The Haunted Grove

I Found a Door in an Abandoned Lot. What Was on The Other Side Is Terrifying!

• Little Red Ghost Studios • Episode 11

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A routine life working at an accounting firm begins to unravel when strange occurrences manifest—reflections that move too slowly, coffee that tastes metallic, and digital clocks that run backward at specific times. These anomalies lead to the discovery of an impossible door standing alone in an abandoned lot, a threshold to a distorted version of reality.

• Small inconsistencies in daily life that suggest something wrong with reality
• Discovery of a standalone door in an abandoned industrial district
• Journey through a hollowed-out version of the protagonist's town
• Encounters with creatures that seem to have once been human
• Mysterious tall beings methodically constructing more doors
• Return to normal reality with evidence that boundaries remain compromised
• Government researchers monitoring "boundary incidents" across the city
• Lingering effects that blur the line between worlds
• The unsettling pull to return despite the danger

The door is out there waiting for you to step through, and the terrible truth is that part of you is waiting too.


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Speaker 1:

Some routines become prisons without you even noticing. Mine had iron bars made of alarm clocks and microwave dinners, reinforced by the blue glow of endless scrolling. Six years at the same accounting firm, the same desk, the same view of the parking lot through rain-streaked windows. Home to the same apartment, where take-out containers accumulated like sediment layers in an archaeological dig, I started to notice strange occurrences around my apartment Coffee that tasted wrong not bad, just different like it had been sitting in someone else's cup for a while, I could swear. My bathroom mirror was showing a reflection that blinked a half a second too late, and I'm pretty sure the digital clock on my nightstand started running backwards for exactly 17 minutes every Tuesday. It was small things, the kind of details you convince yourself you're imagining, the kind that make you question whether you're losing your grip on the ordinary world or just searching for something to make you feel anything. My co-workers began to notice too, although they were too polite to say anything directly. Sarah from HR would pause mid-sentence when I entered the break room, her eyes tracking my movements with the careful attention people reserve for unstable things. Kevin from IT started avoiding eye contact entirely, his fingers drumming nervous rhythms on his desk whenever I passed. I couldn't blame them. I'd been forgetting conversations, arriving late to meetings, I didn't even remember scheduling and I complained that my coffee tasted like metal. Most days, nothing will ruin your day faster than a bad cup of coffee.

Speaker 1:

The morning that it all changed started like any other broken day. My coffee tasted like pennies in disappointment and I was stuck in traffic that crawled forward like a large animal, slowly dying. The radio was droning about weather patterns while I sat in my car watching the city wake up around me with the detached interest of someone observing life through aquarium glass. But that evening something shifted. Maybe it was the way the sunset painted the office building in shades of amber that reminded me of childhood summers. Maybe it was the way my shadow on the elevator floor seemed to move independently of my body. Whatever it was, when I reached the parking garage I didn't take my usual route home.

Speaker 1:

The industrial district downtown stretched to the east like a graveyard for ambitions. Factories that once hummed with purpose now stood silent. Their windows dark and broken. Chain-link fences topped with razor wire guarded the empty lots where the weeds pushed through cracked concrete with the persistence of the forgotten. I'd driven past this area countless times, but this was my first time driving through it. The air grew thicker as my car descended into the maze of abandoned buildings, carrying scents of rust and something organic that made my sinuses burn. The streets narrowed, lined with structures that seemed to lean inward, as if sharing secrets too dangerous for the daylight. Warning signs sprouted from every fence Restricted area, condemned property, do not enter. The kind of signs that make you wonder what they're really trying to keep out. Or in A small lot caught my attention.

