Curiouser and Curiouser

A-4 The Hallway

In a hallway filled with doors leading anywhere, pick one and tell us what you discover behind it. (<1000 words).

I came because I was searching. I didn't know what for. Adventure? Excitement? Stories? I just knew there were worlds out there and my own world wasn't fitting me anymore. I needed something else.

It wasn't hard to find the corridor between worlds. It was right were I'd left it, around the second corner to the left, make a hard right and open the third door.

When I first found it, I didn't know the corridor would be so short. Somehow, I thought everywhere would have more depth to it, but as I entered, the doors seemed to arc before and behind me finitely. It wasn't until I moved, that I could sense the true majesty of it—the way the hall curved and bent into a microcosm of the universe. Every step brought more doors into view and lost the previous set as they faded away leaving just enough for me to comprehend at a single instant. Infinity.

And here I was again. Behind me was disappointment. Before me was discovery.

I didn't search for a door that felt right or different. I couldn't. Because all possibility was there, there were too many good choices. Instead, I moved by instinct and opened a door at random.

The first thing to hit me was the smell of baking cookies: sugar and ginger and cinnamon and chocolate so thick in the air that I could almost taste it. Peppermint and vanilla and a fire burning and warmth gathering me in. It felt like home and family. There was singing and I could hear the part that was missing for me to sing.

I could hear them. Everyone was there, my brother and sisters and their children. My cousins and aunts and uncles. My grandparents who were dead. My nephew who died when he was five days old. My friends, close and far. It was every home I'd every known—places that I'd passed through, rooms where I'd stayed for long years. It was every holiday. It was every tragedy. Every pain. Every triumph.

It was home, my home. And it felt right.

And I wept. I couldn't step inside. It wasn't my time. This wasn't the right door for me, not yet. The door shut and I was in the corridor again.

I swiped my hand over my eyes and turned to the next door.

word count: 392