Welcome to our new 🍂Fall Fiction Fill-In Series🍂 where we invite you to finish the endings of our stories and poems. So, come join us and have fun because…

It’s your turn to….

Write. Imagine. Continue….

Today’s feature is:

Would You Stay pt 2

Written by Saneatra Polk

I’m standing at the bottom of the steps, my curiosity getting the best of me. I don’t want to pack my bags and leave because I must know what’s going upstairs. I have an overwhelming feeling my dad has something to reveal to me after all these years. Ever since he walked out, he left me with nothing but a blank space. I barely have any memories of him. Now, standing in his house, everything is perfectly in its place—preserved, spotless, but completely swallowed by the dark. It’s like a museum of a life he excluded me from until now. The answers to twenty years of wondering are waiting for me at the top of the steps.

The stairs groan as I shift my weight. The sound cuts through a silence that once made my ears ring. Outside, the wind that moved through the leaves is now completely still. I can hear my heart pounding in my ear. I keep my gaze fixed on the darkness as if the truths my dad has been hiding are going to fall out of it. I take one more step, holding tightly to the banister, waiting for the dark to answer me back.

A door upstairs creaks open. A sliver of light cuts into the blackness, and a freezing draft drifts down from the landing, brushing past my cheek like a ghost. He knows I’m coming up stairs despite his warnings. I cautiously make my way to the landing. The source of light is dim, nearly fading, coming from a room at the very end of the hall. I needed to see what was going on in that room.