‘Door to Pandora’
By Vyse
---By Vyse
Foreword:
I toyed with only a few ideas the night before I started this. A cassette with a cryptic message or a framed photo of a significant place/person came to mind as ideas. So then I used reverse psychology, thinking ‘If this is what I think is a good idea, then it probably isn’t’. Ok, just kidding, but I did decide that they were too cliché.
I’m just going to run with this idea and see how it goes.
PS: 4 pages in and I realise that subconsciously, this idea is very close to the premise of an anime entitled ‘Abenobashi: Magical Shopping Arcade’ just minus all the popular culture parodies. Well I can’t win em’ all.
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“Life is fleeting, truly”
A man of his late twenties laid in an arm chair in his apartment. He held a wineglass he had been nursing for the last ten minutes to the air above him as he made his observation about life. It was the fourth glass for the evening.
“It is fleeting because for the most part, we live our lives in constant repetition”
He swirled the white wine around for a moment, thinking of how to conclude his monologue.
“It is fleeting because of the ingrained protocols of society, of reality, of the people we think we understand.”
He took the glass to his lips, and swallowed the rest in one gulp.
“But truly know nothing about…”
Just as he placed the glass on the small end table next to the recliner, the doorbell rang.
He got to his feet and walked through the living room to the front door. He removed the dead bolt and opened the door to greet the person on the other side. Before him, a woman dressed in an olive green delivery man uniform stood with a clipboard and pen. Clifford looked her up and down and mentally noted upon how well the clothes fitted her body.
“Good evening Dr. Clifford, you’ve got a package here, so please sign your name, and I’ll be on my way,” the woman appeared to be in a hurry, obviously she had many more deliveries to make around the city tonight.
“Okay, thank you,” Clifford took the clipboard and signed his name. Whilst doing so, the woman moved to the side to take the said package and move it into his apartment.
“Wait, someone sent me a door?” he was confused by the thought of being sent such a thing. The delivery woman proceeded to move the door into his apartment and set it on the ground in his living room. The door was built with a base, allowing it to stand in a vertical position on its own.
The delivery woman saw herself out of the apartment, taking the clipboard and pen from Clifford on her way, leaving him to examine the door he had received. He stood before it, hands on hips, taking in the intricate design of the white door.
For the second time in the last 3 minutes, a series of knocks against a door filled the air. Clifford’s heart skipped several beats as he realised that the knocks had come from the door before him and not the one that served as an entrance to his apartment.
“Who’s there!” he yelled, eyeing the room suspiciously.
“May I, come in?” his guard lowered slightly at the sound of a female voice.
Using her initiative in realising that he wouldn’t comprehend the coming event at first anyway, she opened the door in front of Clifford, stepping out of whatever dimension she had opened the door from and closed it behind her.
“W…what the hell!” Clifford was understandably confused and terrified. His mind kept telling him that this lady had snuck into his apartment somehow and pulled this illusion to gain something from him.
The intruder before Clifford, despite being labelled as such, also made quite an impression on him by means of her attire. She wore a form-fitting, white, one-piece, beginning at her bust, and ending in a tight skirt halfway up her thighs, white boots that nearly reached the end of her one-piece, and white, arm length gloves. She also wore a white mask that covered the left half of her face, with a giant question mark on it. Her most striking assets though, were her long brown hair and brown eyes, which made her the spitting image of the delivery woman.
“Hello Clifford,” the brown haired beauty spoke.
He feigned a quizzical tone “Yes, um, who the f**k are you?” Clifford demanded.
“You can call me,” she took a moment to think of an appropriate name. She herself was not a being that required a name, she was a simple, solitary, inter-dimensional being that, until now, did not need something to individualise herself.
“Pandora,” she finally said, deciding that the name ‘Pandora’ was most befitting.
“What is this, some kind of joke or what?” Clifford insisted on looking around him, to ensure he wasn’t simply the victim of a cruel prank.
“No,” she neutrally replied.
“Then why the hell do you look like the delivery woman that came by just now?” Clifford knew it had to be a trick, they had to be twins or something, for they both looked exactly the same.
“That’s because of you,” she again, replied neutrally.
“Because of me?” he asked, requiring further clarification.
“Allow me to explain this to you. I, Pandora, am guardian spirit to this gateway,” she gestured towards the door behind her with her hand. “This gateway can lead you to an infinite number of realities, and I am here before you because you have decided that your current reality is unacceptable,” she paused, allowing Clifford to realise what she meant. “You are, as you say, sick of the repetition inherent in a life spent in this reality. When a being such as yourself comes to this conclusion, it is I who appears before them with an offer,” to this, Clifford raised an eyebrow.
