Dust and cobwebs collected at the top, bite marks framed the door, and part of the corner had been chipped off due to my friends being a little too careless when rough-housing. Days turned into weeks, and soon enough, the closet was cluttered with my crap. I saw my friends from time to time, and otherwise occupied myself playing games.

Several days passed by without anything abnormal happening. As the eleven-year-old I was, I didn’t have much of an opinion on the closet and let my parents place it and clean up how they wanted. So, a few weeks prior to when it happened, they had found an old second-hand closet and decided it would fit nicely into my room. As the weeks went by and storage space in my room slowly decreased, my parents decided it was time I got somewhere to store all my junk, that wasn’t on the floor. I had a large bedroom all to myself, filled with a vast assortment of toys and videogames. Being an only child, I had the privilege of getting everything I asked for.

I lived in a relatively quiet home in the suburbs with my mother and father.