Speaker 1:

It sat wedged between two derelict warehouses, surrounded by a chain-link fence that sagged with the weight of decades. Most of the keep-out signs had faded to illegibility, their messages blurred by the weather and time. But one section of the fence stood out from the rest A gate that hung open at an odd angle, its chain wrapped loosely around the post, not locked, just resting there. I parked across the street and sat in my car for twenty minutes just watching. There were no security cameras visible, no movement, just the lot, overgrown and forgotten. The radio had gone to static and when I reached to change the station, the digital display showed strange symbols I didn't recognize. The gate creaked when I pushed it open. The chain fell away with a metallic whisper that seemed too loud.

Speaker 1:

In the evening quiet, I squeezed through the gap, feeling like a trespasser in a place that was no longer meant for people like me. The lot was larger than it appeared from the street Concrete slabs jutted from the earth like broken teeth, surrounded by weeds that grew in patterns that almost suggested some kind of intelligent design. The rust-colored stains that marked where the machinery had once stood reminded me of the outline of a dead body at a crime scene. There one minute and gone the next. The air carried the same metallic taste I'd been noticing in my coffee, but stronger now, mixed with something sweet and cloying that made my stomach turn. I walked for maybe ten minutes following paths that seemed to exist only when I wasn't looking directly at them. The temperature dropped with each step, despite the warm evening, my breath began to mist, and somewhere in the distance I could hear music, a melody that sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. And that's when I saw it.

Speaker 1:

The door stood alone in a small clearing, maybe fifty feet from the nearest building. There were no walls or no structure, just a doorframe with an open door standing upright like a monument to architectural impossibility. It was old but intact dark wood with iron hinges that should have been rusted through but weren't. The frame was carved with patterns that seemed to shift when I looked at them spirals that became eyes, geometric shapes that suggested faces screaming in a silent agony. The wood frame felt warm to the touch, warmer than the cooling air around it, and when I pressed my palm against it I could feel something underneath the surface, a buzzing like a swarm of bees or a live electrical wire was buried in the wood. The door itself hung open, revealing nothing but the lot beyond. But the air that moved through the frame carried scents that didn't belong, like ozone and copper and wet earth and something floral that reminded me of funeral homes. This had to be something like a prop from a movie set and was abandoned by the film crew. I circled it twice looking for the trick support beams hidden in the weeds or anything that would explain why a door was standing in the middle of an empty lot with no building to contain it. And when the wind moved through the frame, the door swayed gently on its hinges. The sound it made wasn't quite a creak, it was more like a sigh or something breathing Street art.

Speaker 1:

I decided Some elaborate installation by an artist with more vision than sense, the kind of thing that gets featured in magazines about urban decay and forgotten spaces. I remembered reading something about those metal obelisks that kept appearing in remote locations a few years back Utah, romania and California Always the same pristine steel, always perfectly placed and always gone before anyone could ask the right questions. This must have been something like that man. Artists are weird. I chuckled to myself and, without thinking, I stepped through the door and the world changed, not all at once, not like stepping through a portal in a fantasy novel, more like the way your eyes adjust to the darkness, details emerging gradually from what appears to be nothing.

Speaker 1:

I was still in the same lot the same concrete slabs, the same weeds, the same warehouse walls rising in the distance, but everything felt wrong. No, it was wrong in ways that made my forehead start to sweat as my pulse raced. The sky was the color of old brass, tarnished and sick, hanging low like a ceiling about to collapse. The buildings around me were the same structures I'd seen from the street, but aged decades beyond recognition. Windows were boarded with wood that had rotted to pulp, and vines crawled up the walls like veins on the back of a dying hand. Their leaves were the wrong shade of green. And the silence? It was the kind of silence that invites all the unwanted thoughts you'd hidden away, and it was periodically broken only by the sounds that shouldn't exist whispers without words, footsteps without bodies and the distant sound of children laughing in a place where no children should be.

Speaker 1:

I turned around, expecting to see the door behind me, but it was gone. No, not gone moved. It now stood about twenty feet to my left in a slightly different position, facing a different direction. The carvings on the frame were different too. They were more elaborate and more disturbing faces that seemed to follow my movement and hands that reached towards me, with fingers too long and jointed in places human fingers weren't meant to bend. The panic started as a flutter in my chest, a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation.

