In the Summer of 1971, I was six years old.  I was old enough to know better, but too young to understand.  School was out and life was good.  My days were spent with friends.  Marvin was my next door neighbor.  He cried a lot and always seemed to have a runny nose.  Lance was my other friend.  He was tough.  He never cried and could curl his tongue up like a cone.  Playing with matches, trapping bumble bees underneath glass jars and sharpening our pocket knives on the concrete all ranked high on the fun list.  Matches, however, held a special attraction.  Forbidden by the old people, yet readily accessible, they were kept in a drawer next to the giant white stove.  Matches had so many uses to me.  Melting my model cars, burning the heads off my army guys and setting ants on fire were just a few.  One rainy morning, I traded friends for imagination and headed to the basement.  It was a moldy maze that filtered you to the main room.  A giant dungeon with one dimly lit light hanging from the ceiling.  Behind the old boiler furnace, that I would sometimes pretend was an evil robot, was my biggest rival.  The small safe was mounted in a lonely brick column in the middle of the floor.  It was my life long goal to somehow crack this worthy opponent and claim it's hidden treasures.  After failing with a hundred or so combination spins, I moved on to the heavy equipment; a large, half-broken hammer that I had found in an alley and a small screwdriver stolen from my father's toolbox.  With no success, I then turned to my trusty matches and burnt the iron vault in strategic places.  After temporarily giving up on the safe, I wandered aimlessly looking for a new project.  I ended up on the threshold of the forbidden room.  It was a small, dark, evil place located in the farthest comer of the basement.  Although I had looked through the outside window many times, it was the only room I had never set foot in.  You see, it was haunted.  There were monsters, spiders and snakes.  If you ever went inside, the door would slam shut and never let you out.  These were all well known facts shared by an unreliable source, my older sister Patti.  She had been appointed my baby-sitter and warden for the Summer.  Although I knew most of what she told me were lies--such as, I was adopted and dying of a mysterious disease, I had never challenged her on the forbidden room.  If I did go in and the door slammed shut, she would probably say, "I told him so," while fluttering her eyelids and listening to the screams of a boy being eaten by vampires.  As I walked up to the closed door, I imagined what great treasures lie inside.  Money, gold, guns and fire crackers could all be mine for the taking except for one problem.  They were guarded by the scariest monsters in the world.  Mummies, lions, gargoyles and maybe even the floating hand from Barnaby Collins.  I hated that show.  Still the day was young and I had no place to go, so I decided to confront the monsters.  After sliding a heavy box of books over, I slowly opened the rickety old door.  Small streaks of light danced off the walls and floor.  The room was musty like the smell of rain.  There were old newspapers pasted to the ceiling.  An old dirty mattress was propped up against the wall.  I shoved the box against the open door and stepped into the room.  The newspapers were yellowed and crumbling.  The walls covered with cobwebs.  "Wow!" I thought.  "I've done it!" I have gone where no man has ever gone before.  Like a pirate or a cowboy or the really old guy from "Wild Kingdom."  I ended up standing over the mattress and wondering what was inside.  There were no old people to tell me I couldn't, so I sliced the mattress open with my finely sharpened knife.  The guts were clumps of white and yellow mush.  "Cool!" I thought.  "Is it cotton?  Is it wool?, Would it burn?  Has anyone ever peed on it?"  Pulling out my matches, I quickly lit one and threw it in the gaping hole.  I had to be fast so as not to burn my fingers.  The first match was a dud, but the second hit right on target.  It seemed to disintegrate the clumps as it dropped down through the depths of the mattress.  A thin wisp of smoke rose up like a dancing snake.  "Where there's smoke, there's fire." I had heard that on TV, a much more reliable source than my dumb sister.  This was really special.  I had to show someone.  I ran as fast as I could out of the room, past the evil robot and paused only long enough for one quick spin.  I then headed up the stairs and out the back door.  A hideous shriek shot from the living room, "Be back before mom gets home," bellowed my sister.  By the time I got to Marvin's house, the rain clouds had parted giving way to a bright yellow sun that shined down in full force.  Lance was already there, setting up a full scale military invasion on Marvin's newly created Lincoln Log fort.  The morning's adventures were already a million years in the past and now it was time for war.  It was a long, bloody affair.  Hundreds of soldiers were strewn on the ground.  Their bodies burnt, shot and drowned in the great mud-puddle lakes.  It was then that I heard the call, "Danny, it's suppertime."  As I walked up the stairs and in the back door, I was greeted by my mother and told to go wash up.  Passing the table, I noticed it was meatloaf night.  I hated meatloaf night.  A giant hamburger stuffed with poison onions.  My turned-up nose prompted a quick response from my father who was also in the room, "Boy, you don't know what good food is."  I know what good food is and it's not meatloaf!  Entering the bathroom, I quickly passed my grimy, soapless hands under the water faucet and wiped them off.  The clean white towel was left with two long mud streaks.  I would take my lumps for that one later.  As we all sat down to the chant of "God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food," the back door suddenly swung open.  It was Lucy, the evil old lady from across the hedge.  "Your house is on fire!" She screamed loud enough to kill a man.
Turning to the basement door my father quickly jerked it open.  Great clouds of choking, black smoke poured into the kitchen. 1 was hustled out of the house and across the street onto a neighbor's porch.  The morning's events came flooding back to me; the monsters, the room, the mattress, the smoke.  The sirens grew louder and louder until the bright red trucks came to a screeching halt.  The bluish-orange flames were now visible, shooting up from the bottom of the house.  Their faces were dancing and mocking me.  The firemen were blasting the flames with water and shattering basement windows with their axes.  My mother turned to me with a stern face and tired eyes saying, "Daniel, have you been playing with matches?"  I answered quickly, "No mom.  Maybe it was lightening or maybe it was the sun.  I bet Patti was smoking again."  Her glaring look told me she knew I was lying.  The firemen were now in the house, smashing, breaking and drowning all of our worldly possessions.  Then it happened.  Two firemen appeared at the front door, dragging a badly burnt mattress for all the world to see.  Old enough to know better, I was now experienced enough to understand the consequences.
 

Danny Rhodes
Brother of Toni Quinn, MS IV
Third Place for Prose