It was decaying. Contaminated somehow. The entire basement was flooded with twelve inches of water at least, and everything within it had gone bad. Mold was beginning to grow. You couldn’t stay in there for long without having to go back upstairs to get some air. And now it was spilling over into the kitchen, black mold coating the walls thickly, the surface of every counter felt grimey. It was closed off.
Eventually, we had decided that it was time to clean the kitchen, so for the next few days, my parents and I worked tirelessly to scrub down and wash every surface of that room, and throw out all of the disgusting, rotting food.
After that, it was time for movie night. My grandparents came over, along with my older brother Holden, back from Maine. Or well, I assumed my grandparents came over. Even though I didn’t see them myself, I could tell they were there. As Holden prepared these mini-pizzas on indoor mini-grills, he began to tell me these stories. Superstitions pilots have, that if they disconnect with two or more of the other planes around them, then it was bad luck.
As we spoke, I tried to bring myself to act normally, but it was a bit hard to considering how disgusting the kitchen was only a few days ago. I didn’t even wipe my hands with the outward-facing side of a paper towel, because I knew it had been exposed to the air, but not if it had been air from the clean kitchen, or the dirty one. For now, the pizzas were done. I began to tell Holden which ones I wanted.
I woke up at 10:30 AM the next day.
This entry was written on the 17th of August, 2026.