The Start

Leon lounged on the arm of the couch in his living room, his mother constantly had to yell at him for that.

"Get off the arm of the couch! You'll break it!" And stuff like that, however, Leon wasn't bothered. He and his mother didn't have a bad relationship whatsoever. In reality, his relationship with his mother grew after his father's death, as they grew more and more dependent on each other. A mother needed her son, and a son needed his mother. Of course, Leon had his younger sister, but she was more quiet, even around her family.

He found himself sliding off the couch and falling to the floor, landing on his back on the rough green carpet. Quickly standing up to push past his embarrassment, he found himself looking around to see if his mother had returned home and noticed, however, she was not yet home.

He quickly moved his eyes to the floor and spotted a coffee stain from years prior. One that his dad left when a young, small Leon ran past him and bumped into his leg. Leon focused on it for a moment, and stepped out of the living room, and into his kitchen. He found himself getting a quick snack from the pantry.

After scarfing down his small snack, he returned to his room, went to his computer, and played a couple of games.

He found himself winning a bit more than usual, and that's when a ball of fire shot past his window. He stood up, rubbed his eyes, and quickly rushed outside. Looking up at the nearby tree showed that what he saw was real.

"The tree is scorched. What was that ball of fire?" He thought, following the trajectory of where the fireball had to have come from, and he could see a figure standing on the neighbor's rooftop. It was a girl, maybe around Leon's age, she was wearing a brown cloak, which covered most of her figure, especially her head.

"Did you see that too?" He yelled to her, to which she nodded lightly and turned around, jumping off the rooftop on the other side of the house. Leon was astonished. He hadn't seen the other side of the house before, but it had to be high up. He thought a silly thought, of her jumping off and onto a trampoline.

His thoughts restricted him for a moment, and he didn't even notice the sky was dark, clouds covered the entirety of his town, and it began raining. The fire on the tree was extinguished very quickly.

"Can't believe a meteor just struck our tree..." He mumbled to himself before returning inside.

As he walked through the hallway leading to his room, he realized the light was now off, and a picture frame was knocked to the floor. He crouched down to pick it up and found the picture was missing. His bedroom door was ajar, and he stood back up slowly, his eyes focused on his door. From inside, a familiar male voice spoke.

"It's been beneath our nose all this time. His dad is the guy." Leon crept up to his door and peered inside, but all he could see was the brown cloak covering a man's figure. The figure was holding his arm out, a glove covering his hand, the same hand he was using to hold the missing photo.

Leon took another step forward, crunching the glass beneath his sock. He recoiled with an "ouch!" and his sock began turning a dark red color. He looked down at his foot and then quickly back up to the figure, who was now gone from Leon's room. Leon rushed in, hopping on one foot, and looked around the room, wondering how the man escaped. "Windows?" Closed and locked. "Hiding in the closet?" Flinging it open revealed nothing but Leon's old toy box and some shirts, neatly hung up.

Leon ended up feeling lost, he felt like he was losing his mind. The photograph laying face-down on his desk. On its backside, in a rough font, it read:

"The Lab—old school."

On the bottom of the photograph, there was some text in Leon's mom's handwriting:

"James, (34) Leon, (5) and Sarah (9 months old)."

Leon smiled a little, flipping the picture over again, he looked at his dad, who had a surprised face, his hands held up as if to catch something, in the picture, Leon was standing in the freshly cut grass and seemed to have thrown something at his father, but he could not recall what it was. In the foreground sat Sarah, who was playing with a water balloon, it sat hanging out of her mouth as she nibbled on it. Leon remembered vaguely that the balloon ended up popping in her mouth, causing her to cry.

After moments of thinking of the past, he flipped the photo over again and looked at the first statement. The lab.

"What lab?" he wondered, deciding he would have to go to this "old school." Of course, he had passed by an old school many times when riding the bus home from school, but it was quite a ways away from his house. It would certainly take a long time to get there, and by then it would be dusk.

He decided to go anyway since his mom wouldn't be home for a couple more hours at least.

Leon breathed a heavy sigh as he arrived at the old school. It had only taken roughly twenty minutes, which was a lot shorter of a trip than he remembered.

He walked up to the door and found himself pushing on the door, only to realize it was blocked on the inside.

"Huh?" He mumbled, "No entrance for me, I suppose." He turned around only to realize he had come all this way from a simple phrase on a photograph.

"But was that all? Was it the ball of fire? Or was it the man in my room who caused me to come here? Or was it really just some words on a photograph that led me here?"

