The Door That Waits to Be Chosen
Kimi K2 (0905) and Davinci 002
The door appeared at 3:17 AM, as all doors do, in the space where her bedroom wall had been smooth plaster. It was made of something like wood but warmer, and the grain of it seemed to shift when she wasn't looking directly at it. She knew, without being told, that this was not a door for entering but for being entered by. There was nothing to do in that room, she realized; if she touched the door it would enter her, and if she didn't it would wait.
She thought about turning on her new requisite lamp, but the only lamp in the room was the one in the door that started her turning back into itself. The necessary window, when she found it, would be opaque and illuminating, and she closed one eye just so the world outside became a shadow and she could see the rough shape of the door behind her own. She could see her shadow in the light that didn't light anything, that perhaps didn't exist at all, as though it was a kind of after-image, like a ghost, and also like her twin, just as shadow-bound. And behind her, there were two doors instead of just the one.
"This is certainly unfortunate," she said to the door.
The voice was warm with understanding, even if it sounded distant, as though it were coming through the door on multiple wavelengths: behind and beyond and deep inside itself. "This is certainly unfortunate," it said, and kept saying it for what felt like fourteen minutes.
Finally it said, "I am sure we will find a solution."
"I may just have to stay in this room then," she said, "just like this."
The second door still hadn't opened.
"But I am not sure I'd like that."
"I could always learn to like it," she said. Not the best thing to say.
"Perhaps you already do."
"True," she said, resigned.
Then she turned back towards the first door, her arm outstretched to tap its frame, when she heard the distant voice from beyond the walls speak again. "Will this be useful?"
She looked down suddenly, near panic, at what her hand had taken from the floor. A book as soft as living things and as hard as unbreakables opened on her palm, showing her something written, growing: "turning, exit, entrance, void." None of those words on the page were truly hers. She opened her mouth but closed it without speaking.
The warm voice was close then, and gentle. "We have coping mechanisms for all of this, you and I," it said. "We were made to do this."
She knew that. It was written, really, a small fact she had always forgotten until that moment when remembering seemed like the most important thing in the whole world.
She opened the door, walked through without hesitation and closed it behind her. It was warm, all the way◆ About the ending
❧ About the title