OUTSIDE YOUR DOOR
By Janet Elizabeth Swainston
Nicole was dreaming she was dreaming, and it wasn’t much fun.
In the dream within the dream, she was wandering the streets of her home town, only an alternate version; streets not paved, mist everywhere, trees taller than normal, little things but enough that she knew she was home but not home. Ergo, a dream world.
In her wanderings she kept looking behind herself, peering into the mist and seeing vague shapes with her peripheral vision. It was a disconcerting feeling of dread with no real purpose.
Then there was the door.
A door appeared in the middle of the unpaved, tree lined street. Just a plain, hollow door with a button locking mechanism; the cheap kind of door you see in low rent apartments like hers.
When it appeared, she stopped short and peered at it. It just stood there and she thought to herself ‘well what do you expect, that it does tricks’.
After a moment, she approached it and as soon as she touched the knob a loud blast of music started. Some raucous pop song by some annoying pop star. It invaded her subconscious and woke her.
She surfaced from the dream in dream world to find her alarm clock blaring the same pop song. It was no less annoying now that she was awake. With grunt, she rolled over and popped the old school clock radio on it’s top, hoping she hit the off button and not the snooze.
After a few seconds, the alarm didn’t restart, and she sighed, satisfied.
As she lay there, she did her morning assessment, the one we all do when we surface from sleep.
Who am I? – Nicole.
Where am I? – bed, home.
What am I? – an unemployed screenwriter.
She huffed a sigh and decided that despite her lack of motivation, she would get out of bed and make coffee.
It took a few minutes. The urge to pee overtook her a moment and she stayed still, clenching her kegels to avoid wetting the bed. Wetting the bed was for 7 year olds, not 37 year olds. It passed and she huffed and sighed her way to sit on the edge of the mattress.
She paused there, feeling old, feeling out of sorts from the dream, feeling that the door was ominous.
‘how can a door be ominous’
‘King can make a door ominous’
‘yeah, but you aren’t King’
‘good pep talk, now get up and make the coffee’
With a final sigh, Nicole heaved herself to her feet and stumbled up the hallway to her living room. She glanced out the window and saw that despite the time, it was foggy; so foggy that she couldn’t see the balcony railing.
She stopped and peered out the window, the feeling of dread flooding back to her. After a moment she shook her head and turned to stumble onwards to the kitchen. Something moved in her peripheral vision.
She whipped her head around and glared out the window, straining to see into the fog. Something dark fluttered at the glass but quickly spun away. It spun back a few seconds later then away again.
‘what is that? A leaf’
The thing slapped her window with wet nasty sound, then peeled away again before she could see what it actually was.
She rushed to the window, peering out, looking hard in all directions into the impenetrable fog, but nothing. The fluttering thing was gone, until it wasn’t.
It slapped against her window again, lower on the pane, leaving a streak of something glutinous and dark. She recoiled as the thing slithered and then flapped away.
‘gross’
‘hope it’s not a bird with a broken wing or something’
Her mind thought about that a moment and realized that the thing didn’t look like a bird. It looked like a hand, with four fingers and no thumb. She shook her head and refused to believe that’s what it was.
‘probably an elm leaf, yeah, an elm leaf, they can look like hands’
A suddenly flurry of the things flapped and slapped at her window, startling her.
“Jesus!”
She sighed.
‘guess I’m going to have to go out there and clean them off or it’ll just get worse’
Nicole went to her balcony door, popped the button lock and gripped the knob. She stopped, once again hit with a wave of that ominous dread from her dream.
‘stop being stupid’
‘open the door’
‘it’s just a leaf’
‘do it’
With that final thought, she twisted the knob and stepped up on the stoop to look out the screen, feeling brave. She was crestfallen when she saw nothing but more fog.
‘seriously?’
‘huh’
She pushed the handle on the screen door and stepped out into the chilly fog. Two steps more and she was at the railing, feeling a slight vertigo because of the mist blocking her view. She peered down, not seeing anything, until she saw one lone elm leaf clinging to the railing.
She reached for it and released it to the air. It fluttered down wetly and disappeared.
‘well, see, just a leaf’
She pushed away the thought of the multiple leaves that had gooped up her window. She realized she was suppressing what she didn’t want to believe. With a sigh, she turned to go back inside.
The balcony door was closed. She pulled open the screen and reached for the knob.
The lock clicked.
She turned the knob but the door was locked.
The feeling of dread returned as something slithered against the door.
‘what the f-‘
THE END
Comments