One Rule

There was only one rule: don’t open the door.

Not many people could comprehend that kind of self-imposed restriction, the kind that gnaws at the edges of your sanity, taunting and teasing. The kind that turns the mundane into the macabre. But Sarah did. It was her life, her existence - and she'd grown accustomed to it. Every day was a repetition of the one before, like an old vinyl stuck on repeat. She'd start with tea and sipped slowly as her trembling hands steadied. The routine was always the same. Cook breakfast, clean the dishes, read a book, perhaps sketch the serene wilderness that stretched beyond their small world. And then, as the sun began its descent, Sarah would sit and stare at the basement door. A simple wooden door – nothing out of the ordinary. But wasn't it extraordinary how a simple thing could turn into an obsession? How it could fill her with such dread and curiosity? No one didn't understand, they only saw it as a door – a door leading to a cellar that was locked for good reason. "It's unstable down there," They'd warn her, "The ground is treacherous. It’s damp and moldy." She tried to listen to them, tried to convince herself that a door was just a door, yet every day the whispers grew louder, more insistent. They crawled up from underneath the floorboards, ghostly tendrils of words seeping through the cracks, only to vanish when she tried to decipher them. "Sarah," they'd hiss, their voices as cold as the ground outside, weaving an eerie lullaby that only she could hear. The whisper was a tantalizing puzzle that teased her mind, feeding on her intrigue and anxiety alike. Something was calling her from beneath that door, something that wanted to be found. Each night those whispers slipped into her dreams, transforming them into twisted nightmares of shadowy figures and ominous warnings. By morning her fear would fade to curiosity and then to frustration.