Plurk paste

The Door

I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when a door opened up in front of me. Now I'm not talking like, someone's front door. Nor a car door, side door, or any other sort of every day occurrence that would have you shrugging your shoulders like, Yeah? A door opened? So what?
No, I'm saying that it's the middle of the day, the sun is shining, and some sort of portal to another dimension or something opens up right in front of me. Then I say to myself, “Holly, what the hell is this?” because talking to yourself is a perfectly normal, valid thing to do when there's no one around but you and a portal to God knows where has just appeared out of nowhere.
What's this portal thing like? Well for all intents and purposes it really just looks like a door, except there's no frame, no mechanism, no nothing - I checked. Just a rectangular space, hovering above the ground, showing me the inside of some sort of house or something. I can't really tell, it's dark on the other side.
So I think to myself, well hell, now what? Do I go through? Do I call the police or something? (Oh yeah, cause that'd go well 'Excuse me Officer, some sort of portal to another dimension has just opened up on the sidewalk, you wanna take a look?') Do I just walk around it and pretend I didn't see a damn thing? Maybe that's what someone else would have done, but not me. I'm nosy you see. Too curious for my own good, my Grandfather says. So of course I do the only sensible thing in this situation and stick my head inside.
“Hello? Anyone there?” I ask, craning my neck around to try and get a good look. It's really dark and there's dust absolutely everywhere. But no sign of life. I pull my head back out, scratching the side of my face as I consider my next move. There's no one around - and I think even if there had been say a housewife opening her windows at precisely that moment, she'd have seen a headless girl standing in the middle of the sidewalk and would probably have shut her curtains quick smart. My Grandfather's not expecting me back for at least another hour, so I have a bit of time. Why not have a quick look?
So I take a deep breath, pull my shoulders back and step through. There's nothing to signal I've just stepped across inter-dimensional barriers or whatever the hell I've done. No tingling, no headache, no nothing. If it didn't smell like burning I could still be on the street I'd just left. Why did it smell like burning? I wondered, looking around the dim house. And oh, that was freaky. Behind me, exactly where I'd left it, was the Door - showing the bright suburban street I'd just been standing on. But just past it, a little to the left, was another door, this one as plain and ordinary as you could get.
I walked past the Door to investigate, tiptoeing as I went, conscious of the fact that whoever lived here might not appreciate a random alien trespasser wandering around their living room. I needn't have bothered. Twisting the door handle, I cracked the door open just a fraction, but that was enough. “Holy hell, what happened here?” I whispered, gaping. The entire street's been decimated. It looks like this house is the only one left standing. Everything else is rubble. Black, charred, and smouldering.
While I'm standing there, taking this all in, three things happen at once. Okay, no, two things happen, one thing finally registers in my overloading brain. The first is that I hear a cry; desperate, hopeless, anguished. The second is that a giant fucking insect thing, with eight razor sharp legs, huge translucent wings and a stinger as big as my head flies down the street as if it's taking a stroll. Which, on later reflection, it probably was. And the third, as if these two things on their own weren't bad enough, is that I realise that the reason everything's cast in a lovely burnt orange sort of hue is because the sky is filled with a swollen red sphere that is surely a sun mere hours, if not minutes, away from going supernova.
Why wasn't I burning to a crisp? I honestly have no idea. I have a very vague recollection of a glare, bouncing off what may have been a habitat dome, but at the time I was too busy slamming the door shut and running - okay, stumbling - back to the Door as fast as I could. I stopped in front of it, gasping in ragged breaths of air like my life depended on it. There, exactly where I left it, was my boring old world with it's perfectly normal Sun, and street, and insects who weren't big enough to eat my face. I stood there, shaking (hey, I'm not going to lie, I was fucking terrified) and wondered what the hell I was going to do. Me and my damn curiosity.
