literally inseparable. We lived in a quiet little town and everyone knew everyone. Well, except for the old lady that lived next door. She never left her house hardly and no one really knew her. She would only ever leave her house one night out of the year, and that was on Halloween night. We all thought she was a witch or something.

Maggie and I always went trick or treating together, it was the best event at Halloween. Dress up like monsters and get candy for it, best gig ever!! After we would collect our bounty of candy, we would head over to our other friend’s house for a sleep over, this was our tradition.

When we got there, our little group of friends consisted of myself, Maggie, Steph, James and Damon. This year, James wanted tot play truth or dare. Great!! I knew what I would be picking, everyone already knew I had the biggest crush on Damon so to play it safe, I will be the daredevil everyone knows I am. We started the game and it went well, just little dares and little snippets of truths until it got to me. Damon asked me, truth or dare, without missing a beat I said “dare”. He just grinned at me. I should have known that it would be something epic.

“Your dare is, to break into the old woman’s house next to yours and find out what she’s hiding”. I was momentarily froze. I didn’t want to break into her house, rumor had it she would lock you in her basement if you got caught. I decided to follow through with it though, I didn’t want Damon thinking I was a scaredy cat. So with that we all went to the Old Woman’s house. I was relieved to see that she had indeed followed her regular actions and left the house for the evening. Maggie volunteered to go with me so we both went to the back door. I turned the knob, it was unlocked! Maggie and I continued to go into the creepy house that all of us kids feared.

Once we were inside we looked around, trying to find out what exactly was she hiding in this old house. We went through the kitchen first. There were herbs, spices and flowers spread out all over the counters. We decided this wasn’t enough evidence so we went further into the house. Next we came to the living room with a huge stone fire place in the middle of it. There were large book shelves on each side of the fire place. In the fire place the fire was still going and a cauldron sitting over the open flames. We searched that living room up and down and couldn’t fine and anything. “What about the cauldron”, Maggs asked.

“Nah, it be the first thing that she notices is gone, we need something small but profound. I was looking at the book shelves and I noticed that one book had been taken off the shelf multiple times by the disruption of dust. So I went to pull it out and when I did the book shelf opened, it was a door. Maggie and I both went into the secret room and saw the most amazing globe of the world that we have ever seen. It was no bigger than a basketball. It was lit up and it looked like clouds were covering it like a little miniature planet. We decided to look for a cord or plug but much to our surprise there was none. “It has to be battery operated”, I stated to Maggs. Just as we lifted the globe out of its stand we heard the Old Woman’s car door shut. My eyes went wide with terror. So Maggs and I with the globe in our hands tried to get out as fast as we could. We almost got to the back door when we tripped over a kitchen rug and the globe launched through the air and when it hit the ground, it shattered into a million pieces. Just as that happened the world around us began to shake and everything started to shatter.