Weekend, the time when somebody like me, a 12 year old boy, didn’t have much to do a part from playing alone in the house.

My mother kept an eye on me all the time and I can’t really blame her, after all, I think I broke every single window in this house. That’s why I’m not allowed to play football indoors.

I was getting so bored that I decided to go up and down the stairs. Up and down, up and down… That was literally the only thing I was doing that day. Mum passed by and shouted “John, stop fooling around!” while my brother didn’t even bother to say anything.

Despite that, I kept on going up and down the stairs and I started counting the stairs to kill some time. I counted 14 steps, again and again. My brother passed by once again and whispered something like “What a ‘tard”, and I returned the “compliment” even though he didn’t really seem to listen to what I said.

I went up the stairs once again, but this time I counted 16 steps. I thought that I made a mistake, since I counted the 14 steps like 10 times, so I decided to count them again.

They were 14, yeah, it must have been a mistake. That being said, I got bored of the stairs so I went to watch some TV.

The following day, I resumed my routine of running around the house. I ran under the tables, went in my brother’s room and so on. I was pretty old for these things, but I was so bored that I would have done anything to kill some time. Finally I went down the stairs and counted them.

18 steps. Something was wrong. I counted them again and this time there were 15. I rushed to my brother and told him about it. He wasn’t really interested, but since I kept asking he had to get up and count them for himself.

He counted 18 steps right before my eye then went back to his room and closed the door.

I was so frustrated and confused, and I decided to try something different. I covered my eyes and started going down the stairs while counting them. 1,2,3,4,5…

I got to the 18th step, but it wasn’t the last one; 19,20,21,22 and I kept on counting, there seemed to have no end, it was weird; our stairs couldn’t be that long.

40,41,42, Where would the end?

I spent over an hour going down the stairs, I was already at the 120th step and still counting. I wanted to open my eyes, the curiosity was killing me, but I wanted to reach the last step before opening my eyes.

Slowly the silence faded away, leaving place for some strange whistle sounds. Step by step, other weird sounds started to appear: some kinds of dragging noise. The sounds were stronger and clearer by each step I took, and finally I reached the last one. The 666th step.

I just stayed there still; feeling like my throat was getting choked by some kind of pressure. The sounds stopped as soon as I reached the last step. I wanted to open my eyes, but I was afraid of what I would see. It was very hot, like the heat coming out of an oven or a very hot summer night. I was struggling to breathe.

I reached another set of stairs going up. I wanted to get out of that place so I just went up.

As I started to go up, the sounds started again. I went up one step at a time, counting them and naturally, the last step was the 666th. I kept going forward, feeling more tired and exhausted with each step I took. It felt like I was getting older with each step.

As I kept walking, I stumbled across another set of steps that were going down again. I was freaking out so I decided to finally open my eyes…

EVERYTHING WAS RED!

I then looked down at my hands, and they were full of wrinkles, like the hands of my grandfather.
I rushed down the stairs; at the end there was no other way than up. Every time it was the same, up and down, up and down…

I went up and down countless times, until I finally collapsed on the ground and fell asleep.