Friday, June 20

This morning, I decided to stay home from practice. You see, I'm used to getting up at 7:30, but 6:30 is really hard for me to do consistently. Especially because I've been staying up late recently. The guys are just so much fun and I love talking to them.

Anyway, I stayed home today and slept till 10:00. Obviously, when I woke up, nobody was in the dorm but me. Wanting to be useful, I scoured the place for some cleaning supplies, put my earbuds in, and got busy cleaning everything I could see. Well, I didn't go into the boys' rooms. But I cleaned all the common areas and the bathrooms.

I was listening to my "dance" playlist on my iPhone. It's got Michael Jackson, Adam Lambert, and LOTS of K-Pop. That playlist makes me feel really active and I cleaned almost non stop for the whole 3 hours until SHINee got back.

While I was sweeping the living room, SHINee's "Dream Girl" started playing.

Now, when I was a senior in high school, I was in the homeschool color guard. After I graduated, there were four people in the guard. And, since 3 of us love K-Pop, and the "Dream Girl" dance is done with mic stands, AND since there were five of us, well... We learned the dance and did it with our flags. We had to change it a bit, to suit us better, but it was mostly the same. But naturally I began to sing and dance!

Oh I was having the time of my life. Eventually I got to Minho's rap. Oh yeah, I know that too! I started rapping and doing Minho's  choreography. Up, down, down, back, 1,0, down in front, "I am awesome", spin...

Crap. As I spun around, I realized that every member of SHINee was standing in the doorway watching me. I yanked my earbuds out of my ears and tried to be as nonchalant as possible. "Oh hey guys! What's up?"

They burst into laughter. And kept laughing. And kept laughing. I felt my face turn red. I suddenly had this deep desire to be a turtle, able to just pull all of my limbs into a little shell where no one could see me.

As he laughed, Taemin stumbled over to me and gave me a huge hug. When they finally stopped, Onew commented, "you know, her dancing really wasn't bad!" I smiled at the praise.

"Yeah," Jonghyun agreed. "But Hannah, please don't ever rap again." They all started laughing again. I did too. I NEVER claimed to be a good rapper, and I never really wanted to be either.

It turns out that the guys actually came home early so we could go out to lunch together. Which is good, because I totally forgot about eating. After lunch, we got back in the car and started driving. I kept asking Taemin where we were going, but he just smiled and said "I guess you'll find out when we get there." None of the other guys were any help either. They just smiled.

Eventually, we arrived at our destination. It was a haunted house. Not a REAL haunted house, mind you, but one that is specifically designed to scare people.

"Why are we here?" I asked.

"Because it's fun!" Exclaimed Onew.

I shrugged my shoulders. He had a point. This would be fun. The whole point of this particular haunted house was just to get through all the floors. Jonghyun told me that most people who tried couldn't do it.

I thought that the boys would probably expect me to be really scared. I wasn't really sure WHAT to expect. I'd never been to a haunted house before. At any rate, it was sure to be a memorable experience.

The six of us walked in as a group. We all had to sign a contract that said (basically) "I promise not to sue the company for scaring the living daylights out of me. I also give permission to the workers in the house to touch me and take me away from my group." That by itself was scary.

But the first floor was really not very scary. The walls were covered with creepy dolls and clowns. As we walked through, a big doll shot out of the floor in front of us, laughing. We all jumped, but managed to get through the floor.

As we were on the elevator down, I remarked "that doesn't even count as being scared. That's just being startled." I tried to sound confident, but my heart was beating really fast.

On the next floor, we walked into a room that looked like a hospital room. The lights flickered as we took a look at our surroundings. In the center of the room, there was an operating table covered with blood and what I'm pretty sure were human body parts.

We began our walk to the elevator when we heard a scream coming from a closed door on the other side of the room. The door flung open and a little boy came running towards us. His arms and face were covered with bleeding cuts. He grabbed Minho and screamed "HELP ME!" Before collapsing on the ground in front of us.

We diverted our gaze from the boy on the floor back to the door he came from. There was a man standing there with a bloody scalpel. We didn't give him any time to do anything. We ran to the elevator and went down to the next floor.

