CONTRIBUTION: The Door

Hesitation.

I looked at those eyes staring back at me, the contempt as blatant as the disbelief smeared across her visage, her perfectly framed smirk telling me everything I needed to know about the kind of reception I could look forward to when I stepped through that door. It was black and menacing, and loomed behind her like a portal to an other-worldly realm, and she, the gatekeeper, was doing everything she could to deny me access, though I’m not even sure she fully understood why.

The door stood tall and firm, and was disproportionately large for the moderately sized vestibule in which it was housed. In fact, other than the small desk at the reception and a single, grommeted leather chair to its left, its clawed feet gripping silently to a floor that seemed to melt into the walls, there was not a single other thing there to decorate the cavernous walls of that room, and I found it unsettling. It was as though the only thing of importance in this room WAS the door, and nothing else. Even the woman was of no consequence; she wore the purple lipstick of a laborer; easily replaceable.

But the door… that was something to behold. Its entirety was an amalgam of black: intricately carved Shou Sugi Ban wood inlaid with black jet, schorl and onyx, held together with bands of blackened steel and housed in a frame that was at least six meters wide and triple that in height. Staggering. If you looked at it for long enough, the carvings would play tricks with your eyes, moving like they had wills of their own, setting to flight thoughts like carrier pigeons in the mind that released tiny messages to be lost in the crevices, creating itchy welts of confusion where they hid. The Elders had warned me about this, the strangeness of this place, what it could do to your soul if your eyes lingered for too long, and so I averted my gaze to keep my composure and focus on what I had to do.

Think.

Behind that door lay the answers to questions I had spent a lifetime formulating.  Longer still to gain the courage to ask. And once I did, once I did find the courage to ask… Oh, God, I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had never opened up that door, never asked those questions. Because those kinds of doors… they can never be closed except from the other side. But the alternative was to stay in ignorance, to keep feeding the machine and its madness, and so every time I go over the scenario in my mind, I realize something. I wouldn’t do it any differently; I would do it all over again.

Funny, though, that I would end up here. At this door, the door of all doors, the one door whose legend they use to scare children to bed with. And I came here willingly. What is wrong with me? I nearly died, trying to avoid this place. This place and its secrets and its lies. And now, here I was, at the door of the devil himself, so to speak, and I suddenly found myself at a loss for words. What reason do I give, for daring passage over that threshold? To plead the ear a man that only a handful of people in New South Wales and Victoria combined have access to, much less demand audience with, unannounced, and during a scrubbing no less?

Hmph.

I looked back at the woman, whose out of sync echoes of irritated toe tapping caught my attention. She continued to eye me as I stood there, not answering her question, and her face had hardened to resemble an eerie Galatea, pre-life. I had expected it, I guess… that way that people judge when they see the end result but don’t know the journey it took to get there. Or the cost. All she could see was the well put together businesswoman in front of her. She didn’t see me. Not really.

But it’s no matter.

Sitting there, at her desk, perfectly manicured nails poised at the keyboard, purple lips pursed with impatience at my rudeness, her demeanor said everything that I needed to know: that I was running out of time. I needed an answer for my intrusion, an explanation for being in the city when it was supposed to be evacuated. And I needed it now.

But I hadn’t thought that far. I only knew I had to get here, to this room, to this place, to this door. I only knew that I needed answers that only the Ministry could give, answers like why the gum was causing such violent reactions in people when they stopped taking it, and if there was a way to detox from it safely. A way without permanent damage to the body, that is…

Then there was the whole negotiation of the peace treaty, if there was one to be had. They trusted the Resistance about as much as we trusted them. Probably less, considering our history.

And then there were still the volcanos to worry about… and what came out of the ground with them. I shuddered. So many questions, and I hadn’t the faintest idea which one would spark her, or even if those eyes that fluttered with the shadows of wings that could no longer find their way out could flicker with life once again.

I looked into her preternatural eyes, then further, to the door just beyond. I had to say something. There were too many people whose lives were hanging in the balance to stay silent any longer. And so, I steadied myself as the figures swirled, shut my eyes, then took a deep breath as the door began to groan with the weight of movement.

Contributed by Eileen Burnett, Literature masters. The following is an excerpt from Burnett’s upcoming book “Safe With Me.”