“What kind of offer?” Clifford asked, slightly intrigued, and forgetting for a moment that she had not a couple of minutes ago, invaded his apartment through an inter-universal door.
“I offer you the service of this door,” she stepped aside, revealing the door to him again. “If one other than myself should step through this door, that person will be transported to a different reality to the one they previously inhabited,” she explained, Clifford however, was not yet convinced.
“What’s the catch?” he asked, playing along with the obscenely ludicrous claim this woman was giving him.
“There are two conditions or ‘catches’ as you put it. First of all, once you leave your current reality, there is no way to return to it,” he nodded, so she continued “Secondly, when you step through it, this gateway will transport you to a reality that reflects your own state of mind and desires.”
Clifford, whilst still sceptical, considered her offer. Gone would be the monotony of his own life, the constant annoyance of those idiots he had to call ‘co-workers’ at the hospital and the society he had lived in for the last twenty-eight years of his life. He would enter a world that would reflect everything he could ever want to be happy. He would find something that was close to heaven, and having the choice right in front of him, rather than having to wait for death to enter such a place wasn’t nearly as inviting an alternative.
“I must now leave you,” Pandora spoke, whilst slowly rising into the air of his apartment.
Once she was half a body length higher than Clifford, she imparted one final warning.
“If you decide that this is what you want, then remember this, and remember it well. Do not travel through the door for the wrong reason,” with that, she dissolved from existence.
“The door will disintegrate at daybreak, you must decide by then,” her ghostly voice echoed, and then there was no more sign of her.
Clifford walked up to the door and ran his hand over the frame of the door, astonished by what he had just witnessed. Speechless to the fact that a woman had managed to levitate and disintegrate right before his eyes.
His hand ran down the frame, and gripped the handle. His heart rate rose higher, if such a thing were already possible in his current state of mind. He took several deep breaths, and nodded to his own resolve.
“It’s now or never,” he decided, and turned the doorknob. As he opened the door, a light brighter than any he had ever seen greeted him, and with uncertain steps, he entered it.
The space he had stepped into was so vast and bright that he could barely see, however as soon as he closed the door behind him, the brightness instantly disappeared, and he found himself in a foreign building.
“Where…am I?” confused, Clifford looked around him. The first thing he checked was whether or not the door was behind him, and indeed it was. It looked exactly the same, and stood by a wall in the room he was in.
Clifford was in an apartment, similar to his own in its structural layout, but the furnishings were all different.
He walked towards the long window that dominated the western wall of the apartment, and realised he was somewhere very different. He looked down from the 8th storey of the apartment building at a town that could be best described as middle eastern in appearance, a striking contrast to the urban environment he had come to be accustomed to.
For the second time in as many minutes, his vision was temporarily overcome. A loud explosion occurred in the building across from the one he himself was in, or more specifically, it was hit by a mortar.
Then another explosion, which he did not see, but heard and felt as the entire structure of the building he was in shook from an explosion.
“Ahh!” he lost his balance and fell while the entire building continued to sway and shake.
“So this is the reality you would prefer?” confused and scared, from his prone position he looked over his shoulder and there was Pandora. She didn’t appear as she did before, this time she wore something that looked like a Halloween costume. She wore black robes, and a pumpkin mask covering half of her face.
“Wha…why has this happened to me?” he asked in desperation, pieces of the ceiling beginning to crumble and fall as the shaking continued.
“You willed it so, the moment you set foot through that door,” she pointed to the said object.
“Why the f**k would I want to be in a place like this!” he was confused and rightfully so. This was not the reality he envisioned stepping into.
“You wanted change, you wanted something that would break the monotony of your own life, and you wanted a place that threw social protocol to the wind,” at this Clifford stood up, mouth agate, realising that she was right.
“Am I supposed to die here?” he asked in a tone that accepted defeat, larger pieces of the building falling down around them.
“That door is always open to you, it will take you to another reality if you truly desire it,” they both looked at the door again. Clifford’s eyes widened, it was sanctuary, survival, it was all he wanted at that moment. He wanted to be alive.
“I don’t care where it takes me, as long as it’s safer than this!” without much further thought, Clifford ran across the room, opened the door, and entered.
