Not super proud of this one but then writing has lots of highs and lows. As with a lot of my shorter fiction, this may or may not end up part of a larger piece.

I first noticed it on a Monday night. I thought I had caught it out of the corner of my eye before, but it was easy to dismiss. Something like that didn’t just appear. But that Monday night, it became all too real. Where my neighbor’s house should have been was a door. A door with a single light shining over it. A door where I had never noticed one before. I stood in my laundry room for at least an hour, looking at the door. The clothes finished drying, and it was still there.

How was it possible?

I decided I must be seeing things. I had a few beers, I had smoked a little pot, there was simply no way the door was real. I had never imagined something like this before, but that didn’t mean it was impossible to imagine it now.

Still the next morning, I was curious and confused. I went outside and spent extra time watering my lawn and looked. The front of the house still faced the street, the side of the house still faced my laundry room, the door was not there.

Nothing seemed wrong. Everybody still smiled and waved. There was still gossip among the neighbors. We all pretended that the world was okay while secretly dreading every day.

In the daylight, there was no door.

Tuesday night I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, the door was still there.

Once again, I stood in my laundry room and simply stared at it. Why was it there?

Every night for a week, I would obsessively stare at the door, and every day for a week, I would wonder if I was losing my mind.

So I simply started ignoring it. The door was not hurting me.

It was a Thursday when the door seemed closer.

The problem was it was impossible to tell. The door was not there in the day, so there was no way to measure its location. In the dark of night, it stood out in the emptiness so stark and clear that, of course, it overtook my vision.

I must have been imagining it again.

It was another Monday when I realized that once again, I wasn’t.

The door was closer, there was no denying it.

I became obsessed, I practically lived in my laundry room when the sun set each night. The only reason I would leave was to use the facilities or when the sun would rise. The door was slowly getting closer.

I spent my days on the internet, obsessed. Had anyone else suddenly seen a door appear? What would happen when the door reached me? By all logic, I should be afraid, but simply put, it was the only thing happening, so I just didn’t care.

It was a Friday when the door got close enough that I knew I would be able to touch it.

I didn’t touch it. Of course not.

But I could.

I knew if I opened the window, I would be able to reach out and touch the handle and see what was on the other side.

Suddenly I was afraid. Not of the door, but what the door would show me.

Still, I spent every night watching it. It still had just one light over it, it was still just a door.

It was a Wednesday when the door was only a few inches away.

If it followed the same pattern that it had for the last several months, I only had a few weeks to find out what the door was. A few people had posted online about such a door, but everybody dismissed it as a hoax. No one seemed to question why the person talking about the door never posted again, then posting something outrageous and disappearing into the net would make the most sense.

Tomorrow will be a Friday, and the door will officially connect with my laundry room wall.

Maybe on a Saturday, I can tell you what will happen.