“Ready or not, here I come!” Samantha yelled as I started to hear footsteps slapping the hardwood floor in her home. We knew playing hide and seek was a child’s game and teenagers should not be playing it, however we were babysitting her younger brothers and figured hide and seek would keep them busy. I wasn’t quite ready for her to come and find me yet though. Then, I realized she would certainly find me if I was standing in the middle of her room. I looked all around the room for a place to dive into and then her closet caught my eye. I opened the sliding door and crept back to the back as far as I could go. I covered myself with some clothes and then took out my cell phone for some light. I was searching around to see what a mess it was in there when all of a sudden I saw a crack that was running up the wall. I took a better look, and then soon realized that it was a door! My mind wandered and I quickly wanted to find out what would be behind such a place. I moved her clothes out of the way and opened the door as far as it could go. I beamed my light from my cell phone into the inside of what looked to be giant cardboard box inside. I started to reach back into the box when I heard footsteps coming my way. I closed the box up and hid under the clothes once again. The door to the closet rushed open and all I could see was her head peeping into the closet, just looking around. She started to search underneath the clothes when she heard a noise from the other room. It must have been one of her little brothers.


I relaxed my tension of being found in my hiding spot and began once again to return rummaging through the brown box. To my surprise, inside was simply a couple of movie tickets, an empty bag of peanut m&m’s, a couple of old bracelets, a left shoe that was missing a shoestring and then as a lifted up the shoe I got the biggest scare of my life. A huge spider was under the shoe! I quickly grabbed the shoe and began swinging. I eventually killed the spider. As soon as the spider was dead I began to get out of the closet and just give myself up. That was until I realized something had been knocked over and spilled onto the floor while I was frantically swinging the shoe. It was a bottle of pills. I read the label and the label clearly stated that these were to be taken once a day. However, the bottle was full and the label also stated that this medicine was for hallucinations, and another bottle said “Paranoid Schizophrenia.” I became entirely confused as I cleaned up the pills. I was worried that this medicine was Samantha’s. As more thoughts crossed my mind, I wondered if Sam really was insane. I always knew she was sort of weird, however I never knew it was something this serious. I reached back into the back of the cardboard box to stash the medicine back there when my hand reached a cloth. I pulled it out to wrap up the medicine and to my surprise it was not a cloth. It was a woman’s blouse and a man’s white t-shirt. As I examined them, I realized the shirts had dark red stains splattered on them. Samantha had old bloody shirts in the back of the closet. I was seriously freaked out by this point and had the feeling that I needed to go home. I threw the objects back into the box and shut the door where the box was placed.


I uncovered myself from the clothes, and reached for the door handle, however as soon as I did, the closet door quickly sprung open! As my eyes started to adjust to the light I hear two boys’ voices, “We found you!” they shouted. I opened my eyes and saw the twins standing in front of me simply laughing and pointing. A couple seconds later Samantha walked in and saw me lying in the mound of clothes. Her face looked worried and angry at the same time. “What are you doing in here?” she exclaimed. “I was hiding. That is the point of hide and seek you know?” she looked at me nervously and then pulled me out into her room. She casually laughed and we walked out of the room into her brothers’ room. Samantha put her hand on my shoulder as we entered the doorway. I shrugged her off and as soon as I did, the door to her brothers’ room slammed closed in the twins faces. She locked the door and glared at me for a couple seconds. My heart began pounding and my palms were sweaty. Her mean glare quickly turned into a smile and I began to worry more. She quietly told me to sit on the bed and she started whispering things to me. She said she knew that I had found the items in the closet. She was whispering that she would explain to me later about what had happened. I was confused and scared while she became closer to me. Was she going to kill me or something? Was I going to be hurt?


I had no idea what to think until we heard a car door slam and keys to the front door being jingled. She looked at me and loudly whispered “My aunt is home and she knows you found the items in the box. She is not happy. We have to get you out of here.” I paused and said “Wait, those items in your closet are not yours? The medicine? The bloody clothes? The movie tickets?” she looked at me kind of angrily. “No! Why would you even think such a thing? They are my aunts. But I kept the things to remember what had happened. She has way too many secrets, so this is the one that I must keep from everyone, but now that she knows you have opened the box she will lose control and start hallucinating out of anger. It will only become worse the longer we stay here. She refuses to take the medicine and I do not want to have another death on my hands.” These words sent a shiver down my spine. I went to speak yet she kept on talking. “Mary, my parents got killed because of me. That is there clothes in my closet. The movie tickets resemble the last time I ever saw them. My aunt had one of her fits after we had come home from the movie because she was angry that we had not invited her. The angrier she got, the worse the hallucinations would be. As we opened the door to come inside after the movies, we saw her standing in the kitchen with a knife. What she saw in her mind was demons walking through the door. She did not recognize who we were. She was only trying to protect herself by killing them. She didn’t get to me because my parents pushed me back outside and when I came inside she was gone. It is my entire fault because I was the one who did not want to invite her. My parents are dead because of me. Can you imagine having to watch your parents die Mary? I have to live with that feeling everyday! I do not want to lose my best friend considering I have already lost my parents. So please, we have to grab the twins and get out of here until she calms down.” I was at a loss for words at this point, however I knew we must get out of the house. We opened the door and let the twins into the room. We opened a window and all crawled out one by one.




As soon as we were outside, I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and called 911. Sam had just given me the second child when all of a sudden she slammed the window shut and exclaimed “Run! This has to end.” I told her to come with us and not to endanger herself. She would not listen and she ran out to the kitchen where her aunt was. After that, I heard no more noises until a gunshot was fired a couple moments later. I held the twins and began to cry. I knew my best friend had just been shot. The police arrived a couple moments later and they came out with a body bag. They had finished zipping up the bag as they came out of the house. A couple moments later, Samantha was escorted out of the house by the police. I ran to hug her because I was so happy to know she was the one who had been alive! Although, I stopped in my tracks because I soon realized that Samantha was in handcuffs. They came over to talk to me and question me on what had gone on. I said I was not in the house when they had fought however I knew her aunt was a crazy woman. I knew my words did not matter much because Samantha had told she shot her aunt in self defense. In their mind, I knew they would still want to charge her with murder. After they were done questioning me, they expressed to me that they had been looking for Samantha for a while and how she was not in a stable condition. There had been four murders in the last couple of months and her DNA was all over each crime scene. My mouth dropped to the floor in realization that Sam had made up everything about her aunt and Sam was really the one with issues. I could not believe what I was hearing yet, it all caught up with me later that day. I was just happy that I was safe and had kept the boys in good hands from now on. I was never the same person after that day.