Random stories

It is a grande house. Sweeping verandas around the house, Victorian styling, little details you just don’t see any more. In its glory it would have been an amazing house.

Sadly, It is run down. Needs paint and some loving. Many of the little details are broken or rotted away. As a handy guy, I can putter away and fix this beauty up. It will take a few years but fixing houses is a passion of mine…. And well, it’s the only house we can afford, so a perfect combination of events…. At least for me.

“What a freaking dump”, my son Stanley says.

“Come on buddy, it isn’t that bad. It just needs a little lovin, and it will be a beauty.”, I said as upbeat as possible. “Why don’t you go explore a bit. See what you can find. Mom and I will keep unpacking.”

And unpack we did. Moving has to be one of the worst things. So much work. Your house and life are just in utter chaos for weeks or even months afterwards.

Stanley seemed a bit more upbeat as he explored the house and found all of the nooks and crannies.

“Honey, let’s just order some pizza for supper. No way we are cooking anything here tonight. I don’t even know where the plates are.”, my wife Linda said.

“Sounds like a plan.”, I agreed. “Hey Stanley! Stan! Where are you buddy?”, I hollered into the house.

“In the basement. Come check this out!”, I heard him faintly reply.

I wandered into the basement and found Stanley sitting on the floor in the cold storage.

“Whatcha doing in here buddy?”, I said looking around at the dirty shelves and randomly left behind preserves.

“What is this?”, Stanley said pointing to a buckle in the floor. It looked like some kind of release.

“No idea bud.”

“I can’t get it to open. You give it a try.”

I shooed him over and heaved on the buckle and a chunk of the floor popped up revealing a round hatch with a big metal wheel on top.

“Holy cow! It is an old school bomb shelter entrance.”, I placed the popped up floor against a wall. I gave Stanley a bit of smile, “should we open it?” His eyes lit up.

“Totally!”, he said excitedly.

I tried and tried but couldn’t get the big wheel to turn. “Sorry buddy, it must be rusted or locked or something. We can try again after supper.” We both went up stairs a bit dejected from whole experience.

Stanley talked excitedly about his adventures through the house over supper. He kept coming back to the bomb shelter curious what could be in there. His ideas and stories getting wilder by the moment.

“We going to go back down and try and open it now?”, Stanley said just as we were finishing our pizza.

I sat him down and put a hand on his shoulder. “Look buddy, that’s really not how things work. We get to see the locked safe or vault or bomb shelter. We get all excited about it and then OP never posts again. That is just the way Reddit works.”

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Submitted by escher4096 on Wed, Nov 16, 2022 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

You move into your new house, an ancient house but the only one you could afford. You soon discover that it has a bomb shelter. Only problem it’s locked from the inside.