The Forbidden Floor by Denise Diehl

The Forbidden Floor by Denise Diehl

Rachel crept up to the forbidden sixth floor, paused before the door, readjusted her glasses, and swept her long, untidy hair into a ponytail. She glanced behind her, took a deep breath, and pushed through, gasping at the sheer size of the place and the number of archived specimens. She crept along the wooden floors, which creaked in the dim light, room after room, grimacing at the obsolete glass-encased relics of yesteryear museums—lifeless, sad animals in shabby fur, their cold marble eyes fixed. I shouldn’t be here, she thought … out of respect.

She’d heard about this collection—one of many. “Nothing is thrown out. There are pieces centuries old. It’s amazing and creepy. You’ve got to see them.” It was her morbid curiosity that drove her to visit these exhibits, which had lost their prestige and their reason for display yet cried out to be seen and remembered. She shivered at the forlorn state of erased life and wondered if one day humans would join the exhibits for future races to look at and ponder.

Room after room blurred into a dismal experience. She stopped, suddenly wanting out. I don’t want to be here, she’d seen enough. Their plight felt overwhelming and unresolvable, a betrayal of life itself. She decided she didn’t like this place, no matter how much she loved the thrill of the ghoulish, the forbidden, horror stories, and the scary. She nodded—this was a sickness of the soul.

She woke from her reverie when she heard the closing bell ring and the lights go out. Rachael spun around to retrace her steps to the entrance, but the door had vanished. She frowned and told herself to stay calm. With arms outstretched, she kept her mounting anxiety in check and bumped her way along the black corridor until she saw a tiny light at the base of an empty case, its door open. She stopped to glance at its plaque and reeled at what it read—Homo sapien. I can’t be here, her mind screamed.

Dread struck, twisting her guts and spinning her around, only to send her leaping back in fright as the polar bear lunged at her from its enclosure. Her momentum sent her stumbling into the empty glass box. The door slammed shut, the lock clicked, and the tiny light blinked out.

Rachel’s screams of terror merged with the silent wails and howls from the glass-encased shadows, abandoned in the cold darkness of the past.

Get me outta here!

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Denise Diehl 2026

Image Source: Aron Jäger from Unsplash.com