Secret Dungeon

There once lived an old woman with a secret deep dark dungeon beneath her house. She spent most of her life, the part that was visible to the outside world, in her decorated home furnished with leather couches, expensive glassware, and artistic looking lamps. Her husband died some years ago leaving her in a stage of a life she had always wished to experience. Sure she was a widow; but to her, she became unmarried, a free soul, and ready to do things she forgot she ever wanted to do. This was a difficult thing for her because she desperately loved people in her life. Now that her husband had been gone for so many years, there had not been any one to share love with on a daily basis. But now she would have so much time to explore all the places in herself that she had neglected and forgotten about. Places she could now explore without restraint.

When she and her husband bought this house, they had no idea it contained a floorboard in the back corner of a closet that opened up to a ladder that led down to a room without electricity. She discovered this opening once before, but was too afraid to enter. She tried to think of it as never being there. But because she was all alone in her house now for many years, she could neglect it no longer. She grabbed a baseball bat and a flashlight, entered the closet, opened the floorboard, and stepped down. The ladder went much deeper than she had expected. She had to walk down at least 25 steps on the ladder until she reached the ground, which was covered in a mossy green grass. The moisture sunk through her socks and made her feet wet. By now her curiosity trumped her fear and she set the baseball bat against the ladder. She turned all the way around and examined how green and humid it was under her house. There was a small tree in the corner and a piece of ribbon tied to one of its leafless branches which held a tiny piece of folded paper. She untied the ribbon and opened the paper, and a magical light escaped from the folds in the paper. The light from the paper painted the walls like a sky with red and yellow and orange rays of sunset. This flash of light lasted only a few seconds and when it went out she shone her flashlight on the paper and found a picture of her husband.

She took the photo up the ladder immediately to try to regain some clarity in what was turning out to be a magical experience. When she got to the top of the ladder, and out of the closet, she noticed it was raining outside. She lit a candle and put some tea on the kettle to sooth her nerves. After the tea cooled enough to sip it, she let the warm tea relax her as she took the photograph out, opened it up and found nothing there. It was blank. Then her feelings surged from the experience, and she cried. Had this magical world existed all along? How did her husband's photograph get there and why did it disappear in the dim light of a rainy day? She longed for her husband to return to comfort her, but at the same time she felt freed by this new space for her to explore in herself.

After a few days she returned to the dark space under her house, and next to the tree she saw a small piano. She took piano lessons as a child in order to appease her parents, but this piano did not bring back feelings of hostility; instead, it seemed to call to her and ask her to tap on its keys. She slowly walked closer and closer to the piano and sat on the dusty bench and pressed down a key that rang and echoed in the dark dungeon. As the note echoed a light swelled and illuminated her face. Each time she pressed a key the room lit up; and when she held down the pedal to let the notes resonate, it stayed lit. The first note she played lit the room in a blue color, the second in white, and the third in red. The intensity of the light grew each time the volume grew. She found she no longer needed a flashlight. She wasn't concerned about playing anything she had learned as a child so much as she was amazed at the power of the music to color the room. She returned upstairs and cleared out her office of all the books and saved magazines, and started painting beautiful colorful pictures inspired by her trips into the dungeon. She went there when she was afraid. And the dungeon always seemed to change when she entered. Sometimes it was moist, sometimes it was dry, sometimes it was cold, and sometimes it was rough and rocky. She dared not show anyone the dungeon because it had become a deeply personal place that was too special to be exploited. But many admired her paintings. She turned part of her house into a gallery. Her home started to be littered with guests who became new friends. They left art in her home and made music in the upstairs that flickered and warmed the home like a fire. Her creative bank never ran dry... there were just times when it was harder to see, and easier to ignore. But whenever she let her creative spirit free, she found love. She had kept that sheet of paper and some years later the photograph of her husband was restored. She always loved him, and when she saw his face on the sheet of paper she knew he would be happy for her newfound creative life. This was all she could have ever hoped for, and it was always there to be found.

The End