Meatmachine.info

I went into the basement of the bike shop today, and I returned much more heavily laden, my psyche weighed down by terrors unknown to the world of sunlight and sweeping.

You can’t get to the basement unless you open the door. It’s a trap door, and indeed it threatens entrapment. Built of dry splitting floorboards and bent black nails, it seems to be held together by cobwebs alone. Maybe fear also. Standing on the trapdoor when it is closed is not highly recommended if you weigh more that 120lbs. Looking at the trapdoor the wrong way while someone else stands on it is also dangerous. Once upwardly swung open, the door hangs by a single hook. The screw attaching this hook to the door hangs on by a few brave threads, promising eventual and catastrophic failure.

Below the deathdoor trapdoor a staircase leads into the subterrain. There is a lightswitch which activates no effective illumination, but merely a humming buzzing and flickering pair of bulbs that are most likely filled with nothing but spider eggs.

You enter a dark room. To the North there are the skeletons of ancient English 3-Speeds hanging from hooks in the ceiling. To the East there are boxes of components ranging from vintage 1971 Campagnolo brakes to the drum brakes off of a VW bus. To the West there is a passageway leading to certain doom.

I am glad I can still be frightened by the imaginary and the harmless.