The Door

A Short story i had to do for a Final Exam. Its baced on a painting.

I am a passageway, nothing more then that. Many people pass by me, day and night, big and small, old and young. The scrap their finger prints on the creases of my wood finish as they exit or enter. I am merely the door. The only door that can see what others can’t, that can hold in secrets, and lock things in from the outside. I’ve seen things that aren’t meant to be seen, and heard things that aren’t unmeant to be heard.

     It was late June; the summer sun had melted onto my wood-like skin, warming me up instantly. Warm and sticky hands gripped the edges of the door way, and swiftly passed into the room behind me, and then I was closed and locked. A conversation bounced off the walls and sank into the floor boards. It rang through my rusted hinges, my wrinkled skin like butter, and I could hear and see everything. A Man I have never seen cross my way before, slightly tall, a long dark beard and in a suit in tie. The man walked around the room, glancing at every corner and looking into stray cabinets. He then walked casually towards a woman and a man who had been cradling a child. The Mysterious man began to talk. His speech was muffled and I could not make out what he was saying, but with each breath a rush of anger filled his face and shot out at the couple who had been sitting on the bed. They would turn pale and back off slightly and dared not to ask any questions. By the look on their faces, something was going to go terribly wrong, or it may have already.

   The unknown man once again took a stroll around the small, empty room, and then walked back to the couple for a few final words of good bye. The mans eyes were closed when he spoke then he opened them again, and exited the room, and passed under me, as I had captured a large scent of fancy cologne. Once I closed, the woman cried into her hands, and the tears ran through the creases in her fingers. The man held the infant close and cradled it softly as he rocked it back and forth, whispering soft words and crying softly under his old and tired breath. And they sat there weeping until the sun rose then next morning.

     The early morning sun scattered in small smudges around the room. The woman was feeding the infant, and the man was looking over a pile of unknown papers, with a look of mere dread on his face. The light that had hung over them by a thin wire flickered each time they moved around, and the sound of rodents scurrying through the walls was loud and noticeable. The window that hung over the bed was open and cast in a sweet yet sour smell of the outside world, which I had never seen. An extremely bright light covered the opening of the window, and spread out over the bed. A gust of wind flew it and shook the bed sheets, rattled the light bulbs and flew the papers the man had been looking over, all around the room, in a flurry of white. The man got up, and swore as he was trying to recapture the loose papers. One of the papers had flown out of the window and off to the unknown. The man reached out the window, half of his body was wedged between the two sides. The man pulled back and sat on the bed. He sighed unsuccessfully, and rubbed his forehead. He then tried to flatten out the once neat papers back to their original state. The woman sang sweetly to the infant as she wrapped it in a large colorful blanket. The infant’s eyes were closed and its thumb was in its mouth. The woman continued to sing, and the man closed the window, continuing to read over the papers, on the other side of the room. The woman slowly stopped singing and all had gone quiet.

      Another day had gone by, then another and yet again another day, same as the last. The room started to get smaller and smaller looking as the items with in it, started to diminish and the people as well started to diminish. The woman was extremely thin, her face was stained with dirt and large purple bags formed under her small pink eyes. She was weak and her arms and legs were just skin and bone, unable to hold her self up, she had just stayed in bed. The Infant was in better shape, it was still thin and filthy but it was able to crawl. As for the man, he too was thing and his cheek bones were shown through his face, and his boney hands and legs, still made it around slowly, as if he were thirty years older then he really was. The man sat beside the woman and thought to himself quietly as the woman sang a soft tune in her dry and cracked voice. It echoed through the walls and out the window for the entire world to hear.

      Night fell slowly on the family. The light that had once hovered over their head was gone, and the only source of light they had was a small candle that burned in the center of the room, casting and eerie and luminescent feeling. The woman fed small pieces of bread to the infant and the man nibbled on a small cracker, as he watched the small candle light flicker. Someone knocked on my and turned the locked knob. The man stood slowly and walked over to me, opening me and looking at the man who stood in the door way. It had been the man from before, but behind him were two other men, that were dressed the same way he was, in a large black suit and a long beard, falling to their chests. The feeble man spoke, with a desperate pleading look on his face, but the man in the suit punched the man across the face and he went tumbling to the floor, holding his bloody nose. The unknown man approached the woman and child; the man smirked, and spoke more gently to the woman and child. But the woman’s face creased with anger, and she grabbed the candle and jabbed it into the mans eyes. The man screamed in pain, shouting something loudly, and the two other men who had followed them, pulled out a gun and shot both the man, woman, and child. Leaving them dead on the floor. The three men ran out and slammed me behind them. As I watched the sun come up and hover itself over the lifeless bodies that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for years. Lying dead in a bloody mess. They had come with nothing and left with nothing.