Door's Gone By

Doors. 

Mundane.

Rudimentary.

Much like many aspects of life they shape themselves into irrelevancy. No one, save historians, knows that the Sumerians and the Egyptians first created them by placing wooden slabs on metal pegs that pivoted open and shut. Years of failure, after failure. Mistake after mistake. Refined and tuned, as all machinations of man must be as each passes the crucible of shoddy craftsmanship until the finished product is no longer revered as the majestic work it is. But instead glanced over as unassuming and ordinary.  

And yet, I find myself passing doors not formed from the ancestors of Memphis and Ur and Uruk. No human could form these malignant monstrosities. Ethereal panes of malleable translucent glass. As many are around me as stars in the night sky, and every time I open one I found myself in a new place.

The fruits of Eden.

The placidness of purgatory.

The fires of Hades.

All opened and closed with a silent swing. The cosmic machinery spun as the door was clamped with foreign metallic jaws, and swept away only to be replaced by another. 

Why me? 

I asked myself that question. Again, and again as countless doors open and close. 

I push the thought away and greet myself with the bitter winds of a darkened world where a sun's light has never shone. Only the expanse of nothingness fills the skyline. No seeds had settled on this darkened obelisk careening past star systems without a companion. A little rock in the void. 

I shut the door. 

Not this one either. 

I’m looking for one door. One single door.

The door back home.

How long have I been here? How long has some righteous God seen fit to grant me a sliver of his power?

I settled in a field of alien amber grass. Not forever, but for a time. I wrap my arms around my legs and watch as two red suns burn across a sea shimmering green. Whoever designed this blessing or this cruelty had the forethought to strip hunger from my necessities. As with water. As with sleep. 

Whatever hand gave me this gift also set out to mock me.

Nature had settled in. As a factory worker on an assembly line, or a soldier marching in unison with his brothers-in-arms. A measured meter that strikes the metronome at an even pace. The whirling whine of engines as the small contraptions set in place. The shimmering of the door. The syrupy stickiness as I reached inside the pool for the handle. The fiery pinch as my fingers greeted the biting knob. Another pull, another door swung, opening up to another brave new world. 

Lifeless, boundless, and bare. 

I stopped counting. I was at over seventeen thousand, six-hundred and forty-two worlds when I did.

The world of note was once a crowded hive city now desolate with drowned cathedrals, and dormant colosseums that pierced the sky like a giant’s picket fence.

 I wandered for a time, navigating the barren streets without fear or caution as I had often done before. 

I found myself standing in a colossal pit. Deep in its earthen depths, I stared up at the sky as I had done seventeen thousand, six-hundred and forty-one times. 

Yet, this time six glowing reptilian eyes stared back at me. 

My heartbeat fluttered as the eyes blinked. Not all in unison. One slowly after the other. As if the creature was registering what it was seeing as much as I was. I found my feet trudging up the slopes backwards. My calves squealed at the unnatural motion, but I could not take my eyes off it for a second. Not with the way the oily tentacled beard traced down the skyscraper like a revolving snake.

At the summit, I dared a look away. Searching the door that would grant my rescue. I saw it ajar, and raced towards my sanctum as a building speared through another. Rubble and debris cascaded downward in an avalanche as I heard the creature take its first quaking gargantuan step. It had caught up to me with only its first.

The door was no more than twenty feet away as I stole a glance backward. As fast as a speedboat and as large as a traincar, tentacles slithered after me. Smashing through roadblocks with ease. Unhindered by the falling nano-blocks that shifted and morphed to their pre-programmed specs. 

My soles collided with the familiar room’s floor, but I did not have time to breathe. I delved my hand with earnestness, took the pain with glee, and slammed the door shut as suckers suctioned against the misty haze. The machinery whirled, the world faded, and the danger passed, but the memory of it all remained. 

I hammered for the next door, and the next, and the next, until I had lost count. 

What I have not lost is our kitchen. 

White walls, fiberboard cabinets, engineered quartz, luxury vinyl plank flooring, and a little green sticky note.

“I’m sad to leave you for two weeks, but I know it’ll be ok. I hope Thailand will be fun, my boss said it’s important for our contacts to stretch to the Southeast Asian markets. Every American business has tried this same strategy for the past fifty years, so I’m sure this two week excursion will do an insane amount of work. I’ll think of you every day, and call whenever I can. Love you tons. The time we’ve lived with each other has been incredible. Two weeks apart, but a lifetime together. All my love.” 

Signed in cursive.

Penelope. 

I grip the sticky note with care. My hands strained to smother it with a death grip rivaling a boa constrictor, but my mind does not want to lose it. A lifeline was thrown out to me, so I may return.

One day.

Some day.

But not today. 

I opened the next door. 

A world of ashen gray that stretches beyond the horizon. I should have called for the next, but instead I took a step forward. My bare feet sank in the gray snow. Nothing moves.

Whatever this world was, it’s now gone forever.

Or maybe, a god forgot. 

I take a mouthful of the poisoned air, but my lungs do not repel the toxins. It breathed it in naturally as they did in the rest of the foreign worlds. 

This could be it. 

I registered the thought. It could be. No more doors. No more monstrosities. I could set myself down here forever, and wait as eon’s past and fade. 

But Penelope. 

I looked back at the door. I sigh, and stand. A part of me calls for me to stay, but the other part, the longing part, knows I need to return. I wiped the ash off my jeans and stepped back up through the doorway. 

The door slammed shut as I called for the next.