Are you alive?
By Maayan - bronze member
Submitted on June 10, 2026
Chapter 1
"Are you alive?" I asked into the darkness, not expecting a response, and just as I thought, and just as it is every night, nothing, not one bit. My mother tells me every night that my father is out there somewhere, wanting to come home, but she has been telling me that tale since I was 6. I am 15 now, so sometimes I find it hard to believe. According to my mom, my father left to keep me safe. He left because he could not stay, but I know his name. I looked his name up on the old, broken computers in my school when I really should be studying for math, and all I ever find is a cold case from when I was 6: that a man went missing, and they found his truck flipped under the old red bridge in the woods that lead to the next town over.
My name is Silver. I am 15. My sixteenth birthday is in 3 weeks, and it also happens to be the night of the biggest red moon in the past 300 years (pretty cool, right?). Right now, my mom is out of town. She went 3 towns over to do some bank stuff, or wherever adults go to put their money in a place where the bandits won't get it (yes, bandits still existed, and no, they are not the ones stealing your left sock; those are gremlins)(yes the gremlins break into your dryers and steal your socks). So I have been home alone for the past 4 days, and it's been pretty chill. I went to school, ate some pizza, and played with some fire, and had to go on an hour-long manhunt for my favorite purple sock (I think a gremlin took it). It's been a chill past 4 days, with nothing much going on.
My thinking has been rudely interrupted with a bang at the door from God knows who.
"COMING!" I yell, knowing they can't hear me.
I roll off the bed and wander downstairs to the front door.
"Who is it?" I ask, knowing exactly who it is.
The voice on the other side of the door responds, "It's the mailman, Silver. Open up, I need you to sign the package for your mom."
One of many things I forgot to mention is my mom has a bit of a problem. She buys way the hell too many house plants: roses, tulips, fly traps, and so, so, so many vines. But whatever, I can't do much about it.
I unlock the door, then pull the massive thing open.
"Finally, took you long enough to open that."
"Hey, I was mentally taking notes about where to put all these plants. It's not my fault she buys so many plants."
I sign for the package and then spend 45 minutes dragging massive palm trees into the backyard (why palm trees? We are nowhere near a beach. We live in Mooncove, like 500 miles from a beach).
Ok, so I am not completely in tune with all the strange things my mom does. I mean, don't get me wrong, some of the bullies at school think she is a witch (and every time they say that, I threaten to curse them so that when they wake up, they will see a giant spider in their room and have to wake up and run outside, only to find out it was just their hair. That shuts them up). As much I dislike my mom’s strange obsession with house plants I love her so much she raised me all by herself since I was only 2 years old and i can never repay her for that.
My deep and meaningful thoughts about how much I love my mom were interrupted by another knock at the door.
"IF YOU BROUGHT MORE PALM TREES, I AM MOVING OUT!" I yell.
"Good thing I didn't bring any."
I know that voice.
I throw the door open and find Arianna standing there with a backpack slung over one shoulder and a grin that usually means one of two things: she either has snacks or has done something incredibly stupid.
"Please tell me you brought snacks."
"I brought cake mix."
"Close enough."
Arianna is my best friend. We have known each other since we were 5 years old and got banned from feeding ducks at the town pond after we accidentally convinced them to follow us all the way to the marketplace. In our defense, we did not know the duck would assume we still had bread after we showed them we did not have any left.
"Your mom still gone?" she asks as she walks inside.
"Yep."
"Cool."
"Why is that cool?"
"Because that means we can make a giant cake without adult supervision."
I stare at her.
"Arianna, we are the exact reason adults supervise things."
Twenty minutes later we are making a giant cake without adult supervision.
The first problem is that neither of us can find the measuring cups.
The second problem is that Arianna decides measuring is more of a suggestion anyway.
The third problem is that I accidentally drop an entire egg on the floor.
Arianna points at it.
"You gonna clean that up?"
"No."
"Why?"
"I think the gremlins deserve a snack."
By some miracle, the cake actually turns out edible.
While it cools, we throw ourselves onto the couch and put on one of those old adventure movies where a hero spends two hours looking for a magical sword and somehow never needs to use the bathroom.
Halfway through the movie, Arianna nudges me.
