Through the Rabbit Hole

Good morning!  How was everyone’s weekend?  I actually got to spend some time with my family up in the mountains.  And I got to make s’mores on National S’mores Day so that was fun!

This story is completely original and I heard the first line when I was working my job at an escape room.  When I heard the first line I knew that I had to use it for a story.  So this is a Feel Good story, which isn’t a common occurrence on the blog, but enjoy!

Through the Rabbit Hole

“Look under the carpet.  There’s always keys under carpets.”  Rachel started lifting up the rugs in the room, hoping to find any way to get out of the room.

Jesse groaned.  “How in the world are we supposed to get out of here?  We’ve been stuck in here for hours. And I’ve looked under the rugs already…there was nothing there.”
Rachel threw her hands up in the air in disgust.  “Well I didn’t know that! Why wouldn’t you have told me that before I started picking up the rugs?  What have we not looked in? Or looked at?”

Jesse bent down and sat on the floor.  He ran his hand through his hair and stared up at the ceiling.  “I don’t know. We’ve looked at everything in here and we’ve found nothing.  I’ve run out of ideas.”

“We can’t give up!  We have to find a way out.  What will our families think if we don’t come home?”  She spun around looking at what was on the walls. “What…what about this picture?  Did we look there?” She ran up to the wall and tried to yank the picture off the nail.

“Rach…it’s not worth it.  We’re stuck here for who knows how long.  So we might as well just relax and wait.”

She turned around and looked at him.  “We aren’t going to be stuck here for that long.  I just…I don’t know why we are stuck here or who shut us in here but we need to get out.”

Jesse let out a long exasperated breath.  “I know you’re angry, and so am I. But the only thing that we can do for now is to just sit and relax.  So sit down and relax. And maybe if you calm down we will be able to figure something out.”

Rachel stared at Jesse and sat down on the floor across the room from him.  She leaned against the wall in a huff. “Can I ask you a question?” Jesse shrugged.  “Why did you ask me out here to this random house?”

“Uh…”  Jesse’s eyes went directly to the floor, not wanting to make eye contact with her.  “Because I wanted to talk to you. And…like…not at one of our houses. Like a neutral location.”

“Okay…but why this random house that we are now trapped in?”

He shrugged again.  “I don’t know. Marcus told me about this place and I thought it was a good place to talk.  But he didn’t tell me about this room that we could fall through a trapdoor.”

Rachel crossed her arms across her chest.  “So what did you want to talk to me about?”

“I wanted to talk about us.  About what happened to us. I wanted to talk through things that happened.”

Rachel scoffed.  “Like what? How you cheated on me?  And how you lied to my face about it?”

Jesse nodded.  “Yeah. Like that.  And I know you probably won’t believe me but I regret that night so much.  You have no idea how much I regret that night because not only did I lose my girlfriend, but I lost my best friend as well.”  

She scoffed.  “Well maybe you should have thought of that before you decided to cheat on me.  And maybe you shouldn’t always act like the victim. I bet you have never considered how I feel through all of this.”

A tear started to fall down Jesse’s cheek.  “You don’t think that I thought about how much I hurt you?  You think I’m that selfish that I didn’t consider how much I hurt you after the fact.  That’s why I lied to you in the beginning because I knew how much I had hurt you even when I hadn’t told you yet.  I didn’t want to lie but I did it to try to protect you.”

“Did you think I would take it better if you told me a month after the fact like you did?  Because I could’ve told you then that you were wrong before you even decided to lie to me.”  Rachel shook her head. “I feel like I’ve wasted so much of life dating an idiot.”

Jesse let out a sigh.  “I understand that you are hurt and I know that I’m the problem, but just hear me out okay?  We were best friends when we were little kids. Our families were friends and they still are friends.  And now if our families hang out we can’t even talk to each other. We can barely be in the same room together for more than 5 minutes.  I mean…we started dating when we were 16. That’s 4 years that we were together and I wouldn’t call it a waste of either of our lives. We’ve grown up a lot since we started dating and we have matured a lot.  But I feel like you are being childish and not listening to me and what I have to say. I cannot apologize enough to you about what I did to our relationship. And I understand if you don’t want to date me ever again, but I want to be able to be on talking terms.  I don’t want it to be awkward between us anymore. I want to go back to what we were before we started dating or when we were dating. I just…” His face was now red from crying. “I just want to reverse what I did and I cannot apologize enough to you.”

Rachel sat on her side of the room and started to tear up.  She didn’t realize how hurt Jesse had been when he had hurt her.  She had been so angry at him that she just blew up at him and never really looked back.  But now, now she realized how hurt they both were. She took a deep breath and looked at Jesse.  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how hurt we both were. I accept your apology and I agree with you.  I want to go back to the way things were. I don’t know if I can date you again but we can definitely be friends.”

Jesse paused and smiled.  “I’m glad. I was really hoping you would say that.”

She smiled and nodded.  “Honestly, I’m glad you talked to me.  I’ve been really thinking about it lately and I was hoping that we could talk.  Which is what we did.”

They both sat on their respective sides of the room in silence for a couple minutes before there was a loud noise from overhead.  They looked at each other with shocked looks on their faces and started screaming. “Help! Help us!”

The two of them continued to scream for help as they stood in the middle of the floor.  There was the sound of something being pried open and suddenly there was some light in the small room.  Rachel and Jesse could see 2 firefighters standing at the top. They were getting saved and they were going to get out.  Jesse wrapped his arms around Rachel and gave her a quick hug before the ladder was brought down to the floor. It felt good to get everything off of their chests and solve their issues.

Maybe they didn’t find the key to get out, but they did find the key to solving their problems.