“Below the Floor,” by Willow Ackerman: May 2025 1st Place

Noah had spent the last three Saturdays helping his uncle renovate the old supply shed behind the school. It was dull work, nail-pulling, wood-hauling, but today he came across something that wasn't quite right: a section of flooring that didn't belong with the rest. Different nails. Clean wood. Essentially a door.

He opened it with a crowbar.

A spiraling staircase disappeared into darkness. The air that blew up was faintly sweet with cotton and motor oil.

Noah hesitated, then grabbed a flashlight and went down.

What he found was a huge underground factory.

Metal arms stitched, sorted, and boxed the thousands of knotted socks. They tumbled off conveyor belts in rainbow-colored rivers, some pineapples, some shark-shaped, some sandwich-shaped. The oddest thing? They seemed…aware. A striped one fell off the belt and wriggled into a bin. Another rotated and grumbled, "Late again."

Noah's jaw fell open. "Did you just—talk?"

The sock didn't answer, jumping into a chute labeled “Outbound”.

Noah hadn't had time to process when a screaming alarm blared.

“ERROR: ORB CONTAINMENT FAILURE. SYSTEM INSTABILITY. EXIT SEALING IN 120 SECONDS.”

In the center of the room, a crate of glowing glass orbs trembled. One rolled off and shattered. A wave of uncontrollable laughter burst from it, echoing through the chamber. The machines jerked, scrambled, spun out of sync.

The socks panicked. One launched itself at Noah’s leg.

“You brought surface static! We’re destabilizing!”

"I—I don't know what that means!"

"Run!"

Noah ran, dodging flying cloth and sparks. The factory clattered. A chute exploded, showering socks like confetti. The stairwell gaped, half concealed beneath a pile of broken globes. He climbed, falling once, then crawled to the top as the door began to close.

He rolled out in time. The hatch slammed shut.

Silence.

He lay on the shed floor, breathing.

In his jacket pocket, a sock trembled.

It said, "Close one."