A Mystical Phenomenon (By: Carys)

  As everyone knows, doors are objects that can open and close to allow someone or something to come in. However, in science fiction and fantasy, doors not only perform the functions mentioned earlier, but they also symbolize promises, warnings, and invitations that serve as thresholds between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Whether it is a mystical wardrobe, guiding to a snowy, sunny kingdom, or a futuristic portal to galaxies that are located far, far away. The act of opening and closing the door is a strong narrative device that resembles exploration, transformation, and the unknown. Across both genres, doors examine a character’s bravery, challenge their aspects, and propel them into adventures or nightmares. By investigating the potentials of the doors in this story, I am going to disclose the deeper themes about curiosity, consequences, and the desire of humans to discover beyond the familiar.

  Now, I am going to cover one of the stories………...It was raining cats and dogs the day I found the door. I hadn’t meant to be in the Black Hollow at all-----I was just attempting to take a shortcut after my car broke down on the old highway. But the trees swallowed the road behind me, and before I acknowledged it, I was lost.

  That’s when I saw it. A door.

  Not a ruin, not a remnant of some old house. Just a door, solid-oak, its brass handle tarnished green with age----standing perfectly upright in the middle of the clearing. No walls. No frame. Just the door, not touched by the storm, as if the rain didn’t want to acknowledge its existence.

  I should have turned around. I didn’t.

 The time I turned the handle, the entire world ripped.

 At 1 second, I was in the woods, chilled and soaked. The next thing was-------------gold.

 A city stretched before me, massive and impossible, its tower spiralling into a sky with the colours of decreasing embers. The air smelt like burnt sugar and sweltering metal, and beneath my feet, the ground rumbled faintly, just like a gradual heartbeat.

  “You’re really late!!!” I heard a voice behind me. I turned and took a look.

  A lady stood there, tall and sharp as a knife; her coat was shifting between shadow and smoke. Her eyes were similarly unnaturally gold as the sky.

  “Why was I late?” I asked, and my voice hoarded.

  “For the end!” she said, as if it was apparent.

  Her name was Yana, and she named herself as the Keeper.

  “This location is the Between,” she described, leading me via the glass streets. “A crossroads. A seam between worlds. Every door you’ve passed -----some of them lead here.”

  I stared at the endless doors queuing up the streets------ Some were wooden, some steel, and some made of materials whose names I didn’t know. Each one hummed faintly, as if whispering.

  “Where do they go?” I asked.

  “Everywhere.” Yana said. “And nowhere. Doors open to locations that were, locations that will be, and locations that shouldn’t be.” Then, she looked at me; her gaze became heavier. “And some doors should never be opened at all.”

  I saw it at the end of the glass road. A door of black iron, wrapped in chains that vibrated------shifting, coiling like serpents. The lock at its centre pulsed, slow and rhythmic, just like a heartbeat, again.

  “What’s behind that one?” I asked.

  Yana went very still. “The Hollow King.”

  “Who?”

  “Not who,” she corrected. “What. The thing that waits. The thing that starves.”

  I should have listened.

  But I’d already stepped nearer and nearer.

  The lock was warm under my fingers.

  “Don’t ----” Yana embarked.

  Too late. The chains shattered. The world bawled.

  The sky cracked like glass, and from behind the door came a sound--------soggy, ragged inhaling and exhaling, the scrape of something too cosmic moving in the vague. Yana grasped my arm, her nails drawing blood. “Run!!”

  We barely made it back to my door before the thing on the other side lunged. I caught a glimpse of it----a maw of teeth and shadows, a famine so inordinate it bent the air----before I slammed the door shut. The impact knocked me to my knees. Silence. Then, thud. Something heavy knocked at the door from the other side. Thud, again. Thud, then nothing.

  The rain had stopped when I stumbled back into my world. The door vanished. Only a circle of dead grass was maintained. The earth blackened as if scorched.

  I told myself that it was a dream. A hallucination. A trick of exhaustion. But sometimes, at night, I hear it------A faint scratch came at my bedroom window. A whisper, just beyond the edge of hearing. “You left me waiting….” And I wondered----If I ever found another door------Would I open it? Or would it open by itself?