He covered his eyes again from the bright light around him, which soon faded, and this time he found himself standing on a beach, his clothes drenched in seawater. An inflatable life boat laid by his feet.
From where he could immediately see, the beach was very wide, and the beach extended 20 or so metres into the mainland, where it met with a thick tropical forest. He turned around, a giant plume of smoke had enveloped the smouldering remains of a sinking oil tanker.
Just as he was beginning to make sense of it, he heard a person’s coughing. Clifford looked around, and there was a woman wearing a life jacket half submerged in water further up along the shore. She could barely move by the looks of it.
Clifford raced up the beach and waded into the water to save the woman. He pulled her onto the shore, took off the life jacket and lay her onto her side. Being a doctor, Clifford knew how to treat the situation, she was breathing, but she had inhaled a lot of smoke and water, so all he could do was watch over her until she recovered.
He sat by her and watched the sinking remains. Clifford began piecing together the puzzle that was the door. He looked over to it again, he had found it lying half buried in the beach sand, so he dug it up and it now lay on the beach not far from him and his patient.
The door was designed to take him to a place that provided an answer to what he was trying to escape from. The first time he had stepped through, it was about changing his current circumstances, which saw himself nearly killed by mortar fire. He had stepped through the door a second time to escape danger, which in this reality was in the form of an oil tanker exploding, and the solution was to seek refuge on an island.
The woman roused herself, and upon realising the current state of affairs, she sat up wide-eyed, looking around herself, and fell back again from a lack of energy.
“Are you alright miss?” Clifford asked, concerned for her.
With her eyes closed, she put a hand to her forehead, “I’m fine…just a bit sick from the water,” she allowed one eye open to examine the man next to her. She closed her eye again, “Are you the only other person who made it off,” she asked, already knowing the answer.
The question made Clifford bow his head, “As far as I know, we are the only two people here,” Clifford stopped briefly to think, “Do you think we’ll be found?”
The woman smiled slightly, “Of course, this is the 21st century y’know… and we were on our set path when the explosion happened, they’ll be combing every island around here for weeks.”
This calmed Clifford, the knowledge that they were safe and a rescue party would find them soon set him at ease. He looked to Pandora’s door, and decided it was time to leave again.
The woman was safe enough, he didn’t need to worry about her if her claims were true. They were logical enough in Clifford’s mind, so he decided to believe it.
He walked over to the door and stood it up, the woman watching him closely. He took one last look at her, the thought that she may not survive without him briefly crossed his mind, but was quickly shaken off.
Clifford didn’t need to worry about such things. He realised that morality and social values no longer held any leverage over his actions. He was not obligated by anyone or anything to stay with this woman.
“See ya,” he simply said, but then widened his eyes. Further along the beach behind the woman, Pandora stood stark naked, save for the half-mask, which appeared to resemble the ones worn by women at masquerade balls, as she held it up to her eye with a small black tube that was attached to the half-mask.
By the time he had realised it was Pandora, the door was already opened, and Clifford was presented with a new reality.
Clifford was in a hotel room, sitting on a large bed; golden colours dominated the colour scheme, indicating that the hotel was an expensive one.
A shower was running, and stopped after a minute. “I’ll be there in a second Cliff!” came the voice of a young girl. Clifford did not stir from his seated position, and a minute later, the girl emerged from the bathroom wearing only a towel that was tied around her body.
Clifford analysed her appearance. His studies into human anatomy told him that she could be no more than 14 years of age, she had shoulder length blonde hair and a cute face. She sat down next to Clifford and took his hand into hers. Clifford was about to rip his hand away from her when she decided to speak.
“Do you remember the first time we talked to each other…?” she looked up at Clifford with a neutral expression. “In that chat room I mean…” her simple question, at once, made it very clear what this reality was. He was in a reality where he manipulated underage girls into having sex with him.
He thought he had cast away any and all morals and social values he was once obligated to uphold, but this was too much for him. He would never live with himself if he took advantage of this young girl now..
Noticing that Clifford wasn’t in a mood for talking, she began to take away her towel. Revealing her moist, naked body underneath. She turned to him with her lithe frame, wanting to give herself to Clifford. She reached up to his face with her own wanting to taste his lips.
“N…no, stop!” he stood up from the bed and stepped away, looking at her with a horrified expression. He turned and looked around quickly for the door that had bought him here. He looked around a corner, and there it stood against a wall.
By the door was a small mirror, where he caught a glimpse of Pandora again. This time she wore a policewoman’s outfit, dominantly blue, with the skirt cut at an appropriate height. She held her police hat before the half of her face that was normally covered by a mask.
