Locked down in the basement-part two

Guess what? It’s been 5 hours and we are still stuck in the basement.

Ugh, why did we ever want to surprise aunt? Now we are stuck in the basement. Food supply hasn’t been hard since aunt will just open the laundry hatch from time to time and send down snacks using a laundry line. And chores. And entertainment. Basically, we had the privacy we wanted in the basement. Well, you can’t say it’s that bad. And since uncle Percy is the one doing the unsticking, well, we can expect this for at least a day, before aunt realizes she can haul us out of the laundry chute the way she’s been sending stuff in.

I was glad I had my headphones here with me. Tamara and Pepper fighting at 12 in the morning can get annoying when you just wanna talk to your best friend. These two are also amazing. At 12 A.M. they decide they want to do their work and complete cleaning the basement. Well, at least the basement was clean, and everything was in one corner. There was a garbage chute too, which took all the stuff down to the furnace. But I don’t think we should be turning that on. We’d die of the heat.

We had cleaned out the basement, and all the boxes were out of the way. We saw that the furniture there was also pretty decent. “Great, we don’t need to go shopping, because aunt would never let me drive you two there after what happened last time.” We all shuddered. Last week, Tamara drove us to the mall. While driving, Pepper noticed a ‘puppy’ in the middle of the road and screamed at Tamara to stop the car. Tamara broke so suddenly the car swerved into a ditch. And as for the puppy, it was a soft toy some kid dropped. So Tamara cannot drive without aunt in the car.

After surveying the furniture, I brought out the ribbons and stands we brought in. we arranged them to make a little wall, and then decorated it with flowers and a poster board with wings. It was designed to be a selfie wall, but we turned it into rods loosely held together by ripped pieces of ribbon.

The next thing to do was make another room within the basement, for laundry. We can’t have a laundry chute in the middle of aunt’s personal room, can we? I was pretty tired, so I sat down on the sofa, Pepper two steps behind me. Suddenly, I felt like something was tickling me. “Pepper, stop it. You know I don’t like being tickled.” “Rachel, you’re the one who’s tickling me.” Suddenly we both realized what was happening. “Okay, we cannot use this room for aunt’s surprise. It’s got a mind of its own,” Tamara exclaimed. “Alright, let’s calm down. It’s probably just our imagination,” Pepper said. I, on the other hand, was screaming like a little kid. “Get me out of here! Aunt, send a laundry line down and pull me out of here!” The basement door opened. Uncle had fixed the lock.

We raced up the stairs and out the door, nearly trampling uncle in the process. “Did you girls see a ghost down there,” aunt asked. “No, the entire basement is a ghost! The sofa has a mind of its own, the boxes are a mess, and none of the lights work. I think last night while sleeping I saw someone in the basement.” “Yeah, I came down last night to get a few books and accidentally messed up the boxes you stacked up. And Pumpkin Pie must have dropped her toy mouse in the sofa when she came in with me. That must have been tickling you two.” “So you mean to say the lock has been fixed since last night,” Tamara said, incredulously. “Yesterday morning,” aunt corrected. “Then why didn’t you tell us?” “I wanted to see what you were doing down there.” Wow. It must be so fun watching us struggle down there.

“But what were you doing,” Uncle asked. “We were cleaning out the basement so that we could make aunt’s surprise for Valentine’s Day. Since we messed up last time.” “So you were making the basement into a sitting room?” “Yes.” “That’s what it is already. Why don’t you girls ever do anything useful?”

Seriously. Why don’t we ever do anything purposeful? But then again, this is more fun.