Metaphysical Furniture

  Chapter 27 — Closing Time The Perpetual Egg was empty except for a couple of strays looking for a late night/early morning meal that wouldn’t go down easy. Dawn hadn’t quite arrived yet, but it was thinking about it. The sky outside the windows was the color of a bruise that had decided to heal. Frank sat at the counter with a cup of coffee that was doing its best. I sat next to him with my own cup, giving myself space to breathe. Frank sipped his coffee with contemplation. Not because he needed the warmth. Because it felt real. “So,” he said. “That’s it?” “That’s usually how endings work,” I finally said. “They pretend to be smaller than they are.” Frank snorted despite himself. Then, to his own surprise, he laughed. Not the brittle, defensive laugh he’d perfected over the years. This one came up from somewhere deeper. Somewhere unguarded. “I kept waiting for the big reveal,” Frank said. “The perfect door. The right life.” “Doors close,” I said. “People open.” Fr...

Chapter 26 — The Final Threshold The door was waiting where it always waited. Not in a field this time. Not in a memory-shaped room or a half-built version of a life. Just there. Upright. Ordinary. Wood grain worn smooth by hands that never belonged to Frank. A brass knob dulled by years of imagined use. I stood a few steps back, hands in my coat pockets, giving Frank the space you give someone who’s about to say goodbye or decide not to. Frank didn’t feel the rush anymore. That heady cocktail of what if and almost . The door wasn’t brighter than the world around it. If anything, it looked smaller. Less certain. Like a suggestion of a door. He stepped closer. For a moment, the air tightened. The door reacted not with drama, but with recognition. The faintest shimmer passed through the frame. The door was curious but didn’t want to make a big deal about it. You again? it seems to ask. Frank rested his hand on the knob. And for the first time since this all started, the door showed him...

  Chapter 25 — The Door Weakens The first door disappeared while a man was still talking to it. He was mid-sentence—something about if I’d just stayed —when the frame thinned like breath on cold glass. The door became translucent. Then it was just… gone. The man finished his sentence anyway. He stood there blinking, mouth still slightly open, hand hovering where the handle should be. He looked embarrassed, like he’d been caught sneaking into the part of an old video rental stores where they used to hide the pornos. Frank watched from across the street. “Did you see that?” he asked. “I did,” I said. “Door ghosted him.” “That feels… rude.” “Doors aren’t big on closure. Ironic, I know.” The man muttered something under his breath and walked away, shoulders slumped, but lighter somehow. Like someone who finally said the thing they’d been rehearsing for years, only to realize there was no audience left. We kept walking. There were fewer doors that day. Not gone yet but diminished. Less ...

  CHAPTER 24 – CHOOSING NOW   The diner was quieter in the morning. Different quiet. Less haunted. The kind that belonged to bacon grease and early risers instead of unresolved lives. Frank sat in the same booth as the night before, staring at the same menu, but it didn’t feel like a trap this time. Instead, it felt available. The Door hadn’t appeared yet. New behavior for a door. Usually they are all too eager to lure you with their siren’s song. Frank took a sip of coffee, smiling in spite of its general badness. It feeds on too late , he thought Not failure. Not regret. Not even longing. Too late . The phrase had weight now. He could feel how often he’d used it—like punctuation at the end of every unfinished thought. Too late to start over. Too late to be good at it. Too late to matter. The Door loved that part. It lived there. Camped out in the space between maybe someday and not anymore . Frank looked around the diner. The waitress wiped down the counter. A man at the fa...

  Chapter 23 — Silas Tells the Truth We decided we needed a bite to eat. The Perpetual Egg was open but empty in the way only diners ever are—lights on, grill warm, the sense that someone could come in at any moment, but probably wouldn’t. The clock over the counter ticked too loud. Coffee steamed like it was trying to escape. Frank sat across from me in a cracked vinyl booth. He had both hands wrapped around his mug, not drinking it. Just holding on. Me? I was devouring an open-faced roast beef sandwich like it was my last meal before being led to the electric chair. The door hadn’t followed us here. That bothered me more than if it had. “You ever notice,” Frank said, staring into the coffee like it might answer him back, “how some places make it harder to lie?” I glanced around. The laminated menu. The pie case. The waitress pretending not to listen while listening to everything. “Yeah,” I said. “Diners are like confessionals. A place to share what you wouldn’t anywhere else. No...