The third floor was pitch black. The only light came from the open elevator door, but eventually that was gone too. "This isn't too bad." I commented. "All we have to do is choose a wall to follow to the exit!" I put out my right hand in search of a wall. I found one, but it was covered with something sticky and wet. "Ugh! Oh that is disgusting!"

"Well we want to all stay together," Key said. "So lets hold hands to make sure we aren't separated."

I immediately felt a warm hand grab my own. "Who is this?" I asked, squeezing the hand I held.

"It's Onew!" Came the laughing reply. After a little while, we established who was holding hands with who. As I had gross sticky stuff all over my hand, I was on the end. Then was Onew, Taemin, Minho, Key, and Jonghyun, in that order.

We began walking. I was nominated to lead the parade through the room. Now you're probably wondering why five guys decided to let a girl younger than all of them lead. Well you see, no one really wanted to walk straight into a sticky wall, so someone with a free hand had to lead. And, as my right hand was already covered with sticky stuff, I suppose I was the logical choice.

We walked for what seemed like an eternity. All of a sudden, Key shouted "Wait! Jonghyun!"

"What's going on?" Minho asked.

"Jonghyun's gone!" Exclaimed Key.

"What are you saying?" I cried.

"I'm saying that I WAS holding his hand and now I'm not."

We began yelling for Jonghyun. He didn't respond. I remembered the contract we signed before we came in the building. When I reminded the guys, they agreed that there was really nothing we could do except try to find the exit. We did so fairly soon afterwards, and the five of us headed down to the next floor.

I was beginning to wonder how long this haunted house would take. I'm okay with being scared, but when people go missing, I REALLY start to loose it.

The next floor had two light sources: a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling, and a tv screen in the corner. A little girl sat in front of the screen, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth. The tv was only playing static.

The girl turned to us and screamed. Suddenly, a door opened and a lady dressed in a nurses outfit came to comfort the girl. But the girl wouldn't stop screaming. The nurse turned her attention to us. "You've upset her!" She screamed. She ran towards us and grabbed Taemin.

She pushed him to the ground and started dragging him away from us. Minho grabbed Taemin's arms, and we all joined together to get him away from the crazy nurse. But Minho's hand slipped and we all toppled over on top of each other. The woman pulled Taemin away by his feet as he screamed for help. We scrambled to our feet, but they went through a door and when we pulled on the knob, it was locked.

Defeated, we ran to the elevator and down to the next floor. It didn't feel right, just leaving him, but again, there wasn't really anything we could do.

The next level, I guess it was level 5, was dimly lit. Everything around us had a bluish tint. At this point, it was just me, Minho, Onew, and Key. We heard a high pitched screeching sound coming from around a bend in the hallway we were in.

I grabbed Onew's hand. I was done faking, I was FREAKED OUT! But, I'm not one that gives up easily. I was determined to finish this haunted house. We only had 3 stories left, including the one we were on.

Around the corner, the walls and most of the hallway were covered with giant spiderwebs. We slowly made our way through the maze of webs. Suddenly, we heard the screeching sound again, only this time it was coming from behind us. I spun around, startled. Only a few feet away stood a giant spider. It had eight red eyes and long fangs, dripping with poison. It's entire body was covered with mangled hair.

We ran. We ran as fast as we could without getting stuck in the webs. We almost made it.

Minho, the tallest in our group, tried to duck down to get through an opening in the web, but instead got a faceful of the sticky substance. The spider soon caught up with him and wrapped him up tighter in the web.

Helpless, Key grabbed my hand and we ran to the elevator.

Once in the elevator, I slumped down against the wall. Onew and Key came and sat on either side of me. I laughed.

"This is intense! But we've only got two floors left!" I tried to sound confident, but really, I was terrified.

All of a sudden, the elevator stopped. The three of us jumped to our feet. The lights began to flicker.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me!" I yelled in English. The lights went out.

Suddenly, a blue figure appeared in front of us. It was a little girl. The four of us stood in silence staring at each other. The blue girl looked at each of us in turn, but her gaze rested the longest on Onew.

She smiled at him. And it wasn't one of those "I like you" smiles... It was definitely an "I'm going to kill you" smile. She disappeared and the lights turned back on. The elevator started moving again,

but Onew was nowhere to be seen.