It was a dark and damp night on Burrow lane. It was 11:30 at night, and Sydney Wolfe had just gotten home from work. Today was just another day of the same, painful, long, and tiring day that Sydney called her life. Everyday Sydney got up in the morning, went to work, came home and then started on homework before falling asleep. Sydney worked at the local depot, from 3:00 P.M. To 11:00 P.M., so there wasn’t much time for a social life, or anything else a normal young adolescent would do. All Sydney did for a living was put things in their places and help out stupid customers at work, before coming home and doing strenuous homework at 12:00 A.M. or later. It was a boring life, but someone had to do it.


As bad as Sydney’s duplex was, she had to admit that every time she got home from work, she realized just how lucky she was to have it. Sydney had decided at an early age that going to college was not for her, so when the time came she enrolled in online college to save herself from the ever so horrible campus life that collage gave to so many inexperienced teens. The whole plot of collage was to learn, and Sydney didn’t really see how partying every night would teach her anything, and with the hard work schedule’s she had, even doing homework was a unbearable task that Sydney had to deal with.


It was already 11:32 by the time Sydney walked through the front door of her duplex, luckily for her the upstairs apartment was still unoccupied, so their was no loud music or disturbances to worry about when she tried to do her homework. Sydney only had the capacity to stay awake for so long, but having a hot, long shower when she got home usually woke her up a little bit. The clock turned 11:42 as Sydney got out of the shower and started on her homework, her record time for staying awake was 12:41 so Sydney had to get this work done fast.


But the rattling noise coming from upstairs that started at around 12:00 made sure that this would be a night that Sydney would not soon forget. 12:04 came and the rattling had still not stopped, and Sydney realized that this was a matter Sydney would have to deal with herself, since it clearly hadn’t stopped by itself. Sydney placed her books down on the table and left from the living room. Sydney rarely ever went upstairs seeing that there was no reason to, but she did have the responsibility of being the janitor and sprucing the place up once in a while, but the last time she had done that was about two months ago. No wonder nobody had moved in.


The duplex was not a very pleasing place, all Sydney knew was that it was someplace for her to live under cheap circumstances. She had defiantly not rented the place for its looks or worthiness, I mean the place needed a lot of fixing, but Sydney doubted if she’d ever actually get to it. She was reminded this as she walked up the pale green stairs that would lead her to the upstairs apartment. With each bare-footed step she took she was greeted by a long, sorrowful screech that the old wood let loose. Sydney realized just how badly the floors needed to be replaced, but when would she find the time?


She pushed it out of her thoughts as she reached the top of the stairs. The screech of the floors as she moved closer to the old wooden door, added to the ghastly rattling of the pipes which made the screeching of the opening door even more annoying. By the time Sydney entered the apartment, she had a big enough head-ache that she swore she could hear a high pitched scream in her head. But all the noise had gone as she entered the apartment, she could no longer hear rattling, and the squeaking floor was no more, it was as if it had all been a figment of her imagination.


Sydney stared hard at the empty room, had the noise even come from up here? Was there even a noise? She figured she was too tired for her own good, and decided to head back down stairs and take a good nights sleep, she’d finish the rest of her homework tomorrow. So as Sydney lay down in her bed she couldn’t help but wonder if she had actually herd a noise or not. This question of self-conflict was making it unbearable to even think about, but Sydney couldn’t help but get it off her mind. It was as if it had been imprinted permanently into her thoughts and it would not go away.


The rattling noise that had started up again only made it worse. The rattling noise! She thought to herself, it was back! It hadn’t been a figment of her imagination, uh what a relief, but it soon became an annoyance again as the rattling grew louder and louder and Sydney remembered how unbearable it had been and therefore is now. It was 12:21 and this time Sydney took no time when it came to getting upstairs, but once again the sounds silenced as she flew open the apartment door. It was quiet again, which actually bugged Sydney because she couldn’t go to sleep without figuring out where the noise was coming from.


If anywhere the noise would probably be coming from the pipes in the laundry room. So Sydney walked steadily into the laundry room, which was located in the room to the far right of the living room. As she walked in she couldn’t help but notice the peeling wallpaper that loosely clung to the wall and ceiling. It only took her a moment to find the two pipes that had been hitting each other, but surprisingly the sound was more like a silent rattling then the sound she had herd. But she figured it was over and she could finally go to sleep.


That idea was tossed out the window though, as the power suddenly went off, leaving Sydney blindly in the darkening upstairs apartment. Sydney couldn’t help but hear her heart beating faster with each dimming of the lights, by the time she was in total darkness her heart was at a heavy, fast, sweat-breaking beat that would ultimately cause heart attacks. It was about 12:36 when Sydney started feeling against the walls of the apartment trying to find her way back downstairs.


Paranoia made its way into Sydney’s body, as every sound made her jump and get even more paranoid. It took all she could not to scream like a baby and curl up on the stairs. Flickering images were bouncing inside her head and she knew this wasn’t right, maybe she was crazy. But when she reached the end of the stairs It all stopped. The power cut back on, the noises stopped, it was as if noting had ever happened.


Sydney swiped her memory and chose just to go to bed. She turned off the lights, locked all the doors and headed into the bathroom before she could go to sleep. In the bathroom Sydney splashed water in her face; it felt like maybe she may actually be coming back to reality. She wiped her face and stared into the grungy mirror. Boy had tonight been a rough one, hopefully tomorrow would be better.


Sydney placed the towel back on the rack and started walking out of the bathroom, but then a noise came. It was like the scraping on a chalk board. Sydney walked back into the bathroom and looked around, then she spotted it; the mirror. It was cracking, slowly shrieking. Sydney went to run out but the door slammed in her face and locked all on its own. Sydney was helpless, she couldn’t escape this nightmare.


She walked from the door and went over to the mirror, it was breaking, and at any moment it would snap and kill her. She stared right into it, waiting, and thinking. This was the end, and all she had to think about was why? Why was this happening to her, and what was happening to her?


At 12:50 Sydney Wolfe died, the next morning her boss came to the Greenwell Duplex to see why she had not come to work and hadn’t been answering any of his calls. He found her dead in the bathroom and the police came instantly. Sydney’s death has never been solved, but most say she broke the mirror and killed herself. Two months later a new residency bought the Greenwell Duplex and was soon killed. To this day no one else has ever bought the Greenwell Duplex again and it remains CORRUPTED.