Creative Writing Collection

[Updatex2] A Thousand Doors Ago

A thousand doors ago, I wouldn’t have felt all this pain. I wouldn’t have come face to face with my worst fears; the truth, reality. I wouldn’t have failed my mission.

       A thousand doors ago — from the 1st to the 250th — were rooms filled with people. One room for each. Many of the rooms held corpses within, the backs of their heads gouged out, tossed to the ground and splayed about. The smell was awful enough that I never got used to its stench through all 250 rooms. Some of the rooms had living people, their heads misshapen and shaven off, decorated with staples and stitches. I remember room 116 had a kid my age named Nicolas, and I brought him with me as I ventured further through the building.

       This place is called the Canceled, and exactly 1093 doors, four weeks, and 5 days ago, I would’ve ended up right here just like poor Nicolas. He tells me off topic stories of stars and how he thinks they look like, an obvious confusion in his face even though he had such a confident tone. The on topic conversation that I kept turning him to, was the experiments going on in this awful place. And he would tell me, ever so casually, that this was where our souls were taken away. It wasn’t necessarily true since they were only removing parts of the brain that specialized in creativity (the temporal and frontal lobes, mainly), but it was relatively the same thing as losing your soul — according to him.

       It was at door 260 that we found rooms of what I believed to be toys; toys, books, instruments, electronic devices I’ve never seen, food I never knew existed, colors I’ve never heard of, and even pictures of the past. They were held in containers, wrapped in plastics, or simply piled up on themselves. There was so many things to go through, it took us hours to reach the last door (which was, by the way, door 660) of these special items.

       Nicolas hungrily munched on a hardened sweet on a stick. It was a tight, multicolored spiral that was shaped into a circle. The following 20 doors were empty.

       I looked at the handle of door 681 and checked my watch. 8:32 am, August 2nd. My eyes widened. Two days. We’ve been going through this place for two days. Why hunger didn’t gnaw at either of us, or how we hadn’t been caught — I didn’t know. But we still had 319 doors to go.

       Opening this door was a hallway, the floor a soft red velvet in contrast to the dull tile that we currently stood on. I frowned a little and stepped through, Nicolas looking about the room in curious awe. Something felt strange, something I didn’t like, but I ventured through anyways, the Canceled following right behind me. The walls were painted a light beige with a little gold trimming; I wished Annika could see what I was seeing. It was a short hallway that we went through, a few meters in length. We came up to a desk where a secretary sat (she wore a navy attire), typing away on a computer, her dark hair up in a bun; a seemingly stereotypical secretary. There was a door behind her to her right (our left) that had the numbers 682.

She didn’t look up at us nor say anything — perhaps she was far too focused on her work to care about two rebel stowaways?

I stared at her a little, then walked around her table to near the door, and yet she still didn’t look at us. I felt confused at this, how it was strange that she wasn’t to throw us out. I may not be the sneakiest person, but I couldn’t make any sense of this. As I reached for this new doorknob, everything became dark. No pain of any sort, no voices, nothing about me. There was simply nothing.

“… He’s failed… cannot continue… should’ve returned him… can…”

Those were new. I knew who was speaking ever so quietly. But I was confused. Far more confused than before.

There was a click and a small crack of light poured through this place I was in, which I found to be a sort of rectangular room. My eyes hurt a little but they adjusted, sent back into stinging pain as the top of the rectangle-room opened.

I rubbed my eyes. Where was I?

I was standing, wired from many places in this rectangular thing — it fit me perfectly and was taller than it was longer. Looking about, I saw three people, most of them I knew, but I wasn’t at the Cancelled anymore — where was Nicolas?

Tatiana and Mo were talking — arguing, really — until the darker skinned threw her hands in the air, ending the conversation as Mo huffed off. I’ve never seen any of them like this, they always seemed so cool and collected. What happened? What happened?

“What happened?’ I croaked out, unsure if I should bring myself into this.

Tatiana sighed, pushing her dyed white hair back over and over again in frustrated motions. We stood there for some time before she came forth and embraced me.

“You failed,” she said softly. “You failed so miserably…”

Failed?

“What do you mean?” I hadn’t returned her welcoming, comforting action, and I wasn’t about to. I simply looked straight ahead at the rock wall, focusing in on each crack and curve and angle.

“You were in the Canceled simulation, to see how you would do on a mission if we were to ever send you out.”

This made sense — made sense as to why the secretary didn’t notice that holographic boy and I. I had failed far too much for the simulation to continue.

“I’m sorry,” I said plainly. I could feel her shake her head, and I heard her sniffle.

“No. It’s not your fault. We should have prepared you more…,” Tatiana said, drawing back from me and whipping the bright tears off her cheeks.

“I’ll do better next time.” I frowned a little, wanting to make things right again.

Another shake of her head. “There isn’t the time. Not for someone like you.”

Someone, like… me…?

“No, not for someone like you.”

[huehuehue im so proud of this c:  also this is the offical end of ATDA xD]