So Much Potential

A Short Horror Story

Mar 18, 2026

On a day when the sky felt stolen from a painting, and the sunlight streamed in through the sliding glass door, leaving a golden glow to warm the creme kitchen cupboards, Robbie and Doug were having an argument.

“We don’t need a second cat,” Doug insisted, “You don’t even feed Tickles or change her litter box.”

“Yeah, but think of how cute they’d be together,” Robbie pleaded.

He was leaning against the doorframe to the basement and peered backwards absently down the stairs. He suddenly felt a dizzy spell come over him and bounced off of his shoulder to lean against the closet door on the other side of the narrow hallway.

He glanced back down the twenty or so stairs to the hard basement floor, and swallowed. He didn’t want to imagine what it would be like to fall down those stairs. They were narrow and wooden, with sharp edges and no doubt splinters available upon contact.

The stairs were steep, with no bends or corners and there was only one wall, as they opened up to the basement on the other side. The bannister had been removed to get furniture into the basement so if someone fell down, there was nothing they could use to stop their descent.

Not until the floor stopped it for them.

The basement gloom made the doorway and its tongue of stairs feel like an open mouth, waiting patiently to bite down on whomever entered.

“Did you hear a word I just said?”

Robbie’s head snapped back to find his frustrated partner standing with his fists on his hips and a glare on his face. Robbie loved when Doug was angry because his face always flushed bright red and Robbie found this adorable. The consequential behavior for making him mad however, was not quite as charming. He swallowed and put on a big playful smile to try and soften Doug’s irritation.

“Yeah, I did!”

“What did I say then?” Doug asked haughtily.

“Uhm...” Robbie tried, his smile growing into a shameless grin.

“You never listen to me!” Doug accused before pushing passed Robbie and walking down the hallway to pout. He slammed the door to his office behind him.

Robbie should have followed, but he didn’t.

He just stood half turned, leaning against the wall, gazing down into the gaping maw of the basement.

The doorway seemed to grow as he stood mesmerized. The dizziness he’d felt earlier returned in a disconcerting wave that caused him to grab the handle of the closet for stability. He pressed his back squarely against the door behind him and braced himself as his head lightened.

Why was he suddenly having vertigo for the first time in his life?

It had to be vertigo right?

He wasn’t sure, but he vaguely remembered a similar feeling from when he had been cliff jumping as a kid.

Robbie never had an issue with heights. In fact, he frequently had sought them out as a source of excitement and entertainment as a boy. He’d jump out of trees, ride his bike off of jumps, he would do almost anything to feel the exhilaration of falling without any of the repercussions.

But now he was nervous.

He’d fallen down stairs before and it was rarely fun, especially if it was by mistake.

These stairs though, they felt dangerous.

The doorway loomed ominously before him and he imagined a gravity to it. Despite knowing that it was impossible, he couldn’t escape the trick his mind was playing that made him feel the gentlest of tugs toward the open doorframe.

It was pressuring him to advance, to just lean a little more towards it.

Is this what they had meant in high school Physics when they had discussed “potential energy”?

Doug emerged from his office, a little taken aback that his husband had not followed to continue their conversation.

“What,” he asked as he walked between Robbie and the basement door, “No apology?”

As Doug passed between them, it was as if he severed the imaginary connection tying Robbie to the doorframe. Robbie’s eyes followed Doug into the kitchen while his partner finished preparing a cup of coffee. When Doug passed again, they followed him a little lower down until Doug closed the door to his office again.

Robbie smiled to himself, momentarily forgetting what he was doing. Then he looked back to the doorframe. He could feel it more strongly now, a firm pulling sensation towards the open door. The wood of the frame seemed to bend slightly, as if the whole opening were slowly warping in real time. The dizziness attended to Robbie’s head once again and suddenly his stomach lurched uncomfortably.

He grabbed the handle to the closet door and leaned back against it to try and steady his queasy senses, but the sickness did not leave.

Why was he nauseous?

It felt almost like car sickness, although their Subaru Forester was still parked in the driveway. Robbie checked quickly through the living room window just in case. Then he slowly slid down the cupboard door to sit on the tiled floor of the hallway.

As the depth of the stairs left his view he began to feel better, and after a couple of deep breaths the unsettling feeling had left once again.

He put his foot out and softly nudged the basement door until it swung gently along its arc and closed with a loud click.

Robbie let out a sigh of relief, relaxing into a messy sprawl that blocked his little section of the hall. It was almost as if the possibility that he could fall down the stairs was threatening to become real.

He was reminded of the image in his physics text book years ago of an apple in the tree waiting to fall. Was this what potential energy felt like? It felt as if he’d made a terrible prediction and was powerless but to watch it come true. As if the potential energy was slowly converting itself to kinetic against his will.

Falling through the door somehow felt, inevitable.

This was the feeling that frightened him the most.

