Writing prompt: A door of living obsidian appears at midnight in the center of your city, and only you can hear it breathing.
My eyes sprang open the vision of a black door searing into my mind. My heart began to race and a sense of unease, or fear, or impending threat nearly overwhelmed me. Just a dream It’s just a dream. My body doesn’t understand that, so I close my eyes and focus on taking deep, calming breaths. Just a dream.
The vision in my mind became more clear – a door, taller and wider than any door I had ever seen, shining like it was made of polished obsidian stood right next to the historic water fountain in the little downtown of our city. Part of me can’t seem to shake this, can’t seem to relax enough to abolish the image from my mind.
Looking at my watch, seeing that it just passed midnight, maybe I should just throw on some slippers and drive downtown to confirm it’s just a dream. No, that’s ridiculous. Insane. Logical people don’t go on a little joy ride to make sure they’re sane before falling back asleep. No. Sane people just go to sleep.
Maybe you’re not sane
My internal dialogue is not helping. Maybe I’m not the sanest person. I’m certainly not conventional, not accepted by the banal society of my smallish town. Conforming to their preferences is what I’d consider insane. So what if I’m quirky? So what if I’m going to fling back my covers, put on my slippers, and drive the scant few miles downtown to check on an obsidian door that is 100% not going to be there? It’s after midnight, it’s not like anyone is going to see me.
My mind made up, I did just that, flinging back my duvet and sliding my feet into slippers. This doesn’t demand dressing or normal shoes, I’m not even getting out of the car. Looking down I notice I’m wearing the moth-eaten nightgown that’s for comfort and definitely not for looks. Sighing, I grab a robe, touch the bun of hair on the top of my head, grab my glasses, and head out the front door.
This is insane. This phrase feels like it’s being tattooed on every bend and fold of my brain. Because on many fronts this was, in fact, insane.
And yet, I could feel something tugging at me from my heart, some weird preternatural pull towards downtown.
“Maybe I am insane” I mumble to myself. And maybe I am, but I have to know, and I’m not sure if I prefer for there to be nothing there, or for some mythological black door to be waiting.
There are too many cars as I get within two blocks of the fountain. This place is a ghost town after ten PM, so why are there so many cars? My heart rate picks up the pace. Could it be because others are drawn to a giant black door? It’s starting to feel like an alien abduction movie and an ominous feeling of foreboding nearly overtook the persistent warmth pulling me towards this city center. Maybe this is some mass hallucination? Some toxin in our water supply?
I decide to park a block and a half away from the fountain and go the rest of the way on foot. No, I did not dress for this, nor am I wearing appropriate footwear, and yet that pull feels tighter, more insistent. And then there’s the breathing. I could hear it slightly from within the car – it sounded like a steady rhythm, normal breathing. At first I thought it was my own, but realized I was breathing far faster. When I got out of the car, I could almost hear a hitch in the breathing, like whoever it was gasped, or stopped breathing for a beat. When it resumed, it felt faster. As the pace of the breathing slowly increased my footsteps matched the pace, my heart pounding in double time.
Turning the corner, the breathing sounded more like the exhalation of a sigh, a sound so full of relief and the barest hint of a smile. My heart didn’t slow, my breathing increased. Looking up, about a football field away was the fountain, lit up and beautiful, with a crowd of people surrounding a midnight black, gleaming door that towered over everything. It was twenty feet high and maybe fifteen feet wide. The door from my dream.
And it was humming. I could feel the vibrations of the hum – not a tune that I was familiar with, but a tune that my body seemed to understand. My feet propelled me forward towards the door. As I got closer the humming became more upbeat, a feeling of joy and anticipation in it.
Who was humming? Did someone have a microphone and speaker? As I got closer, the crowd was chattering as they looked at the door.
“What the heck is that?” an older gentleman said. He, too, was in his pajamas and slippers. So I wasn’t the only one awoken by this. Had we done some sort of shared dreaming? Did that manifest this door? Was this some sort of witchcraft and our dreams were hacked? That would be a really cool trick if it hadn’t been done on me!
All of the chatter made it difficult to make out full conversations. I got as close to the front of the crowd as possible to see the door. Some sort of mentally agreed-upon barrier was in place, because only one person was closer to the door, while everyone else kept about six feet back in a circle surrounding it.
There it was, the door, as beautiful and alluring as it was in my dream. No, it was even more appealing. The pull from my center mass felt gravitational, unavoidable, and the humming was now smooth and melodic, feeling almost like a lullaby.
“That tune is beautiful,” I said to no one in particular. No one responded. Everyone was so enthralled by this behemoth of a door that magically appeared.
“I think it’s Banksy.” a woman with a full face of make-up and silk nightgown with a robe with feathers – like a caricature of Blanche Dubois, perfectly put-together. Though, her logic is sound. Maybe this is some modern art installation. It had all the components of art, and it got a bunch of homebodies out of their houses after midnight, so maybe it’s just that.
Even the shared dream might be explained. Perhaps we’d all been slowly being fed images or ideas of this subliminally so when it appeared it just seemed supernatural, when it’s really just marketing. That seemed reasonable.
Feeling disappointed and jaded, I turned from the door to return home. The humming stopped with a squeak. It was definitely a male voice, further confirming the idea that it’s Banksy.
“No, please don’t leave me.” the voice was smooth, deep, but soft and warm, an edge of panic in his voice. It felt like warm apple cider, filling and warming my very core. Instinctively, I turned back to see what had happened to spark this reply, only to find that no one had moved. I stood on tip-toes trying to see the man that was near the door, only to see it empty.
“I don’t think it will let anyone get close to it. Did you see how he was trying to walk closer? It was like the ground was moving the opposite direction.” a woman diagonally to me said to someone.
What? I pushed my way a little closer, still feeling a pull, but not wanting to follow it. I don’t want to be anywhere near this door. It calls to me, but it scares me.
I stepped out of the circle, closer to the massive black thing. I could feel it vibrating, hear its own other-wordly music humming through my body. The sound was filling my brain, flooding it with harmonies, feeling the paints of each note caressing my mind, touching each part of it, of me, it was feeling for something. The tendrils of the melody stroked the borders of my memories, kissed at the recollections of joy, sorrow, anger, disappointment, and converted them into sounds and colors. My mind exploding with rainbows of light and spirals of vibrancy – tints and tones I don’t know if I’ve ever recognized before. Each caress felt solid and welcoming, like a lure.
My eyes popped open – I hadn’t even known I closed them. The sounds of people yelling crashed into my ears.
“What are you doing?!”
“How did you get that close?”
At that I looked up and noticed that I was directly in front of the door – the spot that I assumed was a handle almost too high for me to reach. What was I doing? All of this is more than suspicious. Random black, possibly murder doors don’t just wake people up and then give them candy – it was most definitely not a pinata. And yet, I could not move; I could not even contemplate turning around and walking away. There was something on the other side of that door that felt like me. Like some part of me that was missing and I didn’t realize it until I heard that humming, felt that voice inside me.
So I did the only logical thing I could do, I reached my arm up to the handle and pushed the door open.
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