The Door of Unmade Choices: Chapter 8

 

Chapter 8 — Entering the First Door

I don’t recommend stepping through impossible doors as a rule. They’re messy and riddled with paradoxes. Rules are important because give you something to point to later when explaining how everything went wrong. But rules also have exceptions. And sometimes the exception is standing in a diner between the pie case and the restrooms, humming softly.

“Just to be clear,” I said to Frank, “this is a bad idea.”

Frank nodded. “I need to do this, though. It’s calling me. And I don’t get a lot of calls.”

That was the trouble with thresholds. They didn’t shove. They suggested.

The door at The Perpetual Egg had settled into itself like it knew Frank was ready to cross. It gave off the vibe of patiently waiting for a bus. What it wanted was coming. Only a matter of time.

“You don’t touch anything,” I said. “You don’t talk to anyone. You don’t try to stay. Think of this as browsing in a very expensive china shop and you’re the bull. Watch your every step because I’m not cleaning up your mess.”

Frank managed a weak smile. “You say that like it’s happened before.”

“It has,” I said. “It rarely ends well.”

The Cup of Joe didn’t object to these precedings. That worried me. We stood in front of the door. Up close, it was painfully ordinary. Beige and unadorned. Generic doorknob. Scuffed near the bottom. A faint scratch where someone once missed the knob in a hurry. The kind of door you could’ve leaned against while arguing about music in your twenties.

Frank reached for the handle with a trembling hand, then stopped.

“You go first,” he said.

“No,” I said. “You’re the reason it’s here. Doors like honesty.”

He nodded and took a deep breath for courage. He was going to need all of that he could muster and then some.

Low, muffled music hit us first. A bass line crawling its way through the air like it owned the place. The distinct aroma of stale beer, dust, and pot followed. There was another smell, though. Faint and only detectable by people like me who can smell what’s in between. It was the scent of dreams and desires, hopes and longings. Like someone had turned “what do you wanna be when you grow up?” into an Essential Oil and run through it a diffuser.

We stepped through.

The room was too small for the noise it held. Cables snaked across the floor. Posters peeled from the walls. All of bands that never made it past one album, one tour, or one summer. A drum kit sat crooked, held together by duct tape and the sheer force of its own will to live.

And there he was.

Frank. Or a younger, thinner version of him. His hair was longer in a way that suggested weeks without a haircut had turned into a conscious choice. He stood near the mic, bass slung low, laughing at something one of the others had said. He looked alive. An electric guitar that had seen better days was draped over his shoulder. Another guy, this one with a shaved head, sat at that rickety drum kit. A third was plunking out that bass line.

Adult Frank froze.

“I didn’t remember it like this,” he whispered. “I mean I remember Joey and Ronnie there. And this shitty apartment. But not this feeling.”

“That’s because memory edits,” I said. “Doors don’t.”

The band launched into something loud and sloppy and sincere. The kind of song you write when you don’t yet know what you can’t afford to lose. The room shook with it. Not physically but emotionally. Like the walls were bracing themselves for disappointment that hadn’t arrived yet. The lyrics warbled out by Frank’s grungy aesthetic were indecipherable but the performance was earnest and from the gut.

Frank took a step forward.

“Careful,” I said.

“I just want to see,” he said. “Just closer.”

His eyes flickered with a joy long dormant. Emotion welled up within him. A small, peaceful smile formed on his lips as he mouthed along to his younger self’s singing. And that’s when the door hummed a low, satisfied vibration, like a machine connecting with its power source.

I felt the room lean in immediately.

Frank’s smile grew just a little. The hum deepened, practically merging with the thumping bass line. I felt the reverberations deep in my chest.

I grabbed his arm. “Frank.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Did you feel that?” I asked.

He nodded slowly. “It liked that.”

“Yes,” I said. “And that’s the part we don’t encourage.”

The music swelled. The lights flickered. The edges of the room softened, like a photograph left too long in the sun. Frank looked at the other version of himself. The one laughing. The one who hadn’t learned caution yet.

“I thought this was the life I missed,” he said quietly.

“It’s a life you visited,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

The hum sharpened, impatient now.

“It’s time to go, Frank,” I said, tugging his arm.

He hesitated. Then, to his credit, he nodded. We stepped back through the door.

The diner rushed in around us. The clatter of silverware against dishes, murmuring voices, the smell of coffee and fried eggs. The hum faded. The door dimmed, pretending innocence. The world went on as if nothing had happened.

Frank’s hand was still trembling.

“That felt real,” he said.

“It wasn’t,” I said. “It was an illusion. A VCR playback of a memory filtered through nostalgia. “It was real enough for a visit. But not for a stay. Places like that are built to be convincing, not complete. They stop right before the part where you have to pay for your choices.”

He looked back at the door. For a moment, it hummed again. Soft. Hopeful. Like a siren’s song beckoning Frank once more to the waiting sea.

*****

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