I could leave, of course. That'd be simple enough. Walk out as easily as I'd walked in. Stroll down the street as if I hadn't stumbled upon some portal to a post-apocalyptic world, or whatever the hell this was. But what about the cry I'd heard? Sure, it could have been some sort of trap. Or cat. Or something that wasn't a child, alone and frightened and stuck on a planet whose sun was about to explode. But it sure as hell sounded like it was. Fuck. I cringed, heart already beginning to race as I mentally prepared myself to go back out there. “Well there's no way in hell I'm going back out there unarmed,” I mumbled to myself, wishing I had my Grandfather's gun with me. But I'd been coming home from college, where carrying around guns isn't exactly recommended.
I glanced around the room I was in, only now registering the blackened walls and floorboards. Hmmm, dust, dust and more dust. Oh, wait, over there. I walked over to a corner and hefted up a pipe, half buried in dust. And oh hell I did not want to think about what this dust might have been. I shuddered and looked back down at the pipe. It wasn't exactly a weapon but it'd do.
Taking a few deep breaths to steel myself, I walked back over to the front door, twisted the handle and pushed it open. The coast looked clear, but surely the spiderwasp thing couldn't have gone far. I stepped outside, pipe clutched tightly in my left hand. The smell was worse out here. And the only sound was the crunch of my footsteps and my own ragged breathing. Had I imagined the cry?
No, there it was again. A thin voice carrying throughout the silence. I debated with myself for a moment. Should I let them know I was here? Would that alert the spiderwasp - and whoever else - to my position? I decided to remain silent, for now, following the cries as I tiptoed down the street. My entire body was trembling, every sense hyper aware. The crying was coming from up ahead, in the rubble of what would have been a building only a few houses down from the house with the Door.
I came to a stop in front of it. The cries were definitely coming from somewhere in here, but there was so much rubble I didn't know where to start. “H-hello?” I said, voice echoing in the eerie silence. “Is someone there?”
There was nothing for a long, long moment. I gulped, cursing my own stupidity, and turned around to leave.
“Don't go,” a voice said, desperate.
“Where are you?” I asked, turning back around.
“Here. I can see you, but I'm stuck.”
I searched through the rubble with my eyes, squinting past the blackened bricks and chunks of concrete, until I caught a glimpse of something. A gap between a sheet of metal covered in rubble and the ground, where a pair of eyes stared back at me, watery and afraid.
“Alright,” I said, “I see you. Hold on, let me just climb over there.” I began to pick my way across the rubble, hopping from one large chunk to the next. I'd almost reached him, (the voice sounded masculine to me so I dubbed him a he in my mind) when a piece of rubble slid underfoot. “Fuck!” I cursed, as my ankle twisted painfully beneath me.
“Are you okay?” the voice asked, anxious.
“Y-yeah,” I said, wincing as I hobbled over to him, stepping gingerly and far more cautiously now. I was covered in sweat by the time I reached him, ankle throbbing painfully and knuckles white around the pipe. He must have been in some sort of underground chamber or hole of something, because right now he had a perfect view of my feet.
“What's your name?” I asked, crouching down so I could look him in the eye.
“Jay,” he said, peering up at me.
“Nice to meet you Jay. I'm Holly and I'm going to try to get you out of there.”
“But how? It's too heavy.”
“That's because there's a whole lot of rubble up here. I'm going to try to shift it off, okay?”
“Okay.”
I started by brushing off the small bits. Twisted pieces of metal, clumps of wires, whatever seemed like it would move easiest. Then I went on to the bigger bits. Chunks of concrete, bricks and shards of glass went sailing off in every direction.
“Alright Jay, just the big bits left. You let me know if anything shifts down there, okay?” I said, trying to give him a reassuring smile. It probably looked more like a grimace.
“Okay,” he agreed.
Taking a deep breath and pushing the pain in my ankle to the back of my mind, I began to shove off the largest chunks of concrete. They made an awful noise as they screeched along the surface of the metal. I just prayed that those spiderwasp things were deaf.
I was absolutely drenched with sweat by the time I pushed the last one off. I swear, I was so exhausted I felt like I was gonna pass out, or throw up, or both.
