Another short story

This is a companion to the one I posted earlier.


I go to wash my face at the sink and there is this note and a pen just lying in the basin. Who leaves notes and pens lying in basins? I don’t know why I go to wash my face. But this note, it wasn’t easy to make out. Looked hurried. Told me I was to read it carefully. Said I was in some kind of place or situation, to be honest I couldn’t figure much of it out. It talked some about doors. Two doors one white one red. It wanted me to go through the red one. Didn’t tell me why just said it was all up to me but the red one was the right one. One thing it did say, I was to write this response on the back and put it back in the sink with the pen. Is it my sink? There were these clothes, I put them on. Didn’t have anything else. Seems to me that I should be off somewhere. The strangest thing, when I first went to sit and write this my legs didn’t let me. Just stuck standing there like I was unable to move. Then I got free. But these doors, what can it all be?

He dropped the pen and got up with note in hand. Shrugging he left the desk and walked into the bathroom placing the pen and note in the sink. His eyes momentarily caught a reflection in the battered mirror. Grey hair, an old worn face atop a bulky frame draped in the ill-fitting pale overalls he had found on an old chair next to the bed. A compulsion to move took hold, his legs carrying him towards a front door and his hands helping his feet into a just too small pair of shoes then opening the door for his legs to move him through into a narrow passageway. Closing the door he saw that it was red. He looked to the left, a line of white doors. To the right, more white doors. But his was red. In front of him was a narrow stairway dirt and scuffmarks around the top but nobody about. His thoughts still fixed on the doors he started to make his way down, as he stepped his whole body began shuddering his senses only just aware of the biting cold wind swirling around as if attacking him from all directions. His hand grappling the banister for support he hurpled down the steps taking a pause at each landing only to be faced with more and more of the white doors before continuing down descending through floor after floor all the time suspecting he was stuck in some kind of infinite or circular sequence. His pace quickening in some kind of desperate frenzy he eventually collapsed onto the step beneath his legs aching and heart thumping. There he sat hunched over his breath at first heavy now settling into a regular rhythm. Lifting his head he looked around as if in need of reminding himself where or why he was. This started thoughts racing around his head following circular chains of reasoning and so failing to reach any kind of conclusion. Just what was that note meant to tell him? Where did it come from? He paused as if it had suddenly struck him that he hadn’t any idea how he had came to be in this building. None of it was familiar, apart from that door. It seemed to mean something. That door was red and he was to go through a red door. Why is that door red and the rest white?

“Direction, you need direction,” he finally exclaimed as his thoughts reached an impasse. Struggling to his feet he then ambled down to the next landing and took a walk along the right-hand wall of doors. No life and no view on his left the doors and on his right a brick wall. He returned to the stairway, saw that the other side was more of the same. “Nothing for it,” he muttered starting down the stairs again. Slowly down one more flight then suddenly into a wide-open expanse. On the far side a small opening yet no light visible through it with only the unpainted grey brick frame to differentiate it from the surrounding pale white walls. Taking long strides he reached the opening and burst through passing into a dark alley between the building just left and another in front. Here the stale air pressed in on him as he contemplated his next move. Looking right then left he noticed a distant gap and as he moved towards it his walk transformed into a jog then a run, clear open space becoming visible at the end of the alley. Finally he broke out into a vast empty road. Standing pivoting on a point he took in the landscape seeing the dark shape of the tower in which he had just been standing just back from the road and similar such towers forming a line along either side. Looking up he could see no sun above the enveloping cloud leaving him helpless to determine whether it was night or late afternoon, the quietly humming lamps placed at regular intervals down the road being the only source of light their beams directed toward the road and away from the towers situated in the silent dark.

