The Way Forward

elementary fiction

The task is simple.

Choose one item from behind each of the three doors in front of you.

Choose wisely.

Remember your training.

Or choose impulsively and throw the rulebook out the window.

There is no right way. Only the way forward.  

This is important.

It is possibly the most important thing you’ve ever done. Or ever will do. From this moment on, your life will be forever changed.

Take your place.

Ready your medium.

Set your intention.

Begin.  

Door number one is a standard, wood-framed, run-of-the mill interior door. Like something you’d see on a former child’s bedroom, complete with a KEEP OUT sign and a splintered dent in the shape of a hand-me-down high-top sneaker. Or a mud-caked work boot. The doorknob is cheap brass, pitted from overuse and repeated reinstallations. The lock has been disabled because there’s no need for locks if everyone knocks. There are no voices inside. Just a deep pulsing vibration in the floorboards that rattles the door in its hinges on the two and the four. The air behind the door is a mélange of dust, sweat, digital static, and rebellion.

Door number two is a massive, moss-laden structure, arched and archaic, verdant and stirring, forged in granite and surrounded by a redolent mist. A rush of sea and rain and desert and wind whistles and spits through the cracks and worm-worn tunnels in the rock. The stones are warm and damp to the touch, but when you take your hand away, an icy chill runs from your fingertips to your throat. It lingers like an unwelcome touch from a stranger you’ve tried—but failed—to forget. The knotted handle, a twisted root of oak or something much, much stronger, beckons and repels simultaneously, promising danger and glory. Love and loss. Conflict and surrender.

Door number three is a mind trap. A puzzle box of a thousand variations. Mirrors and snares and false floors and gaslights flickering on … and off again. The closer you get to grasping the secret of its design, the farther you are thrown from the scent. It gnaws at you to keep trying. To stop at nothing until you’ve solved it. It is a maze filled with voices. Shadows. Flesh and bone faces. Some kind, some sinister. Some impossible to read. You will need help to unlock this door, and the door behind the door, and the countless doors beyond. Because behind the final door lies something truly precious. Something you cannot live without. Something you want.

Desperately.

A deafening explosion shocks you to your knees. You clutch your ringing ears and cower as door number one is torn from its hinges and smashes against the peaceful granite structure beside it. Door number three vanishes before your eyes in a puff of black, sulfuric ash. You gasp in a panic and reach into the void. Your fingers are met with the same icy grip that threatened to overtake you in front of door number two.

You yank your hand back and clutch it to your chest, as slabs of granite crack and crumble into wet shards at your feet. The roar of the sea and the harsh desert wind collide and careen across their weakened boundary and surround you. A surge of unfiltered music blares from doorway one. A screeching throb of metallic anarchy that would easily rupture a human ear drum, but it can’t drown out the shouting. The struggle. The tortured scream.

The second blast.

You curl into a ball like a cornered animal. The pelting salt and sand threatens to shred your skin from your bones. You crawl into the smoke-filled space behind the remains of door number one. There’s nowhere else to go.

Silence swallows the room.

Your pulse ratchets upward as you take in the scene.

Your first choice has been made for you.

A boy, not yet sixteen, stands over the charred and bloodied corpse of a man. A man who once looked so much like his assailant, observers feared he had been cloned in his own progeny.

The boy shakes as though hypothermic, his face streaked with fresh tears, his arms and hands blackened by an ashy substance, iridescent, like charcoal dust. It moves over his skin as if pulled by small magnets. You imagine a hissing sound and suspect a gas leak. You cover your mouth and nose to shield out the undetectable fumes, and the cinders, still raining down onto every surface.

“I didn’t do it,” he chokes through his tears. “I swear. I didn’t … I didn’t mean to do it…” He brings his hands to his face, and you’re tempted to stop him. Until you realize the morphing blackness on his limbs is a permanent fixture. Or an affliction. His soft facial features remain unscathed, save for his unrelenting tears.  

You stand frozen on the carpet, the clotted blood of the dead man inches from your feet. You’re sickened by the smell. Of death. Of fear. Your own. The boy’s. The ghost of the dead man’s terror still clinging to his battered frame.

“I’m sorry,” the boy wails. “I’m so sorry.”

Your heart twists with empathy. You dislodge the hook and remain objective.

You scan the room, trying not to linger over the body. You’re looking for the weapon that felled him. You find nothing but the destruction it left behind. The bed frame crushed. The stereo obliterated. Lamps reduced to ceramic powder and exposed filament. A circle of dust, the same ashen color of the boy’s arms, surrounds him on the carpet. It twists around his feet like a pit of snakes. You stare in horror at the anomaly until your eyes blur.

“Help me,” the boy whispers.

You blink yourself out of hypnosis and find his eyes, dark, bloodshot, and pleading. Your guard falters and you look away.

The boy sobs and your heart struggles against its restraints.

You center yourself by confronting the dead man’s face. The deep lines in his brow tell an angry story. A violent story. Your gaze snags on the scuffed toe of a mud-caked work boot, and your hands curl into fists.

The boy sniffles and wipes his tears on the back of his tarnished hands. He turns and passes shakily through what remains of his door.

You surprise yourself by making the same exit without hesitation.  

Your mind is blown wide open to what’s become of your starting point.

The desert and the sea have stopped raging. They are fused into one duplicitous climate. One sprawling landscape of earth, water, wind, and rock. Before you lies a puzzle box of a thousand obstacles. A maze filled with choices. Conflicts. Resolutions. The promise of change.

You step alongside the boy, keeping your distance despite an unnamed pull from deep within you to take his hand. To embrace him despite not knowing what will come next. For him or for you.

A chill rattles down your spine as he raises his thin arms. The storm-like markings on his flesh begin to shift. The hissing sound returns as the substance drifts into rows of rivulets, all pointing eagerly in the same direction.

Forward.

He lowers his arms, and the warmth returns to your skin.

“You don’t know me,” he says, his eyes pinned on a blood red horizon.

“No.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“No.”

“But you want to.”

You turn to him and observe his profile. Your mind floods with questions, but you can only read what he’s willing to show you in this moment.

A fractured mind. A changing body. A defiant will. A desperate want. And buried beneath it all … the courage to tell his story.

“Yes,” you say truthfully. “I do.”

The boy squares his broadening shoulders and takes an expansive breath, as if preparing to plunge into an abyss. He launches himself headlong into the unforgiving world you’ve chosen for him, and sprints toward the shifting horizon.

Your only choice is to follow.

Photo by Kunj Parekh on Unsplash