Door

The floor creaks as I hobble down the stairs. My tongue desperately clings to the roof of my mouth, begging for even just a drop of water. The cabinet where the glasses are supposed to be housed is empty and I shuffle my dehydrated body to the dishwasher. With the cherished cup in hand, I totter over to the fridge to get the prized liquid.

The tiny bulb in the water dispenser springs to life with a slight buzz when I press my glass against the switch. The low light it casts illuminates the dark kitchen. Ice clinks against glass and my tongue darts out of my mouth hungry for the cold liquid. Water fills the spaces between the small, frozen cubes in a slow, steady stream.

Once the cup fills, the kitchen falls into dark. I squeeze my eyes shut once, twice, three times to adjust my eyes to the sudden shift. My throat squeezes as I bring the cool glass to my lips, tongue posed on lower lip hungrily anticipating the sweet, wet nectar. But just before the beverage pours down my throat, a deep, unshakeable feeling of dread washes over me.

Stronger than the thirst in me is fear and my body shakes. Every follicle has puckered. All sounds but the shaking of my breathing die. From behind comes a soft, warm breeze, almost like hot breath on my neck. But despite the heat, all warmth rushes out of me. My hands tremble as I shiver and the glass slips and shatters in a crash disrupting the deafening silence. 

Nothing but my trembling body moves. Water pools at my feet; glass and ice become confused. What was once a warm breeze grows into an overbearing heat. Sweat pools on one side of my body, while the other side seizes both in fear and the chill of the night. The sweltering heat grows and grows unbearably until I slowly turn, my backside now bathed in the cool it craved, while the front faces a hellish heat. 

At first I don’t know where the heat is coming from. Nothing seems out of place; there is no smoke, no flames, there are no windows open. But then my eyes glide over the door. 

It’s not an unusual door. In fact it’s about as normal as a door could get. The problem is, it’s not supposed to be there. 

I’ve never seen this door in my life. Where it sits is supposed to be the wall I kept bare to hang paintings. I step towards it, the heat only growing, my body now completely enveloped in it. I place my hand on the doorknob expecting it to burn my skin, but it’s cool to the touch. By now curiosity has quashed my fear and I painstakingly turn the knob and pull the door open.

Again, my expectations are dashed. Instead of a portal to hell or the tunnel of terror from Willy Wonka, the door opens to a staircase leading down. But for some reason, this staircase feels just as ― or more ― terrifying than the alternatives. But even knowing that, I still start forward, as if beckoned by some unknown force. 

Once my foot lands on the first step I am unpleasantly reminded of the dehydration that called me out of bed in the first. My tongue finds my cracked lips and wets them, before pulling itself into my chalk-dry mouth. My throat itches with a cough and as it leaves my mouth, the sound gets swallowed in the cavernous stairwell. 

I become determined to go back to the kitchen and get a glass of water before exploring what lay ahead of me, but when I try, something outside of my control keeps me in that stairwell. In fact, the harder I tried, it seemed like I was actually moving down the stairs, and not back up into the kitchen. Yes. The whole time I was trying to turn around and walk back into the kitchen, I was walking further into the mouth. Now six or seven steps deep, the light on both ends is entirely put out.

What’s worse is with every step, my dehydration grew. Now lightheaded and dizzy, with a migraine that had formed out of nowhere, I can’t be sure if my vision is gone because the room is dark, or because the black spots in my eyes have crowded out any light. My body is weak, and my joints are tight, longing for water. For some reason, I feel deep inside I have to get to the bottom of the stairs. I know I can find water there. 

My left foot leaves the step it was on and moves to the next. A wave of nausea compounds with the pounding in my skull and I crumble to the ground, tumbling four or five steps. My skin pulls taut against my bones as the moisture leached out of me. I am now only two steps from the bottom. I don’t have the strength to pull myself up, so I drag myself down. My heavy skull bangs against the first stair as I near my destination. 

My body shutters on the last stair, skin paper dry and hair pulling against my scalp like a mummified corpse. I can’t even blink my eyes, because the moisture has fled them, and I feel them pulse and bulge with every pound of my skull. Then I hear it. The tell-tale burbling of rushing water. I feel the cool breeze that rushes off a body of water. Smell the damp grass and moss. With the very last of my strength, I pull myself off the last stair towards the oasis.

And as I do, my body cracks. My skin, like tissue paper, dissolves in the wind. My bones, like sedimentary rocks over years, erode to dust and get carried away. My muscles and organs shrivel and turn into hard stones, left to the elements. The water covers me and above me: a door slams shut.

I wrote this short story to help with writer's block. This really did not go the way I planned for it, but I really like it! Hope you enjoy it :)