Speaker 1:

I walked to where I remembered the door being, searching the ground for any signs of how it might have been moved. There were no drag marks, no disturbed weeds, nothing. And when I looked up, the door was gone again. This time I found it behind me, closer to the warehouse. The wood seemed darker now, the iron hinges more pronounced and the opening it was definitely narrower, as if the door was slowly closing, swallowing its own exit. I approached it carefully, like you might approach a wild animal. The door waited, patient, and still Beyond the frame I could see the lot stretching away.

Speaker 1:

But it was definitely the wrong lot. The one I had entered had been overgrown but maintained some semblance of order, but this one looked like it had been abandoned for decades. Cars sat rusted in the weeds, their tires flat and their hoods raised like gaping mouths. But these weren't normal cars. These were cars I had never seen before designs that had never existed, chrome details that formed patterns that hurt to look at. Directly, shopping carts lay on their sides, filled with trash that had long since decomposed into unrecognizable mulch, except for the occasional glimpses of something that might have been alive once. A traffic light hung from a pole that had no intersection to cover. Its colored lenses looked dark and cracked, but as I watched, it began to cycle through colors that didn't exist shades of purple that made my eyes water and greens that seemed to move independently of the light itself.

Speaker 1:

I walked through what once had been a residential area. The houses stood like rows of expired cans of food, their roofs caved in, their windows dark and their walls bulging like they were about to burst. But the wrongness went deeper than abandonment. Front yards had become jungles of weeds and trees, but the plants were wrong too Flowers that bloomed in strange geometric patterns, grass that grew in perfect spirals, and trees whose branches reached towards the ground instead of the sky Street. Signs were illegible, their names were corroded away by weather and time, and possibly something else. It was still my town. I knew where I was and I recognized the general layout, the shapes of the street, the way the land rose and fell. This was where I lived, where I worked and where I'd spent my life.

Speaker 1:

But it was all wrong. Somehow, like a photograph that had been left in acid too long, its reality dissolved and reformed into something malevolent. A strange feeling was coming over me, a fear so deep that it started in my DNA, a primal instinct telling me that this wasn't a place that had been evacuated or forgotten. This was a place that had been hollowed out, sucked dry of whatever it was that makes a place feel alive. The very air seemed thinner, as if something vital had been extracted from it, and in the extraction, something else had been left behind. What happened here?

Speaker 1:

I found the first evidence of other inhabitants near what once had been the elementary school. The playground equipment was still there, but the swings had hung from chains that were too long and the slides curved in impossible directions. A merry-go-round that had fused with something organic, its metal bars grown through what looked like bone, and scattered around the playground were toys Not children's toys, but adult-sized replicas, dolls the size of people, their faces melted and reformed into expressions of perpetual screaming Blocks that spelled out words in languages I had never seen before A rocking horse whose eyes followed my movements with an intelligence that made my skin crawl. I'd been walking for maybe an hour when I heard the first real sound, a low growl coming from somewhere behind me. Not the growl of a dog or any animal I could identify. It was something deeper and more guttural, the kind of sound that makes your primitive brain scream warnings. Your conscious mind hasn't had time to process.

Speaker 1:

I turned slowly, not wanting to make any sudden movements. The street behind me was empty, but something was moving in the shadows between two houses, something large and dark that seemed to flow rather than walk. It emerged into the tarnished light. My brain struggled to catalog what I was seeing. Its fur was patchy, revealing areas of exposed muscle and bone that gleamed wet in the brass light. Its dull black eyes were large, set in a skull that was the wrong shape for any creature that had ever drawn a breath. But it was the intelligence in those eyes that made my blood freeze. Not animal cunning, but something deeper and more complex, the kind of intelligence that remembers what it used to be.