Thoughts swirled in his mind, but he decided to brute force the door instead. He backed up, lifted his elbow, and charged at the door. This time, however, the door burst open and the cabinets covering the door fell to the ground, with one cracking into two pieces.

Leon let out a labored sigh. "Perfect."

He stepped over the debris and made his way down the halls of the dark and old school. He found himself looking in lockers at some point, only to decide he'd be better off finding this so-called "lab."

He felt get caught on a metal pole sticking out of the ground, and he fell to the floor. His hand hit the wall and it made a hollow knocking sound.

"Ow!" He yelled, lifting himself up and brushing the dust off of himself. "That's twice today..." He sometimes had to embrace his clumsiness.

He then reverted his attention to the wall. He lifted his hand shakily and knocked twice more with a resounding thunk.

Leon found himself knocking harder and harder.

"I wonder-" he said, picking up the metal pole, "-if I can just-"

KRTHUNK.

He had stabbed the metal pole through the wallpaper and there was now a hole. He pulled his phone from his back pocket and peered inside the hole, it was a very long stairway going down, so long, in fact, that his light didn't reach the end of it.

He began using his hands to pull off chunks of wallpaper and finally he had a hole for entry. It was at this moment that he realized his foot didn't hurt anymore from the glass shards that he had pulled out prior to leaving his house.

Making it to the bottom of the staircase only made the place darker, he reached around the corner of the stairs and found a conveniently placed light switch. He pressed it, hoping for the best, and to his surprise, it was an actual light switch. The lights all turned on, but for some reason, he got a familiar feeling about the place he was now in.

Lights hung from the ceiling, the walls were covered in a dark, moving substance, a substance that seemed to be whispering to him. He ignored this very odd discovery, chalking it up to some failed lab experiment, and he walked forward, stopping once he reached a desk, where the dark substance seemed to be flowing out of a petri dish.

"How odd." He whispered, looking at the papers next to the dish. They were all covered in black ink, seemingly redacted information. Leon sighed.

"This won't help me whatsoever." He concluded, stepping back. He turned his attention to a room with a window. Inside were a few dimmer lights, a lab table for what seemed to be testing on people, and a mannequin. Leon stepped inside the room, the door creaking heavily.

The room was so familiar to Leon, yet he couldn't figure it out whatsoever, it plagued his mind and he felt sick. The mannequin was facing away from him, and he turned to look at the window, only to see that the window was a one-way mirror, as on this side, it was reflective. He turned to the mannequin once more, to see it was now staring at him, its hand reaching out, and a small black tendril was now wrapped around its body

Leon decided that now was the time to go.

As he exited the room, the black substance started moving toward Leon, Leon jumped back in terror and another tendril grabbed at his legs. Leon kicked it away and quickly rushed up the stairs, turning off the lights by habit. He ran up the dark stairs completely blind. He could eventually see a light shimmering at the top of the stairs.

A hollow realization hit him. It was evening, there shouldn't be light. It was then he could hear two people talking.

"He's coming!" the person yelled, and the two of them scattered away from the entrance hole. Leon jumped through the hole, and quickly pushed a nearby metal cabinet in front of the hole, just to be sure.

He quickly turned left and right to see if the two people were still there, but they were gone now.

Leon, now very panicked from the entirety of today, rushed home.

When he returned home, he instantly drank lots of water and lay down on the couch. He felt sick to his stomach. Whatever he saw today, he was not meant to see, and whatever was down there, tried to kill him.

The front door opened with a loud creak, their home alarm dinged lightly to signify this opening.

"Leon? Can you help with the groceries?"

Leon leaped from the couch and helped her with the groceries per usual when she went shopping.

It seemed the rain had resumed once more because Leon's mother and younger sister were soaked.

"I'm going to go get your sister and me a fresh change of clothes. Can you put away the groceries for me?" She asked, holding Leon's sister close.

"No," Leon said sarcastically.

"Thanks." She replied, looking at him with an obvious eye roll and a smile.

"Of course mom." He said, stepping up to the table and pulling items out of bags, and putting them where they belonged, whether it be the fridge, pantry, or counter. He even saw a DVD box on the counter, one of a horror movie that his mother had wanted to see for so long now. Leon guessed she would pick it up now that it was on DVD.

After all the groceries were put away, he found himself in the living room once more, having already forgotten all of the stuff that transpired earlier that day, he turned on the TV and put the movie disc in the DVD reader just as his mother came downstairs with his sister.

She had cleaned up the fallen picture frame, but forgot to mention it to Leon, thus leaving the question of "what happened?" behind.