Curiouser and Curiouser

A-3: The Hallway

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

I dream him every night. The dream begins the same way.

I am in a hallway of doors stretching in every way into eternity, although I can only clearly see one door at a time.

Every door is different. That's what I notice first. They differ in color, shape, style, and size. Some are familiar, and some are so foreign that I'm not sure where and when they could lead. I pause outside each door as I walk down the hall, listening. Behind one familiar white door, there's the sound of creaking and a baby's laughter. I peek through and see a baby me at about five months, giggling as I pull my self onto a rocking chair, so happy that I can make myself rock. Mama is taking a picture and she looks so young and happy. This is the same rocking chair that she took another picture of one late night while Daddy rocked me until he was asleep while I screamed frustration into the world.

I step back into the hallway and know with the certainty that comes in dreaming that the familiar doors belong to me. I can wander through my life, forward and backward, exploring what-ifs and always-wases and might-have-beens, and will-be-somemaybes.

And I'm while I'm drawn to what could be if maybe I'd done something different (maybe if I'd never gone overseas or if my sister's baby had lived), I'm more curious about the unfamiliar doors. I wander, past tall doors and metal doors, and doors that can't be described by words and worlds that I know. I'm looking for him.

I stop at a round door, covered in flowering vines, and listen. A low murmur and a haunting song in an alien language. I peek in. The air beyond smells of electricity and flowers, a heady mix that's almost too much. It's a room that has windows—or maybe it's not glass—for walls and ceiling so that it feels like part of the garden around it. All the colors are strange to me—the sky a bit too green, the plants too vivid—so familiar but just wrong. I see him with a musical instrument—stringed, but not anything that I recognize, playing and singing to himself, and I feel myself wanting to join in a harmony, even though I don't know the tune or the words.

And I know with the certainty that comes from dreaming that if I step through this door that I'll never find my way back home again, and I'm almost willing to make that choice. He looks up and smiles at me, and his teeth are sharp, but I step through and reach out my hand to touch his, and in that moment, my alarm blares, and the scene fades into light and I'm sitting up in bed, checking my blood sugar, and the hallway is fading.

Every night, I get closer. One day, our hands will touch. I wonder what will happen then.

word count: 493

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Lornda


Great story!