Author: Emily Kinsey

I was trapped. I awoke from a dreamless sleep with a start, unsure how the fire started. (Although, if you ask me, it was probably my brother’s fault.) Flames licked through the open bedroom door and thick black smoke obscured the lone bedroom window.

The fire blazed a jagged scar across the wallpaper to my left, unearthing a small, never-before-seen door, hidden beneath the layered paper. I could see light through the slits and alongside the crackling of fire, I could hear the distinctive sound of someone knocking…and knocking…and knocking.

The door swung open, and a woman appeared in the doorway; an entrance to a different world lay just beyond her.

“Quick, in here!” the woman said, holding the door ajar. “Now!”

Unsure, I hurled myself through the opening. Landing hard, I kicked the door shut.

The woman stood and straightened her suit. “That was a close one.”

“How did you do that?” I coughed. My nose and throat burned; my eyes blurred against the too-bright white hallway. “What is this place?”

“My sincerest apologies, we should have come for you earlier,” the woman said. “But we’re busy today. Lots of glitches.”

“Glitches?”

“They’re common this time of year,” the woman said, helping me to my feet. She turned and guided me down the brightly lit hallway. “We’ve no idea why.”

“Am I dreaming?” I peered down the long, narrow corridor. I couldn’t see a beginning nor an end, just an endless expanse of doors. “Did I die in that fire?”

The woman pinched me.

“Ouch!”

“Hurt?” she asked.

“Yes!”

“Then you’re still alive.”

“Why am I here?” I asked.

“Because you don’t die in a fire,” the woman said.

“I don’t?”

“Car accident,” she volunteered nonchalantly. “Well, here we are, door number five hundred and thirty-three,” she said stopping in front of a door only distinguishable from the rest by the glowing blue number emblazoned above it. “This is where you were supposed to be today.”

“I’m really not dreaming?”

“You are absolutely, unequivocally, not dreaming,” the woman said, checking the time on her wristwatch. “Now, here you are, your door. You just need to walk through it.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Just another cog in the wheel,” the woman said. “Now, Kate, the door….”

“Where does it go?”

“Forward.”

“I want to go home.”

“It doesn’t go backward.”

“I can’t go home?”

“You can go through this door.”

Dejectedly, I walked through the threshold. The room was pitch-black, and I was no longer standing but sitting and strapped in a chair. I regretted my decision immediately. I wanted to go back to the hallway of infinite doors.

“Kate? What are you doing here?” a voice asked in the darkness. I recognized it. It was my father. “How did you get in the backseat? You weren’t there a minute ago.”

“I don’t know,” I trembled.

“She appeared out of thin air!” my brother cried. I could vaguely make out his form buckled in the seat next to me.

“How did you do that?” my father yelled.

“I don’t know!” I shouted. “There was a fire, and a door, then a woman, and she said I’m supposed to be here right now.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” my brother said.

My father turned to glance at me. “A fire?” The car jerked to the left and a large redwood tree loomed just beyond the windshield.

“Dad, look out!” I called, but too late.

I heard fracturing metal and felt a sensation of floating weightlessly through the air, the fleeting world turning on its head, then, nothing at all.