Doug reappeared from his office and walked down the corridor until he was looking down at his husband, lying on the floor like a discarded doll.

“You’re in my way,” he said irritably, “Move.”

Robbie pulled his limbs in and sat up so his partner could proceed into the kitchen.

“No,” Doug continued, “I’m changing the litter box, move.”

The litter box was in the basement.

“Do you have to do it now?” Robbie whined, looking from Doug to the basement door and back to his handsome man.

“Yes,” Doug insisted, “This is exactly why we’re not getting another cat. Just one is too much of an inconvenience for you.”

Robbie scrambled to get to his feet so that Doug had space to open the basement door and watched his lover descend the stairs into the waiting darkness below. The old wood creaked for mercy under his athletic build as Doug stepped off the bottom stair and turned the corner into the room with the litter box.

As soon as Doug was out of sight, Robbie felt the dizziness return. His head got light and he felt faint. He quickly imagined himself falling through the door three times in a row as he stood paralyzed against the opposite wall. He started to sink back to the floor for some relief, only to feel as if he had vaulted forward through the doorway.

Robbie blinked. His head was still spinning but he hadn’t left the secure brace he had against the closet door. His brain was playing tricks on him.

He was still safe, for now.

He grabbed the handle just in case and as he did, he could feel the pull of the basement door, as if he was being sucked in by a powerful wind.

His heart began to beat faster, thumping in his head, driving away his sensible thoughts so only dread and uncertainty remained.

The light began to change, stretching to bring out a brightness in his surroundings that made him feel as if he’d ingested hallucinogenic mushrooms. The world warped like it did in the movies when a character was about to pass out and Robbie clung as tightly as he could to the closet handle, pushing himself back against the closed door with all his might.

Doug appeared at the bottom of the stairs holding a bag with the collected feces of their precious pet Tickles. He walked up the stairs and threw a confused face at his partner in passing.

“What’s gotten into you?” Doug asked, disappearing around the corner to take the garbage bag to the bins outside. He didn’t wait for an answer.

Not that Robbie could provide one, for no sooner had the front door banged shut than Robbie felt bombarded by waves of force.

His head was throbbing. It was spinning. He felt sucked at by the doorframe before him as sweat escaped down his neck.

Suddenly the door handle turned.

Robbie cried out as the closet door behind him flew open, knocking him forward. He managed to get a hand on either side of the basement door frame, only just stopping himself from plummeting down the stairs.

But there he was, looking straight into the belly of the beast, his eyes held by the darkness below.

Then the drag began again.

His limbs grew heavy as his upper body leaned into the empty space above the stairs. He felt pushed from behind, as if the potential energy was forcing itself to become real. Struggle as he may, his mind collapsed into cartwheels of discombobulating dizziness and everything grew bright, blotting out reality with a nauseating flash of pale grey.

Despite his strength, his sweaty hands slipped off of the white edges of the doorframe.

Robbie reeled forward, lost in the dizziness, dragged by an invisible force into the basement. He tried to put his arms up to protect his head but he couldn’t see anything within the flurry of movement.

His face hit the stairs first with a sickening crunch and all he could do was close his eyes and wait. The fiery sting of the collision distracted him momentarily until he felt an unnatural twinge in the base of his neck. Suddenly his back slammed onto the sharp wooden edge of one of the stairs. There was a cracking sound and a shock of pain rocketed through him, causing his whole spine to explode in a frazzling of nerves.

Robbie screamed into the darkness, his eyelids squeezed tightly in pain as his body prayed for relief.

He felt the backs of his heels bang into another stair further down as his entire body somersaulted through the abyss, falling for what felt like forever.

Before he could wonder what was to come next, his face smashed into something hard and rigid. He felt the splintering pain of the bones in his face breaking. He could feel the skin scraping off of his cheeks on the polished concrete floor. His skull bounced off of it only to come back into contact with it a second later for another heavy couple of skips.

Robbie lay crumpled at the bottom of the basement stairs, sightless and thoughtless, as blood began to pool around him on the floor.

Tickles, awoken by the commotion, found her beloved owner lying in a motionless heap at the foot of the stairs and began to gently lick at the puddle of blood that was quietly growing around his mangled body.

Author’s note: Hey there! Seb here! I just wanted to thank you for choosing to spend your time reading my work. It means the world to little old me, head swirling with horror stories, to know that out of the darkness of our experiences we can form real human connections and investigate subjects that are exciting and scary. I’m so grateful that you chose to come on this journey with me and I hope it has prompted some fun questions for you to enjoy thinking about in the future. Your support means a lot and I am honored that you put your belief in me to entertain you.
Thank you.

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Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution of any part of this story or accompanying image is prohibited without permission from the author. No generative artificial intelligence (AI) was used in the writing of this work. The author expressly prohibits any entity from using this publication for purposes of training AI technologies.