  Chapter 22 — The Neutral Space The room was white and without walls or a ceiling. No floor Frank or I could swear to. We stood anyway, because standing felt like the polite thing to do. “This isn’t a life,” he said. “No,” I replied, my voice sounding smaller than usual. “This is what happens when the doors get tired of choosing for you.” There were no objects here. No unfinished painting. No mirror. No Alternate Frank. Even the regret had been wiped down to a dull shine.Frank took a few tentative steps. Each one felt easier than the last. Lighter. Like gravity had decided he’d earned a break. “I don’t feel scared,” he said. That’s when I moved. I grabbed his arm—harder than I meant to—and the contact felt wrong, like my hand had gone numb halfway through the decision. “Frank,” I said, “this room doesn’t hurt you. That’s the problem.” He frowned, distracted, already slipping. “It’s quiet,” he said. “For once it’s quiet.” Ahead of him, something suggested itself. I recognized it i...

  Chapter 21 — The Mirror Conversation A mirror appeared from out of nowhere. Tall and old, it was the kind of mirror that doesn’t flatter and doesn’t apologize. The edges were nicked, silver backing peeling in places like it had been through things and didn’t see the point in hiding it. Frank stopped short. “That wasn’t in here before,” he said. “Neither was honesty,” Alternate Frank replied. “The cryptic messaging is so damn annoying.” Frank turned. “You do it. Now my alternate doppelganger is doing it. So damn annoying.” The room had changed. The unfinished painting still leaned on its easel, but its colors bled outward now, seeping into the walls. The guitar hummed softly without being touched. The manuscript pages fluttered though there was no wind. Everything in the room seemed restless. Waiting to be acknowledged. Frank faced the mirror. He saw himself but not as he was. He saw the moment before every almost-decision. The breath held. The email never sent. The audition neve...

  Chapter 20 — Alternate Frank The core door didn’t open so much as exhale. It was like it blew out a sigh that said, “Finally, we’re getting on with this.” A soft light spilled out; the dusty glow of a room that had been lived in and abandoned at the same time. The smell hit first: coffee gone cold, paper, paint, something electrical that had been left on too long. Frank hesitated. That was new. Up to now, the doors had pulled him forward like gravity. This one waited patiently and politely as if it understood consent. Inside was a life that hadn’t been chosen , just not refused. It was a life Frank allowed to unfold. A workspace stretched out in every direction depicted not one career or version. Rather, it appeared to reveal all of them . A half-written novel slumped open on a desk, its pages curling like they’d lost faith in being finished. A guitar leaned against a chair with one broken string, the wound old enough to be forgiven but not fixed. Sketches were taped to the wall...

Day 19 — Frank’s First Door Returns Frank’s door came back the way bad memories always do. He was standing in the backyard with his hands in his coat pockets, staring at the patch of grass near the fence. It was the only area of his yard not covered in snow. January had stripped the place down to essentials: bare branches, brittle air, the crisp sensation of snow. The door stood where it always had—three feet from the fence, six feet from the back steps, perfectly upright on nothing at all. No hinges attached to reality. No frame anchored to the universe. Just a door, pretending it belonged. Only now it was brighter. Not glowing exactly, but charged. I had seen it before. This was now a door that had been plugged into something emotional instead of electrical. The wood grain shimmered faintly, as if lit from beneath the surface by a memory that refused to dim. The polished brass handle looked warmer than the air around it, as though it remembered being touched. “That’s not supposed to ...

  CHAPTER 18 – THE JANUARY DOOR   January never knocks before entering. It bursts in, egged on by drunkards counting down to its return like it’s some prodigal child returning home. January doesn’t need to announce itself. It just shows up one morning, standing in the doorway of your life, tracking in snow and ready to crash on your couch for 31 days. Like I said before, I don’t do well in January. * By the time the storm started, I was alone in my office, coat still on, heat trying to muster up enough motivation to function. Outside, the city disappeared one flake at a time. It was the kind of snow that looks beautiful as it falls, offering the promise of peace and serenity. So it is with January. The promise of a new year. New opportunities to become a better person. I hate this month. Not in a casual way. My hatred is forged from experience. It’s all short days, long nights, cold weather, and the sound of your own thoughts echoing in an empty stairwell of resolu...

  Day 17 — Frank Starts to Spiral I put that door in the behind me and fought the temptation to look over my shoulder at it. A door seeks you out because it senses your longing. It only sticks around because you want it to. Time to get back to my client and his door. Frank was the case, not whatever baggage I lugged around.  Frank stopped talking about this life the way people usually do. Most folks defend the one they’re in. Sand down the rough edges until it fits a story they can live with. Frank did the opposite. He treated his life like a draft that had accidentally gone to print and he was ready to start over, as if he were brainstorming story pitches at a writer's table. “I think the band version of me was happier,” he said one morning, standing across from a door that had appeared in the room he dubbed his mancave. It stood next to his oversized flatscreen ultra high-definition and the minibar. Frank sipped a cup of coffee in his pajamas and tattered blue housecoat, st...