Loophole – Part 1

It was dark. Very dark. I grabbed the flashlight from my pocket, and turned it on to see where I was. I looked around, and realized I was in a normal living room, but there was nothing normal about it. How did I get here? Why was I here? I don’t know. I just knew I had to get out.

There had to be a light switch somewhere. After a while of shining the flashlight on the walls, I found the switch. I flicked it on, and there was light. I then turned my flashlight off, and looked around. It was a small room, and no windows. There was a reclining chair with a small table next to it in the corner, a TV across the room from it, and a coffee table in the center. There were a couple of bookshelves against the walls, and as well as a few pictures and paintings. This was normal. It was a normal room, besides the fact that there were no windows. Almost everything about it seemed normal, except for the fact that I was in it.

I was supposed to be at work. I have no idea why I was here, or how I got here. I noticed a door next to the light switch I had flipped earlier. I tried opening it, but it was locked of course. Meaning I had to either wait for someone to walk through all menacing, or find a key, like in a horror movie. I decided to choose option number two, and if I couldn’t find a key, I would try to make a weapon.

I have always been calm in stressful situations. Like when I was about to undergo surgery, or my wife was having our child. This was a whole new level of stress for me though. I wandered around the room, looking for something sharp, but there was nothing. I flipped through some newspapers on the coffee table, hoping for some sort of clue or key to getting out. Nothing, of course.

I was getting mad now. I was moving tables, looking behind the pictures on the wall, and looking through books. I turned the TV on, but there was no signal of course. I slid the table against the bookshelf and got on top of it. I looked on top of the bookshelf to see if anything was there, and surprisingly there was. I felt a little more relieved now, knowing that there was a possible way out of this. There were words engraved into the top of the bookshelf, which read “find the key”.

So now that I knew there was no one coming out of the door, I had to find the way out myself. I started looking again, in the drawers of the small table, behind the TV, etc. I couldn’t find anything. I was beginning to lose hope, which is something I rarely do. I was genuinely getting scared, and was having a panic attack. I sat down in the recliner and breathed. I just sat and breathed for about 10 minutes, doing nothing. It was hard to clear my mind, however, knowing that I might only have a certain amount of time before I have the key. Maybe my family had been kidnapped too. What was going on in the outside world? Was there an apocalypse? Am I the only person alive? Or maybe I was just kidnapped. I wondered if I was being watched as I sat there. I looked around the room, but never got out of the chair.

I had been sitting for about 15 minutes now. I could tell because I still had my watch. I then realized that I had my phone in my pocket. I wondered how I could be so stupid to not check my phone first. I think I was just in a state of shock the entire time, so it didn’t cross my mind. I turned it on, and I got a notification saying I had only 20% battery remaining. How long was I in here before I woke up? I needed to stop asking myself questions. I tried calling 911, but I had no signal. This made me wonder where this room was at. I assumed the room wasn’t in the city I lived, because I had signal everywhere in town. Maybe I was underground? Or maybe I was somewhere far off in the desert. I joked to myself, wondering if aliens had taken me into space and were monitoring me, in order to learn about humans. I chuckled.

I looked at the coffee table, and stood up. I walked over to it, and bent down to look at the bottom of it, and there was nothing. I put my hand against it to stand up, and it wobbled, which got my attention. I looked at each of the legs, and noticed there was something shiny sticking out from underneath one of them. I took the shiny object off, and realized it was the key it had been looking for. It had been taped on to the bottom of the leg, which made the table wobble.

I felt a sort of accomplishment for finding it. I opened the door that was next to the light switch, which led into a dark room. I hesitated going in, but eventually I walked through the doorway. I looked at the wall and turned on the light switch. After spending about 2 hours sitting in the previous room, I had memorized the layout of it by heart. I knew exactly where everything was and the second I flipped the light switch on, I knew I was in the same room.

I turned around to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me, but the door I had just opened slammed in my face, and the lights went out.