Of Doors and Stumbling Around in the Dark
She had opened the door, expecting light, or at the very least, a light switch. She was here to find answers. Her sisters had said they’d found lanterns when they’d done this. Maybe hers would be in the form of a candle. She’d not seen much that was modern and she did like old things. Maybe the future she was looking for would be in archaeology?
She smiled at that and began to feel the walls, looking for a switch. The walls of the new room were smooth. There wasn’t even a dint and in the grey dark she couldn’t tell if the shapes she saw were furniture or just blobs of grey and black. Her eyes were still adjusting after the lime colours of the last room.
She kept one hand trailing against the wall and walked the room. If she bumped into something, that was the best test to see what else was there.
She passed one corner, then another, another and another. Four corners in total. This didn’t seem like the very first room, of five dimensions, so four corners should be it. She was back where she started. Sure enough, as she felt the wall, her hand brushed against the outline of the door. She looked for the handle, thinking she might leave the door open and let in a bit of light, even if it was lime. It was better than this grey dark.
But she couldn’t find it. Where was the handle that she’d used? Frantic, she felt all over the door; all over the walls on either side. Nothing but the same smooth paint and wood. She began to bang on the door and shout.
“Hey! Hey! Help! Someone!”
Her energy fell away when no one answered. Of course no one did. She was in an inter-dimensional space. Not her reality and her fist was sore. She hit her forehead against the door, “Oww.”
The pain arching through her head made her stop panicking and think.
They had said there would be a light. She’d give anything for even a candle. Her phone wasn’t working. Not after going through the ocean world. If it would work in a place like this. This place, these rooms, were supposed to give her answers. This was all supposed to tell her exactly what she was going to do for the rest of her life.
No one ever hinted that the initiation to adulthood would be all stumbling around, through stupid rainbow rooms and now this! She let her back hit the wall and slid to the ground. It was cold tile. Maybe she’d made a wrong turn. Maybe she’d given the sphinx the incorrect answers and it had given her the wrong directions? Was this her punishment for wishing for adventure?
She’d only wanted to get off the island. No one ever left Galileo. She had wanted to be the first, regardless of what stupid job this ceremony set her up for. But now, if she couldn’t even pass her own initiation…she’d be lost here forever!
The girl who was almost a woman sat on the floor of the dark, square room until her back was sore. There had to be a way out.
Knock, knock, knock.
Her head shot up, eyes wide at the sudden sound. That wasn’t her. It came from the other side of the room. Scrambling to her feet she stood and then tripped on the edge of a rug. “Oww.” She said a moment later after her mind had caught up with her body’s sudden impact with the floor.
Sitting up she fingered the edge of the rug. There hadn’t been a rug there before.
Knock, knock, knock.
The sound came again, stopping further musing about how a room, previously empty had gotten a rug. She had checked. Carefully.
Knock, knock, knock.
She hurried to the other side and called, “hello? Who is it?”
It felt silly to be asking such a regular question. She was within inter- dimensional space. Some strange eldritch imagining of humanity, nothing that knocked could be any more dangerous than the sphinx, or the squid she’d met and run from so far.
“Hello?” She said, when there was no answer and no more knocking. The sound of a door handle turning and the click of a latch was all she got before a crack of light, yellow and blinding to her dark accustomed eyes, showed the outline of a door.
Another door? But she’d checked!
Then she tensed. What was coming from the other side?
“Hello?” She said again, before backing up a step.
The door creaked and stopped opening when the crack of light was about as large as three fingers width. She waited, but hearing nothing else, she crept forward and peered through the door.
“Oww,” She said for the third time; as green, yellow and blue burst upon her vision. The cheery shapes and colours of a park. She snorted at the mundanity of it and stepped through, glad to be away from the dark, box room.
There was a soft breeze, the trees were bursting with cherry blossoms, there was a dirt trail, a pond with a duck and a green park bench. She sat on the bench and tilted her head back, soaking in the sun and forgetting about her moment of panic in the room. It was gone. It was done. She was in a warm park.
“Good morning! May I sit next to you?” The voice broke her reverie and she nearly tipped off the bench in surprise. As she straightened and looked up, she saw the old man standing in front of her. He seemed to take her silence as confirmation and sat down.
That was when she noticed the goat and the cabbage. In one hand, the man held a lead, which was attached to a big mountain goat. With horns and all, it would reach above the waist of a full grown man. Tucked under his other arm was a green cabbage. He wore a kilt and black galoshes.
“Good…morning.” She said, slow and tentative as she finished her quick assessment.
The goat bleated. “Yes, my boy. We’ll move in a moment.” The old man said to the goat, rubbing the fur between its horns.
“So, Miss Kettle. What are you going to do?”
The girl, almost a woman, looked at the old man startled. “How. I didn’t tell anyone, anything…my name. I’m not.”
“I know. As part of the initiation you must be without labels; names and jobs included. But, you are here to figure what those will be, aren’t you? I’m not like sphinx, my dear. I don’t get much good conversation, will you indulge an old man?”
The girl shifted on the bench, wondering if she should get up and run. She’d make it. It was just an old man. Probably, unless it was an eldritch in disguise. She took a breath and made her mind blank. Whatever the old man was, he was right, she needed to remain open and empty. She wasn’t a Kettle here. She was just a girl, almost a woman who has so many questions. She started with the most recent, deciding she may as well use this stranger in whatever way she could to find her answers and get out of here.