"You excited for your birthday?"
"A little."
"A little?"
"It's just a birthday."
"It's your sixteenth birthday."
"And?"
"And the giant red moon thing."
I shrug.
"Yeah, that's pretty cool."
"The coolest thing to happen in this town in like three hundred years."
"I still think the duck incident was cooler."
Arianna throws a pillow at my head.
The rest of the afternoon passes like that: bad jokes, way too much cake, and arguing about whether gremlins would pay taxes if someone made them. Honestly, it was one of the better days I had in a while.
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Chapter 2
Chapter 2
After Arianna left, the house felt weirdly quiet.
Not creepy quiet not like some weird gremlin would jump out of the walls and eat my socks again. Just the kind of quiet that happens after someone spends four hours making terrible jokes in your living room. I stood in the kitchen staring at the remains of our giant cake. Half of it was gone. The other half looked like it had survived a natural disaster with the way we took it out of the the pan to decorate it.
"Good enough," I said to no one.
I grabbed another slice and headed toward the living room.
The giant palm trees still sat where the mailman had left them right on the wooded planks in our mudroom were we store boots when it snowed.
Seriously.Why palm trees?
My mom bought enough plants to start a jungle, but these things were ridiculous.
I sighed and shoved my hands into my pockets.
"Guess I should move these before Mom gets home." I said knowing my mom would not be home for days.
The first tree wasn't too bad. The second nearly crushed my foot. The third refused to cooperate because apparently plants enjoy causing emotional damage.
I pushed against the pot. Nothing. I pushed harder. Still nothing.
"Move."
Nothing.
"Move or I turn you into firewood."
The tree remained unconcerned. (I sometimes think that there are spirts in the tree and they can hear me they just think im bluffing but I am not i would totally turn them into fire wood)
With one final shove, the pot slid several inches across the the floor boards.
And revealed a metal ring buried beneath it. I froze.
"...Huh."
The ring was attached to a square wooden hatch hidden under years of dirt and dead grass. I stared at it and the hatch stared back. Well.That wasn't concerning at all. I immediately did what every intelligent person would do. I called Arianna.
She answered after two rings.
"Did you burn down your house?"
"No." (why does she always think I burn the house down she is the only one who has burned down part of a house)
"Oh. Then what's wrong?"
"I found a secret hatch."
There was a pause.
Then: "I'll be there in five minutes."
She hung up.
Twenty minutes later she arrived carrying a flashlight, a backpack, and enough snacks to survive an apocalypse.
"Why did it take twenty minutes?"
"I had to prepare."
"For what?"
"For the possibility of ghosts."
"Ghosts don't exist."(they do technically I just chose not to believe that)
"That's exactly what a ghost would say."
We spent the next few minutes clearing dirt off the hatch. It looked old. Really old. The wood was dark and weathered. The metal ring was covered in rust. I grabbed the handle.
"You ready?" She asked quickly
"No." I said with a gulp
"Cool."
She pulled.
The hatch groaned loudly before swinging open. A blast of cold air rushed out. The kind of air that had been trapped somewhere for a very long time. A narrow staircase disappeared into darkness. Arianna shined her flashlight downward.
"I hate it."
"We haven't even gone down yet."
"Exactly."
We looked at each other.
Then immediately started going down. The stairs creaked beneath our feet. Dust floated through the beam of the flashlight. At the bottom sat a small underground room. Shelves lined the walls. Old boxes were stacked everywhere. Maps hung from rusty nails. And in the far corner sat a wooden desk. For a moment neither of us spoke.
"Silver."
"Yeah?"
"I don't think your mom knows about this."
I looked around.
"No kidding Sherlock."
We started searching. Most of the boxes contained boring things. Tools, rope, camping supplies, and a collection of spoons for some reason. Then Arianna found a locked wooden chest.
"Uh..."
"What?"
"You're gonna want to see this."
I walked over. The lock had already rusted apart. I lifted the lid. Inside were dozens of envelopes they were letters. Every single one had the same handwriting. My stomach wanted to shoot up the cake from earlier. Because I recognized it immediately. It matched the signature from the newspaper article. That one article about my missing father. The ones that told everyone he was dead, the one that made me belive for so long that my father would never come back. Arianna looked at me.