He did not turn to confirm wether or not it was indeed a reflection of her. He ran for the door, and made the jump into the next reality as quickly as he could.
Clifford was now inside a one-storey office building. It was night outside, and lights were being flashed into every available window.
“This is the police! We have you surrounded!” came an officer’s voice over a megaphone. “Come out with your hands above your head or we will enter by force!”
“Oh sh*t!” desperate, Clifford scanned the room around him for Pandora’s door. It stood against the far wall at the opposite end of the room, so he ran, leaping over desks to get to the door again. “I’ve gotta escape all of this!” he mis-timed one of his desk hops and crashed onto the ground, tipping the desk onto its side, spilling the desktop contents all over himself. He felt dazed, as if awaking from a dream, or a hellish nightmare, he could no longer deal with these new realities. Every time he entered a new reality, he’d face a new set of problems. The reality of his own situation was that each new set was becoming worse than the last. He thought he was escaping to a better reality than his own, but his theory was getting worse with every new one he entered.
He quickly collected himself and got to his feet. “I have to…end this,” he made a dash for the door, lights eclipsing him from the outside as the sound of police breaking down doors filled the air. He grabbed the handle of the door upon reaching it, and without looking back, he walked through the door, hoping it would be the last time he would.
Clifford found himself in a doorway, before him, a woman dressed in an olive green delivery man uniform stood with a clipboard and pen. He knew what this was. He was back in his original reality, or so he thought.
“Good evening Dr. Clifford, you’ve got a package here, so please sign your name” this was the second time he had the chance to glance over her. This time he noted her name badge, which read ‘Naomi’. He also noted that she didn’t seem to be in the same hurry as she was before.
“Okay, thank you,” Clifford took the clipboard and signed his name. Whilst doing so, the woman moved to the side to take the said package and move it into his apartment.
It was a large recliner chair, made from black leather. Naomi had to drag it to move it into the apartment. Since she already had the chair halfway through the door, Clifford couldn’t offer to help her, but instead started clearing a way through the apartment for her.
Suddenly she let out a cry of pain and held a hand to her back with one hand. “What’s wrong?” Clifford quickly went to attend to her injury.
“My back…I just strained it really bad,” she replied hoarsely. Clifford moved her hand away and ran his hand over her back.
“I’ve got some gel in the pantry for this kind of muscle strain, here let me help you,” he took one of her arms around his shoulder, so that she could lean on him, and he walked her slowly to the arm chair he was sitting in before all of this happened.
As he went to fetch the gel from the kitchen, he noticed a small note folded, and left on the seat of the reclining chair. He took the note, read it, re-folded it and put it into his pocket.
He fetched the gel and returned to Naomi.
“I’m just going to run this onto your back,” Clifford told her, receiving a strange look in return. “C’mon, I’m a doctor, it’s my job,” to this she shrugged, and turned slightly to give him access to her back.
He squeezed some of the gel into his right hand, and lifted the back of her shirt slightly with the other. He massaged her back with his gel-covered hand, “Do you need to contact your boss or something?” Clifford asked.
“No…this was supposed to be my last delivery, so it doesn’t matter,” she replied, turning her head slightly to look at Cliff with one eye.
“You should stay sitting down for a while, you won’t do yourself any good if you get back behind the wheel immediately,” Clifford advised, to which Naomi didn’t object.
He finished his administrations, and took a seat opposite Naomi. As he sat, he noticed Naomi looking at the wine bottle that was half-empty. “Would you like some?” Clifford asked as he poured himself another glass. She nodded her head quietly, and so Clifford poured her a glass as well.
Clifford sat back, took a sip, and then held the glass above him for a moment to mentally recount the message left to him by Pandora in the note.
‘Life is only fleeting if we don’t devote that life to understanding each other’.
- Fin –
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Afterword: Wow, even I wasn’t expecting it to tie up like it did. I figured that Cliff would get so caught up in the realities that he’d enter one last sprint going from one to another until he reached one where he’d fall into an endless void or something. It all came together in the end nicely I think. (Well I’m satisfied)
I also managed to do it in a 3rd person viewpoint, high five! *Claps self cause you left me hanging*
Version 4 comment: I’ve done a bit of editing and the like now. Whatever happens in this competition, may the best writer win!
Version 5 comment: I killed the breaks like I said I would. I love living in a GMT 10+ region.