As he made his way down the road the monolithic towers began to be replaced by wider, sprawling structures. His eyes constantly searching for any glimpse of life or even movement but seeing nothing but the stony outer walls of the buildings on either side. Gradually his suspicions began to subside, the air now clear and the walls receding, no longer pressing in on him as he moved through the still shifting landscape but giving him sense of space. His mind passed back to his earlier thoughts; they seemed unimportant. Why should he pay any attention to an unsigned note? His mind not stopping to consider how he had not signed his note he began to demolish his earlier worries. No, he didn’t know where he was or why he was where he was. He didn’t know where he was going. But his legs seemed to have no trouble moving so he figured they’d take him to wherever it was they thought he should go. It didn’t seem strange that it seemed so late, he didn’t know when he had woken.

But as he walked his gnarled hand still stayed at his chin his callused fingers still rubbing at the stubble on his throat. He came to a stop; looked to his left and right, behind and in front. Just to his side a tall building looming out of the gathering dusk, the path to the door lying between the beam of two lamps the light bringing it into relief yet the entrance lay obscured. His hand dropped his mouth agape he walked up the pathway toward the door his lumbering body forming flickering silhouettes on the ground below like some slowly departing marionette.

His hand at first lingered at his side then reached out to knock but the door fell open creaking on its rusted hinges as he tentatively peered into a large unlit room. A residual smell of sweat and smoke. His whole body through he closed the door behind then like a thunderclap a light switching on his hands now shielding his eyes then gradually dropping back to his sides to reveal a room cluttered with tables and chairs and on his left two doors their gaze drawing his eyes toward them. At first his movements straight toward them he finally broke their unflinching stare and turned towards the tables all empty excepting one sat solitary in the corner, two plates atop with trays strewn alongside.

“You found a note this morning,” said a voice laden with condescending superiority stepping from behind, him now turning on the spot as if to face it but his legs collapsing beneath leaving him collapsed on the ground like some crumpled caricature of man. The man with the voice stood in the door, a short stocky body blocking the light from the street and obscuring the road that just a moment before had stretched out unending into the distance. His life as if contracted to just this point, this confluence of unknown and unseen souls. The man now moving to stand above him, sharp blue eyes peering down at him from above and a smile playing on his fleshy flabby face.
“Yes…In my sink, the sink. I didn’t understand much.”
“And you are now here?”
“I… I didn’t plan to. I was outside. I saw the door.”
“Did the note talk about doors? One red the other white?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you see here?”
“A red door and a white door.”
“And you didn’t mean to come here?” Their faces almost touching, the man’s eyes in his eyes, that voice far beyond insistent, his breath and the man’s breath intermingled. He held the man’s stare for a second more then turned away, the man moving head shaking in palpable disgust and voice muttering words that were not words.
The man paused in the midst of this reverie, turned, and asked in a measured tone, “If I were to go through one of these doors, what would you do? Would you follow me?”
“No,” he replied instantly.
“Good.”

Wordlessly the man moved toward the doors, once there hands outstretched one hovering at the red the other the white then fingers gently teasing at the handles of each as if engaged in some strange dance the man’s fate decided when a door responded to his advances. Yet each door stood immobile and unresponsive the man starting pressing against first the red then the white as if in drunken embrace puffy fingers clawing at the wood trying to discern the slightest difference in design and purpose eventually arms flung away in despair, body turning and back pressed against the stone wall between doors, sliding down forming a sprawl on the floor.

He had watched this man, this man who had just walked in there and began interrogating him, this man who had talked with such confidence, before whom he had lain himself prostrate. Then he had walked out the room a broad smile on his face while the man had been engaged in whatever it was the man was doing. He wasn’t sure what the smile was for. He now sat on the other side of the road directly across from the entrance, his hands playing in the dirt at his feet. As his mind wandered he formed crude images at first a door then a man at the door. The door a misshapen rectangle the man a stick figure with no clearly defined hands, a crooked arm pointing at the rectangle and just too short to reach, a mode of existence incapable of movement towards something so close and tangible at which the man was forever consigned to merely grasp. Presently he rose and with his booted foot swept away the dirt removing the stick figure from his purgatory.

Nobody?