"Say, are you looking for the door?"
"What... door? I don't know what door."
"Oh, then you must be looking for the door!"
"Look, I don't know what you are...."
[Long confused pause]
[In a calm and wise tone, almost a quiet whisper]
"Yes, you want the door. I'm pretty sure you do. They all come here. And then some. All those that want the door."
[eyes wide in panic, in half croak, half whisper]
"Yes, but I... I... just want to see the door. Nothing more."
[compassionate voice slowly fading into a hopelessly unintelligible electronic drone]
"I'm sure you will see the door. Try and relax while you wait for it."
[Panic turns to resignation and then to hope]
In the far corner of the cleanly white-washed corridor, lit by an unknown number of hidden neon lamps throwing cold indistinct light on everything in sight, was a completely ordinary looking white door. It was the first time I had seen it. I had been in this room thousands of times before. I must have been, it was my room after all. It felt like this had been my room my entire life; it was all too familiar, the clinical whiteness of the walls and ceiling, the total lack of shadows because of multiple, cleverly hidden neon lights, the total absence of furniture, or anything else, the eerie stillness. Yes, no draught, the room had no windows. In fact, until this moment, I was not even aware of that door. I sometimes wondered how I got in to the room, but I quickly explained away such silly worries by assuring myself that I never left the room in the first place. It was an interesting thought though, because, many times, i could have sworn that I had been outside. Well, who knows what is and what is not a figment of one's imagination, and in any case, this was not the time to fixate on matters of such little relevance.
I walked the ten steps or so to the door. The white of the walls seemed oddly brighter than usual today. "Almost hurts the eye" I thought quietly. Quiet, that was the other thing. My footfalls made no noise at all. It was as if I walked on a plushly carpeted floor.
When I reached the door, I realized with mild panic that there was no way to open it. There was no knob, no keyhole, no latch, nothing, just a tiny piece of paper stuck to it at eye level with the word "Esque" calligraphed on it in Gothic style. I did not know what it meant, and it did not even pique my curiosity to find out. I just accepted it as one who sees strange things in an unfamiliar land does. Though this room and every wall in it was far from unfamilar to me, I didn't even know of this door until now. Nor had I ever cared to get out of this comfortable room that I had set up so precisely to my taste and sensitivity. The panic at not being able to open it was a little unsettling. Why?
I glanced around furtively for some instrument to pry the door open with, but like i said, the room had nothing else. I glanced back at the door, and suddenly, a beautifully polished door knob, just where you might expect to find one on a door, caught my eye. "I wonder how I had missed that", I thought, by now, forgetting completely about having missed the door before. The knob was a smooth, spherical affair, crafted exceptionally well and finished in gold plating. The glimmer on the metal was out of place in a room without shadows or reflections, yet I was drawn to its exquisite beauty, and spent a long while admiring the knob and feeling its almost sensuous roundness against my palm.
I was decidedly uncomfortable all of a sudden and I wanted the door open. I wanted to feel a breeze on my face, I figured I must have been sweating rather profusely for some time now. The knob turned reassuringly in my grip and the door opened wide noiselessly. I had no idea of what i might expect to find outside, yet I felt fairly certain that I had to open the door.
Beyond the door was pitch darkness. The depth or distance beyond the frame of that door was something i could not judge. The vast sense of unpunctuated space all of a sudden felt overwhelming and I retched involuntarily into that blackness, steadying myself against the door frame.
I knew at that moment that I was going to leave this room. I was going to step into that inky void. I knew that one step forward would be total insanity and a total destruction of my world as I knew it, but I knew that one step backwards was impossible now. I had already taken that step forward. I didn't know if I had wanted to.
What I did know was that there was no coming back again.
For some time I felt nothing. No idea of space or distance. No sensation of sight, sound, or touch. I had no grasp of time, no judgement of how long I had remained like that, in a certain disquieting limbo, not knowing if I was merely drifting gently downwards or plummetting to the bottom of some unfathomable abyss at an incredible speed. The thought did not even seem to matter, let alone cause fear. For all I cared, I could even be floating up, buoyed by some unfeelable thermal wind from the well of darkness below. Or was it the above? I might be upside down, who was to tell?
Wings might help here, if I had any inclination to flap them at all, I thought.
... to be continued.
