The Door

Chapter 1

What would you do if you woke up to the sudden realization that there was a door in your room?

Now, please don't insult my intelligence, as I don't mean the sort of door you find in a wall. A nice, ordinary, well-behaved door. No, this one wasn't ordinary at all. This was the sort of door that you find--or rather, don't find--standing upright in the middle of your floor. Attached to nothing, mind you. What does one do with a door like that?

Well, let me tell you what I did. I did what any self-respecting scientist would do: I pulled the covers up near my chin and gave it a good stare. In a word, or perhaps two, I boggled.

It was clearly a door. No question. I had seen plenty of doors before, and this was definitely one of them. It was the usual size and shape, made of wood, and had been painted white. However, the cracked and flaking paint indicated that it hadn't been painted in quite some time.

In fact, the door as a whole looked old. It belonged to another era for certain, with its dull, metal knob which sported a dent on one side, a decorative backplate, and a keyhole of the variety that accepted a skeleton key. The sort of keyhole that many a young eye has peered through in times gone by.

Of course, in my mind, I asked all of the questions a good scientist would ask, but I voiced the most important query of all, which was, "What in the devil are you doing in my bedroom?!"

A bit strange you think? No, the strangeness hadn't yet begun. Not in earnest. No, not yet.

Well, as much as I would have liked to roll over and forget the whole affair, I simply couldn't. Oh, make no mistake, I had tried closing my eyes for a bit, but upon reopening them, the door hadn't gone away. It simply refused to cooperate.

The slight ache in my back, as well as the rumbling that had begun in my belly, brought about one terribly unpleasant reality: I would have to get out of bed.

With an annoyed sigh and a requisite groan, I reluctantly extricated myself from the blankets and rose from the bed. I then immediately shuffled my feet into the fuzzy ducky slippers at the bedside, because I most certainly wasn't going to perform a close inspection of the interloper without being properly shod.

The door, of course, was closed, and I felt a deep, profound urge to open it and see what was on the other side. Certainly nothing but a view of my room behind it, I told myself with a smug grin. The urge, however, lingered. It pestered. It chafed. It was nigh unbearable. The questions were mounting by the moment, and the mind of a scientist must know!

There could be no more dilly-dallying. It was time for action. And so, screwing up my courage, I strode boldly across the room and threw open the door!

No, not that door, the other one. My door. The normal, well-behaved door that knew how to stay put in the bedroom wall where I had left it!

Not the ill-mannered addition, crassly flaunting its independence in the middle of my elegant, Persian rug. No, I snubbed that interloper as if it were a sleazy politician at a campaign fundraiser.

I proceeded instead to the hall restroom and then down the stairs to the kitchen. After all, there were important matters to which I simply had to attend.

First and foremost was the rumbling in my tummy. You may judge, but my tummy, once it gets to rumbling like that, is nothing to be trifled with.

I broke my fast with a vigor, sipped my tea with a vengeance, and thoroughly perused the morning paper.

I wasn't proud of myself, mind you, but I gave that old, wooden intruder plenty of time to move along with its life, ideally in a wall, somewhere else.

Yes, in short, I dilly-dallied. However, once I ran out of tea in the kettle and ate the last of those delicate, simply scrumptious, little biscuits that I favor, I had had enough. I was fed up, and I wasn't going to take it any longer.

Rising from my chair and squaring the morning Post neatly with the edge of the breakfast table, I said, to no one in particular, though we all know who I meant, "Right then, I'm coming up there now and I expect not to find any strange doors loitering about in my bedchamber!"

Following that, I marched sternly up the steps and back to said bedchamber.

Much to my chagrin, it was still there. No, not my door, the other one!

When my eyes fell upon that door, my courage fell as well, coming to rest first in the neighborhood of my ankles before quickly fleeing to hide somewhere in the proximity of my left pinky toe.

As I stood staring at the door, I boggled anew. It just couldn't be there, and yet, there it was, mocking science and the very laws of reality, not to mention normalcy.

All I managed to say was, "Oh," in the sort of way you do when you walk briskly into a private restroom only to discover that it is already occupied.

There was then an awkward, pregnant pause where nothing at all occurred, followed by some shuffling of the fuzzy, slippered feet. Closely followed by more inaction. Then, some more shuffling, and another drawn-out pause. When I could stand it no longer, I strode to the door and opened it wide. It creaked loudly in protest.

It was then that a warm, gentle breeze that smelled of wildflowers wafted out and tousled my unkempt, graying hair. I believe that's when I fainted.