“Sure, fine. Did you knock on the door, or the wall, or whatever it was?” She asked.
“The box room you mean?” The old man turned to look at her, one bushy grey brow raised. The girl nodded and he continued with a chuckle, “Nope. That was all you.”
The girl scowled, “Me? How? I was just following the doors! I just wanted to leave the island but I have to be an adult first, with a job, it’s stupid. And there hasn’t been a single light-switch. Not even a candle! How do I find the light to my future without those?!
“Because that’s what the Kettles have always done and always will.”
The girl began to hum an irritating children’s song in attempt to block out the old man’s mentioning of her family. She needed to fulfill the initiation by finding a light that would give her a job title. Maybe the old man had a hint? She perked up at the thought.
“How am I supposed to be an adult if I don’t find the light containing my future?”
The old man laughed. “Light? Is that what they’re calling it these days?” He bent over, in deep, belly laughter. The goat bleated along with him. The girl, almost a woman, folded her arms and grumbled.
“This is stupid. They said there would be a light-switch, or something. The rest of my life would be decided and done. But it’s not! I just keep wandering and I was stuck in the dark!”
The old man laughed more.
“It’s not funny,” the girl stood up and glared down at the strange old man. His laughter faded into chuckles and he shrugged.
“Sit down. Let’s talk.”
The girl found herself sitting again. She stared at the old man, waiting for answers.
“This is not real life, this is all only part of a ceremony. I’m not real, these spaces aren’t real. Well, they aren’t your reality, my dear. Your reality is messy, it’s got reams of different paths; lots of lights, lots of darks, greys, lime too. Lots of choices. It helps to think of it all in one straight line, with one solution. That’s what your here for. But I’ll tell you a secret. Everyone is stumbling around in the dark. Even strange old men like me. That’s why I’ve got Charlie here. He keeps me right, even when I think he’s reams wrong and sometimes he is. He is just a goat.”
Charlie, the goat, bleated and butted the old man’s shoulder. He rubbed the fur between Charlie’s ears with a fond smile before turning back to the girl. “So, all you have to do is figure out how to keep going until you reach an end. That’s all.”
“That’s not any help.” The girl, almost a woman, grumbled with an eye-roll.
The old man laughed. “Ah, you are her daughter. Well, life isn’t much help. Where’s the adventure in being told exactly what to do? I thought you wanted adventure?”
“How did you know that?”
“I’m here and there.” The old man shrugged with a twinkle in one eye.
“I thought that!” The girl accused. How could something read her mind?
“I’m there too.” The old man said, face straight and serious.
The girl shuddered and curled up into a ball, pulling her feet onto the bench. “Well, this is still all stupid. They’re all stupid. They lied.”
“Life is tough. No one would want to live it if they really understood that.”
“But I came here for an answer. What am I going to tell them when I get back?”
“You found a light-switch.” The old man stood up from the bench and re-adjusted his grip on Charlie’s lead.
“No I didn’t,” the girl accused, jabbing her finger at the old man.
“No, you didn’t but they don’t need to know that. It’s a secret, between you and me.” He held a finger to his lips and then, with a nod of farewell, he walked off, belting out the children’s song the girl had only been humming earlier.
When he passed the pond, the air shimmered and stretched around him, like a waving blanket. Then, it settled and smoothed back into the grass, the dirt trail and the pond with a single duck.
She shuddered and stood up too, “If that was Life. I hate it, terrible taste in music.”
In the pond, the single duck squawked and began to swim in a fast circle. It became a blur, that became a whirlpool. It stretched into the blue, white cloud sky before the rectangular shape of a human-sized door formed near the bottom.
“Urgh, another door? And I’m going to have to get my feet wet. I hate getting my feet wet.” She told the whirlpool. But she pulled off her shoes and socks, rolled up her jeans and waded in. She hoped this was the last door. She was getting hungry and it was impossible to do anything with a growling stomach.
ARR ~ Moony
Author’s Note:
I talked to high school students this week about my experiences as a writer so far. The name badge the school gave me, called me an “author” and I had already felt like just a fraud, who was only asked to talk at this Career Day event because I’d been a teacher at that school. Everyone there thought it was so cool that I had been querying agents and doing a workshop with Diana Galbaldon at the Surrey International Writing Conference.
This was going to be a non-fiction piece reflecting on how, when I was in high-school, all the adults in my life said I had to make choices and those choices would decide the fate of my life. That’s really ominous and terribly erroneous to hear as a teenager. It made me stray off and away from what I really wanted and made me feel like a fraud, a fake and like I would never be a “real” adult.
Thing is, there isn’t one; a “real” adult, that is. There’s only a bunch of humans with various numbers of decades under their feet who are stumbling around in the dark, hoping for the easy fix of a light-switch, when really, there never is one. I talked to the high school kids about that. I told them to just keep writing, just keep doing what they wanted to do and they would find a way to make it all work, not matter what the adults of their life said about “required education before attempting something, of the futility of balancing dreams and making a living.”
What is “a living” anyway, except the act of waking up at the dawn of another day and deciding how you want to spend it. We could all live on the streets if we wanted, but we each have standards of life that we must create, and within those standards we want, there is also the standard of creating for the sake of it. Creating something that will live out beyond the click of the final door behind us.
That is life; stumbling around in the dark, on an adventure, looking for answers but never quite finding the exact ones because nothing exists in a box, except pesky rugs that trip us and make us doubt.
That is life. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to head out my door and go exploring for more stories.
ARR