Speaker 1:

This creature had once been something I was familiar with An animal on TV, perhaps, something I saw at the zoo, but it almost looked like it had been human. First I could see it in the basic architecture of its form, but something had changed, twisted it into something else entirely part wolf, part boar, part, something that had no name in any earthly taxonomy. When it saw me, it tilted its head in an almost human gesture. Its mouth opened, revealing teeth that were definitely not human, and it made a sound that might have been my name. It was distorted and corrupted, but definitely recognizable. And then it charged. For a moment I wasn't able to move my legs. The sheer panic had made them feel like they were fused to the ground below them. But survival instinct took over and I ran. I'd like to say I ran with purpose, with direction with some plan for escape, but the truth is I simply ran my body moving on autopilot while my mind gibbered in terror. Behind me I could hear the creature's claws scraping against the concrete, its breathing like bellows working overtime, and, underneath it all, a sound that might have been laughter.

Speaker 1:

The derelict office building I ducked into might have one point been a small medical clinic. The lobby was filled with overturned chairs and scattered papers that had long since yellowed and curled. But the papers weren't blank. They were covered in writing reports and prescriptions, notes, all in that same unknown language. I thumbed through them briefly, but stopped when I realized I couldn't read them. There was one intake form that I had almost convinced myself had my name on it as the patient.

Speaker 1:

I found the stairwell and took the steps three at a time, as I ran up, my legs burning with the effort. Each floor I passed showed signs of recent habitation fresh footprints in the dust, filled coffee cups still sitting on the desk, computers running despite the building having no power, but no people. There was never any people. The roof was flat and graveled, surrounded by a low wall that provided minimal cover. I pressed my back against it and tried to catch my breath, listening for sounds of pursuit, but nothing. The creature had either lost interest or was waiting for me to come back down.

Speaker 1:

From up here I could see farther across this version of my town. The damage was more extensive than I'd realized. Entire blocks had been reduced to rubble, but the rubble was organized. It was arranged in patterns that suggested intelligence. Streets were cracked and overgrown, but the cracks formed geometric shapes that seemed to pulse with their own dim light. And in the distance, something was moving. No, someone was moving. No, someone was moving. They were tall, much taller than any human should be, with limbs that seemed too long for their bodies. They moved with a methodical precision that was deeply unsettling, picking through the debris with the supreme efficiency of insects. But these weren't insects.

Speaker 1:

As I watched, one of them turned its head towards my direction and I saw a smooth, featureless surface where a face should have been, and there were a lot of them. They were all sorting things, organizing them into piles according to some system I couldn't comprehend. But as I watched longer, I began to understand. They were building something, constructing it piece by piece from the debris of civilization, and the shape they were creating was familiar. It was a door. They weren't scavenging, they were preparing was familiar. It was a door. They weren't scavenging, they were preparing for something. One of them stopped and turned in my direction, as if it sensed my observation. The smooth surface of its face rippled and for a moment I thought I saw features emerging Eyes, a mouth, an expression that was almost human. And then it raised one impossibly long arm and pointed directly at me. The other stopped what they were doing and looked toward the building where I was hiding. Dozens of them, their featureless faces, turned in my direction with the single-minded focus of predators who had found their prey. I needed to get out of here. I needed to find that door.

Speaker 1:

The climb down was worse than the climb up. Every creak of the building, every whisper of the wind through the broken windows sounded like approaching footsteps. The creature was still down there somewhere waiting, and now the tall beings knew where I was by the time I reached the ground floor. My hands were shaking and my shirt was soaked with sweat. The street was empty when I emerged, but I could feel eyes watching from every shadow. The creatures, all of them, knew I was here. They were just waiting for the right moment.

Speaker 1:

I retraced my steps as best I could, but the landscape seemed to be shifting. Streets that had been straight became curved, buildings that had been on my left were now on my right. I was sure hours would pass since I walked through the door, but then I wasn't sure. Time worked differently in this place. Stretching and contracting like something alive, I was exhausted, dehydrated and starting to hallucinate At least I hoped I was hallucinating the faces I was seeing in the windows of the abandoned buildings, faces that looked human but different, older and younger, marked with expressions of fear and intrigue of watching the spectacle of me being hunted down through the streets.