“Alright buddy,” I said, between gasps for breath, “Let's try giving this a push.” I grabbed the thick piece of metal that was the only thing left between me and him and began to heave it upwards. “As soon as the gap's big enough I want you to jump through, okay?”
“Okay,” he said. I could feel him straining up against the metal, trying to help me lift.
It was as I lifted the metal up to my knees that I noticed it. A buzzing sound, growing louder with every second.
“Come on Jay, we gotta get out of here,” I said, starting to panic. With one last heave I got the metal halfway up my thighs and felt Jay scramble up, grabbing onto one of my legs as he crawled out. I dropped it with a resounding clang and turned around. Flying up the street towards us, its mandibles clicking and twitching, was a spiderwasp.
“Let's go,” I said, glancing over at Jay. Jesus Christ, he was only a kid. If I hadn't shown up he would have died for sure. “Stay behind me,” I told him, switching the pipe to my other hand so I could grab his hand as I picked my way across the ruins.
“It's coming towards us,” he said, sounding terrified. His hand was sweaty in mine.
“I know it is, but let's not panic. There's a house down the street, a safe place, we're going to make our way over there. It's not far.” I tried to sound as reassuring and soothing as possible, but I don't think I was fooling anybody.
The spiderwasp had its dozen eyes fixed on us as we stumbled over the last pieces of rubble and made it out onto the street. Yeah, that's right, as if the damn thing wasn't terrifying enough already. I let go of Jay's hand so I could hold the pipe in front of me. My hands were shaking so bad I'm still amazed I didn't smack myself in the face.
“When I tell you, I want you to run down the street as fast as you can,” I said, not looking back at Jay. He was holding onto the back of my hoodie, shaking worse than I was. “There's a house, only one still standing. You go in there, okay? I'll be right behind you.”
“I'm not going without you,” Jay said.
“One of us has gotta hold this thing off. And I'm the one with the pipe,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt.
“But-”
“Just do as you're told!”
Shouting was probably the dumbest thing I could have done. The spiderwasp twitched at the noise, darting forward with an angry buzz.
“Fuck! Run!”
Acting purely on instinct I jumped forward, swinging the pipe straight at its midsection, hoping to distract it while Jay took off. The pipe connected with its outer shell hard enough to make it crack. But unfortunately that only seemed to make it angry. Grabbing the pipe with four of its enormous legs, the spiderwasp yanked it out of my grip while simultaneously swinging its deadly stinger straight at my face.
“Jesus!” I gasped, dropping onto my back to avoid the blow. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Jay running down the street, looking over his shoulder at me. As thankful as I was that big ol' spiderwasp had been too distracted to notice Jay escaping, I sure as hell wish the distraction had been something other than me.
Speaking of the spiderwasp. It threw my pipe away with a flick of its legs before descending towards me. I scuttled back on my hands and feet, practically clawing at the ground as I tried to get away from it. With an angry buzz it darted for me, stinger extended, but I quickly rolled over onto my front and scrambled upright.
“Holly! Quickly!” Jay called.
I looked over at him for a second, but it was long enough to see that the inside of the house had begun to glow and pulse with a vibrant light. “Shit,” I swore, leaping out of the way as the spiderwasp darted towards me again, its legs extended. I almost tripped over a chunk of concrete as I landed, which in hindsight was quite a brilliant stroke of luck.
Thinking quickly I stooped down, picked up the rubble and threw it at the spiderwasp. It buzzed angrily as it hit its wounded midsection, but by then I was already halfway down the street. Maybe if I hadn't sprained my ankle I would have been faster, but every step I took sent shooting pain up my leg and made my eyes water.
“It's closing Holly! Hurry!” Jay called, motioning me forward with frantic gestures.
“Go!” I called back, “I'm right behind you, go!”
Jay looked at me, eyes wide, then through the open doorway to the pulsing light.
“Jay! GO!”
He gave me one last, apologetic look, then ran into the house and through the Door. I staggered off the street a second later, racing through the doorway - and was almost blinded by a pulse of light that rippled through the room.
When my vision cleared the Door was gone.