"Daddy, please tell us more stories!" I begged him anxiously, while tugging on one of his big hands with my tiny little ones. "I don't know Lina…" He said sounding tired but happy. "Pleeeeeeeease Uncle Alan!" My cousin Emma begged with me grasping onto my dad's other hand. He sighed then looked over to his brother. "Edgar, why don't you tell the next story?" Uncle Edgar chuckled, but nodded in agreement and began his story. Emma and I resumed our spots side by side on the ground before our dads, and listened, awestruck, at amazing story after amazing story that was probably far gorier and filled with vampires and death than we should have been listening to as five year olds. But our dads didn't care, and we most certainly did not. "You aren't telling them more stories, are you?" My mom asked with fake suspicion, Emma's mom just chuckled. As kids we would have raced over to our moms to try and tell them all about what the dads told us, while the moms shot disapproving looks at their husbands. All that never stopped us though, from begging for more stories, and for them to tell us more of them. Those were some great days.

But it all changed in the several years following when my mom passed away due to cancer, and Emma's parents got divorced. Those years were rough and the two of us lost some playfulness and the will to be outgoing and fun. We relied on each other heavily and spent a lot of time together, because our dads would get together at my house, go out on the patio and talk about who knows what for hours almost every day during the week. And while they were out on the patio, we would be in my room, talking, and doing pretty much whatever we could do in that one room. Other times, we would go walking around Santa Carla, particularly the boardwalk, or we would just try to master little tricks on our bikes. But there were also some rare occasions, when we would hear our dads start talking about their old vampire hunting days and some adventure they went on, and we would sit at the window seat in my room, our ears pressed against the window so we could hear what they were saying, even if we had already heard the story a thousand times before. They brought back fond memories of when we were little kids.

But tonight, we were walking at the boardwalk, and after making a complete whatever shape the boardwalk was, twice, we were pretty bored and decided to walk over to one of the cliffs that overlooked the ocean. It was starting to get dark as we reached the top of the cliff, and the wind was stronger up here. "Should we turn around?" I shouted over at Emma, while walking backwards. "We've never been up here and it's getting late!" I shouted again. She shook here head "Not yet!" She was yelling over the accumulating sound of the wind. I kept on walking backwards, it was easier than walking normally uphill. We had been going on like that for about five minutes more before I stepped on a spot on the cliff, covered in a mound of sand. The sand below my feet seemed to disappear and beneath where it was, was a hole about six feet deep that I fell straight into, and hit the ground pretty hard. "OW!" I yelped in pain, and I heard Emma run toward the hole. "Lina! Are you okay?" She hollered down at me, I saw her face appear at the top of the hole. "I landed on my ass, but I guess I'm fine!" I shouted back up at her. We were both silent for the next few moments, obviously still in shock over this incident. Well, I was more just unamused that I would be the one to fall down the hole. "How are we going to get you out of there?" I stood up and felt the around the inside of the hole, it smell ed absolutely awful in here too. I could feel an opening to my left, but I couldn't see into it- it was too dark. I kept feeling the walls. They weren't wet sand like I thought it would be, they felt like wood, but it was also smooth like metal. "DUDE!" Emma was screeching down at me. "WHAT?" I screamed back up at her, I slid my hang along the wall easily, and my hand ran into something that jutted out from the wall. It felt like the same material as the walls around it. I put my other hand against the wall, and my hand ran into another jutting thing. Not really thinking about what I was doing I slid my hands down and found multiple sets of the things on the walls. I looked up where it was brighter an easier to see. "Dude, I think there are handles on the wall in here, it's like a rock climbing wall…" I was practically thinking aloud. "Well damnit Lina! Climb!" Emma shouted. "Wow. How come I didn't think of that?" I shouted up at her sarcastically, and slowly started to climb up, being careful to hold onto every piece.

I was feeling so confident as I ascended the wall, but as I reached for the next handhold, I discovered it wasn't there. "Emma! It stopped!" Silence. "What stopped?"

"The handholds, there aren't anymore of them!" We were both quiet for a minute. "You have to help pull me up, I think I can reach near the opening!" I held up one hand, and I felt her grab onto it, then let go of the hold and put up my other hand. I felt her start pulling back away from the opening, and I kicked the opposite wall trying to kind of hop up the wall and make it easier for Emma. It worked ever so slightly. I felt her hands slip. We screamed in unison. "DON'T YOU DARE DROP ME!"

"I'M NOT TRYING TO!" I felt my foot start to slip back down. I screamed at the top of my lungs, which made Emma panic and let go, but thankfully, it wasn't until we were both a safe yard away from the hole. Emma was standing nearby me panting. I was still too shocked and the fear was still wearing off. We looked over at each other, and embraced in a tight reassuring hug.