Speaker 1:

I'd found what looked like a park, a small green space that had been reclaimed by nature. The tree's branches formed patterns that seemed to spell out words in dead languages, but it was still recognizably a park. I managed to find a tree large enough to hide behind and rest, to catch my breath and to decide whether I should keep running or find a safe place to keep hiding, when I heard them approaching Multiple footsteps, moving in coordination. The tall beings were coming from three directions, their movements synchronized like a military operation. They flowed through the landscape with impossible grace, their forms bending and stretching in ways that defied anatomy, and behind them, that horrible growling I'd heard before, the creature that had chased me earlier emerged from the tree line. But it wasn't alone. There were others now, dozens of them, all bearing the same twisted fusion of human and animal characteristics. But as they got closer I began to see the variations. Some of them had been children once, others had been elderly, but all had been changed, transformed into something that served the purpose of this place.

Speaker 1:

I ran towards the only opening in their formation, my legs protesting. With every step Behind me I could hear the pack giving chase. Their movements disturbed the silence, like stones thrown into still water. But it wasn't a random pursuit. They were herding me, driving me towards a specific destination. The industrial district appeared ahead of me and I felt a surge of hope If I could just reach the lot and find the door and get back to my world. It was there, standing in the middle of the lot, like it had been waiting for me this whole time, the door open and welcoming, showing a glimpse of normal blue sky and green grass beyond its frame. But the frame itself had changed. The carpings were deeper now and more elaborate, depicting scenes that made my stomach turn. And the door itself. It was narrower, much narrower.

Speaker 1:

I put everything I had into the final sprint. My lungs burned and my legs trembled, but the door was getting closer. It was twenty feet ten five. A burning and searing sensation shot through my whole body, ripping the air from my lungs as something clamped down on my leg. The pain was immediate and overwhelming. The creature's jaws were locked around my calf, its teeth digging through fabric and flesh. But these weren't animal teeth. They were human teeth, filed to points, set in a jaw that had been stretched and modified to accommodate them.

Speaker 1:

I screamed and fell forward, my hands scraping against the concrete as I tried to crawl towards the door. And then something grabbed my shirt long fingers ending in what might have been fingernails but were too sharp and too pointed. One of the tall beings had caught up. Its smooth face tilted down toward me with clinical interest, where its features should have been. The surface rippled like water and for a moment I saw something looking back at me. I reached for the doorframe, my fingers just barely touching the wood. The surface was burning hot now and the carvings moved under my touch like living things. The world beyond the opening looked impossibly bright and impossibly normal. I could see the lot as it should be overgrown but harmless, bathed in the light of a proper sunset. With everything I had left, I threw myself forward and through the opening, the door slammed shut behind me with a sound like the world ending.

Speaker 1:

I was back in my world, lying on the concrete with my leg bleeding and my shirt torn. The pain was real and immediate and grounding. The sky above me was the right color, painted with the ordinary magic of a normal sunset. But the normalcy felt paper thin, like a costume that didn't quite fit. My car was where I had left it, but the radio was still playing static when I started it up. When I looked at the dashboard clock, the digital display showed the symbols I didn't recognize the same symbols I'd seen in the other world.

Speaker 1:

The drive home was a blur of familiar streets that felt subtly wrong, traffic lights that took too long to change, street signs that seemed to flicker between different names. Other drivers who looked at me with expressions that seemed concerning my apartment building looked the same from the outside, but when I reached my floor I realized I couldn't remember which apartment was mine. The numbers on the doors seemed to shift and I tried three different keys before one worked, and when the door opened I wasn't sure if it was my apartment or just one that looked like mine. Something was wrong with the space itself. The window in my bedroom was cracked, spiderwebbed with fractures that definitely hadn't been there that morning. My books were arranged sloppily on their shelves, my coffee mug was sitting on the wrong side of the table and there were footprints from dusty or dirty shoes on the floor. The food in the refrigerator had expired, but I'd just bought it a few days ago. My mail and personal belongings were all spread out across the apartment, as if someone had been looking through them, looking for something.