"Silver..."
I picked up the top letter. The date made my heart stop. It was written three months after my father supposedly disappeared.That wasn't possible. There was no way that my father could have wrote this but it looked to clear that same swirl in the in the j and the same little star at the end of his signature. My hands shook as I opened it. The paper crackled with age, it was old and a bit yellowed form the 10 years its been sitting there collecting dust in a basement no one should have ever gone down into.
The first line read: “If you are reading this, Silver, then something has gone very wrong.” I stared at the words. The room suddenly felt much colder and it felt as if someone was there watching our every move waiting to pounce (or steal our socks) and for the first time in years, I wondered if my father might not be dead after all.
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Chapter 3
Chapter 3
I dropped the note and stumbled back. There was no way my father wrote that. He was dead. Everyone said he was dead. Everyone told me to move on and stop thinking I would ever have a dad. How could this note have his handwriting? This note was dated three months after he supposedly died.
"What is this?" I asked, shaking. "How the hell could my father have signed this? It's dated to when he was already dead, or at least when everyone thought he was dead."
"Maybe it's a trick," Arianna whispered. "Maybe this is all just a joke, and we can go back upstairs and pretend this never happened."
She looked scared. One of the many things about Arianna was that she was never scared. She could light half the house on fire and come out laughing. We both backed up the stairs, tripping over our feet as we rushed out. We slammed the trapdoor shut behind us and then collapsed onto the floor, sitting in silence.
"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? THERE IS NO WAY MY DAD WROTE THAT! EVERYONE SAID HE WAS DEAD!"
My voice cracked on the last word because, deep down, I wished he was alive. I wished I had a father to teach me how to do things when Mom was busy.
"Maybe we should tell your mom or the cops. I mean, it's a cold case, and that could open it back up since that letter was dated three months after he left. But it does seem weird that your mom doesn't know about it. It looks like no one has been down there since the dinosaurs were roaming."
"Yeah," I said, quieter now. "Too weird."
We sat there for a while, neither of us moving, both of us staring at the trapdoor like it might explain itself if we looked long enough.
Arianna finally let out a slow breath. "Okay… so let’s think about this logically."
"Yeah," I said, even though nothing about this felt logical.
"Either someone faked the note," she continued "or… your dad didn’t die when everyone said he did."
"Or," she added quickly, "we’re missing something obvious."
"Like what?"
"I don’t know," she admitted. "That’s the problem."
I leaned back against the wall "I know his handwriting. That wasn’t fake."
Arianna didn’t argue this time. That was worse.
"So what are you saying?" she asked carefully.
"I’m saying…" I hesitated. "What if everyone’s wrong?"
She looked at me for a long second, searching my face like she was trying to figure out if I actually believed that.
"That’s a big ‘what if,’" she said finally.
"Yeah," I muttered.
The silence came back.
Arianna stood up first, brushing dust off her jeans. "I think… we should tell someone."
"My mom?" I asked.
"Yeah. Or the cops. Someone who actually knows what to do with this."
I nodded, but I didn’t move.
She glanced at the trapdoor again, then back at me. "We’re not going back down there right now."
It wasn’t a question.
I let out a shaky breath. "Yeah. Okay."
Another pause.
"I’m gonna head home," she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder.
I looked up. "Already?"
"Yeah." She gave a small shrug, but it didn’t quite hide the uneasiness in her face. "This is… a lot. And it’s your family, you know? You should probably talk to your mom first."
"Right."
She lingered for a second, like she wanted to say something else, then just shook her head. "Text me, okay? As soon as you figure anything out."
"I will."
Arianna started toward the door, then stopped and looked back at me.
"And seriously," she added, her voice softer now, "don’t go back down there alone."
I forced a small smile. "I won’t."
She didn’t look convinced, but she nodded anyway and left. A few seconds later, I heard the front door close. The house felt different without her. Quieter. Bigger. I glanced back at the trapdoor. It sat there, completely still. Like nothing had ever happened. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was waiting.
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Comments for the Entire Story
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I love your writing style and pacing! the dialogue is really natural and the story is suspenseful. Can't wait to see what happens next!
Comment by lilrose on June 11, 2026Liked by 0
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