The black hole in the basement

Daylight hours in the basement weren’t as bad, although the black hole was an area I still knew to tread carefully. Sometimes curiosity (or boredom) got the better of me and I’d venture in there. What little light came thru the two small basement windows provided enough illumination to disperse all but the darkest shadows. One day I found myself in the black hole, just looking around and searching for something to do. As I stood in the center of the room, shafts of sunlight filtered thru the dingy windows and dust motes floated in the air. There in the back right hand corner stood the furnace, a huge slate blue rectangular metal box with chrome handles on the front. And behind it was the dreaded singularity of the black hole, where not even light could escape or penetrate. There was always a radius that I drew in my mind around this terrifying spot, and seldom ever would I cross it. But this day was different. I stood there for what seemed like ages, the stillness and silence of the cellar enveloping me. I stared at the furnace, and the darkness, and then at the gauzy sunlit glare trickling in from outside. I balled up my fists, steeling myself, gathering up the nerve to cross that boundary. And so I proceeded, one tentative step at a time, and first approached the furnace. Up near the top was a switch, and I wondered what it was for. But I didn’t dare flip it, as I had no idea what might happen. Then there was the door on the front of the furnace, with its chrome handles. I gingerly reached out my hand and grabbed the handle, and just stood there for a few seconds, my mind reeling. Curiosity was eating me alive, and I just had to know what was behind that door. But then I let go, my courage flagging as I took a step back. The furnace was the collapsed star at the center of the black hole, and it could not only suck in light, but anything else that got too close. It could very well have been a portal into Hell itself, that door leading to fiery maw into which I would surely be pulled should I dare open it. Or a blast of flame could shoot out of the hellhole and incinerate me if I was to breach the lair of the cellar dragon. My grandfather told me to stay away from the furnace, so therefore in my mind something terrible must have been awaiting behind that chrome handled door. Then, with the last vestige of courage I still possessed, I dared to take a peek behind that slate blue fire belching gateway to the underworld. I was pretty far into the exclusion zone, far enough that I could actually see the singularity, a infinite pool of utter darkness that obscured that dreadful back corner of the basement. Circling its edge were rusted garden tools, loads of cobwebs and several pots with dead, withered plants in them. Fear began to overwhelm me, and I had seen enough. I turned and ran back to the center of the room, right under the one light bulb I had turned on when I came in. My heart was pounding, and I kept looking behind me as I turned off the light and shut the gate. Might something come charging out of that corner and chase me down? I certainly didn’t want to stick around and find out!