Speaker 1:

I called the police, convinced that I had been robbed, and two officers arrived within 30 minutes, their faces grave with professional concern. But there was something else in their expressions Recognition, as if they'd been expecting this call or as if they'd already knew me. Where have you been, officer Martinez, asked, studying my torn clothes and my hastily bandaged bloody leg. You were reported as a missing person. We've been looking for you for two weeks. Two weeks, I'd been gone for two weeks. In my memory it had only been hours, maybe a day at the most, but the evidence was everywhere the sloppily arranged books, the expired food and someone looking through my things. They were looking for clues to where I had gone. Your employer called when you didn't show up for work, officer Childs added. Consulting her notepad, your co-worker said you'd been acting strange for weeks before you disappeared, talking to yourself, claiming your reflection was wrong and insisting that your coffee tasted like metal.

Speaker 1:

I had no memory of any of that, but as she spoke, the fragments began to resurface. Conversations I couldn't quite remember, things I had said that didn't sound like me, a life I had apparently been living while my conscious mind was elsewhere. I told them about the door, about the other world and about the creatures that had chased me. I could see the look that they passed between them, the look people share when they're dealing with someone who might be having a breakdown. But underneath I saw something else Intrigue, like they had heard this story before. Show us, officer Martinez said gently, show us where you found this door.

Speaker 1:

The lot was empty when we arrived the same overgrown concrete, the same rusted debris, the same forgotten spaces where ambition had come to die, but no door, no sign that anyone had ever been there. Except the weeds were different, flattened in a perfect rectangle, as if something heavy had stood on them for a long time and the air still carried that metallic taste. It was faint but unmistakable. I was on my knees in the weeds searching for any trace of what I experienced. When Officer Childs called out Over here, she said her voice carefully, neutral what do you make of this? Half hidden in the tall grass, something pale caught the light. A hand severed at the wrist, the skin leathery and mummified, the fingers too long and jointed in places. Human fingers weren't meant to bend the fingernails or what passed as fingernails were filed to sharp points. But it was the ring that made my blood freeze, a simple gold band engraved with a pattern I recognized. The same pattern that had been carved into the doorframe and wrapped around the ring finger was a hospital bracelet, the kind they give to you when you're admitted for observation. The name on the bracelet was mine.

Speaker 1:

The officers took pictures, made notes and asked questions I couldn't answer. They were professional, thorough and entirely convinced they were dealing with the aftermath of a crime they couldn't quite classify. But I caught them exchanging glances when they thought I wasn't looking, the kind of glances that suggest this wasn't the first time they'd been called to investigate impossible things, we'll need you to come down to the station, officer Martinez said. Finally, there are some people who want to talk to you, people who've been waiting for you to come back. The people were doctors, but not the kind I expected. They worked for a department I had never heard of conducting research into what they called boundary incidents. They showed me several files documenting cases similar to mine, people who had disappeared for weeks or months, returning with stories of doors that led to other worlds, of creatures that had once been human and of places that were familiar but wrong. Most of them had been found in the same abandoned industrial district. Many had returned with injuries that couldn't be explained by any known cause. All of them had been changed by their experiences, marked in ways that went deeper than physical scars.

Speaker 1:

The thing about boundaries, dr Smith explained her voice, carrying the weight of someone who had studied impossible things for too long. Is it? Once they've been crossed, they'll never fully close the door you found. It's not the first one and it won't be the last. She showed me some photographs of other doors found in other abandoned places around the city, always the same style, always the same carvings and always standing alone without any structure to support them. The photographs were dated, going back decades, but the doors looked identical, as if they were all the same door, appearing in different places at different times. The people who go through them, dr Smith continued. We still don't fully understand what happens to them or what the lasting effects will be. She paused on the last part, slowly raising her eyes to meet mine. We're also starting to suspect that this might not be the first time. Some have went through the door, she said with a tone of concern.

Speaker 1:

Unconsciously, my fingers had begun tracing around my wrist and my mind immediately went to the hospital bracelet with my name on it and the intake form that could have had my name on it had I been there before. Why? Dr Smith was quiet for a long moment. We're not sure what they are, but we think they're preparing, building something. The people who come back they all report the same thing Creatures that are constructing doors, organizing debris and creating pathways between worlds, as if they're planning something large scale.

Speaker 1:

I never told them about the dreams that started after that, the ones where I'm standing in my apartment looking out that cracked window and seeing the wrong version of the street beyond the glass, where the sky is the color of old brass and something tall and thin moves between the buildings with mechanical precision. Or about the sounds I hear sometimes at night, a low growl that seems to come from the space between my walls, footsteps in the hall outside my door that stop when I get up to look. Or the whisper of wind through a frame that shouldn't exist, carrying the scent of copper and decay. The mirror in my bathroom still shows a reflection that blinks a half a second too late, my coffee still tastes like metal and my digital clock still runs backward for exactly seventeen minutes every Tuesday. But now I know these aren't signs of a breakdown. They're signs of something else Evidence of a boundary that was crossed and never fully closed, proof that the world I thought I lived in was never as solid as I believed.

Speaker 1:

The lot is still there, still empty and still surrounded by a chain-link fence with faded warnings. I drive past it sometimes on my way to work and I tell myself I'm just checking to make sure it's still normal, it's still safe, still part of the world I'm supposed to live in. But last week I could have sworn. I saw something moving in the tall grass, something that shouldn't have been there Something that made my hands shake on the steering wheel and my foot press harder on the gas pedal. The radio went to static when I passed and for just a moment I heard music, the same haunting melody I had heard in the other world. The fence was still intact, the gate is still chained shut and the warning signs are still posted, but sometimes, when the light is just right and the shadows fall in just the right way, I can see the outline of something standing in the middle of the lot, something that might be a door hanging open like a wound in this world.

Speaker 1:

Dr Smith calls me once a week checking in, asking about symptoms and monitoring my condition. She's never really said it directly, but I can tell that she's waiting for something. They all are the doctors, the researchers, the other people who've crossed over and come back. We're all waiting for the same thing. Some boundaries, I've learned, aren't meant to be crossed. Some doors, once open, you never really close, and some things, once they know you exist, never stop looking for you. The routines that once felt like prison bars now feel like some kind of protection, although I'm not sure from what.

Speaker 1:

I take the same route to work, eat the same microwave dinners and fall asleep to the same blue glow of endless scrolling. Because the alternative, the other roads, the other choices, the other worlds that might be waiting just beyond the next wrong turn is too terrible to consider. But I still dream of that place sometimes, the hollow world where everything I knew had been sucked dry and left to rot, where creatures that had once been human hunted with purpose and intelligence and tall beings sorted through the debris of civilization with the patience of an archaeologist. Because even in that dead world, even running from monsters and hiding from things that shouldn't exist, I felt more alive than I have in years, more present and more real.

Speaker 1:

Some nights I lie awake and listen to the sound of the city beyond my cracked window Normal sounds, human sounds, the sounds of a world that's alive and breathing and full of possibility. But underneath it all, if I listen carefully, I can hear something else A low growl in the distance, the whisper of wind through a frame that shouldn't exist, the creak of hinges that open onto a place that shouldn't be. I know the door is out there and it's open. It's waiting for me to step through and the terrible truth is part of me is waiting too, the part that wonders if maybe I'm the one who doesn't belong in this world. The part that remembers the taste of copper in the air and thinks it might be worth going back for another sip.