The Other Room

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This story was contributed by RodneyVSmith

"Tell me a story," the man said greedily. "It doesn't have to be your story, or even a good story, as long as it is true."

Sam paused in the doorway, more than a little nervous now. He glanced toward the front door of the apartment and licked his lips, seriously considering just making a run for it. The apartment had already given him the creeper vibes from the time he had entered, and the emaciated figure of the old man sitting in the poorly lit corridor wasn't helping things. There was a flickering blue light from behind the old man as if from a swinging lightbulb on a chain, but not entirely; it was just the only explanation that Sam's mind jumped to that seemed to make sense.

Sam dragged his eyes back to the old man and tried on a smile that didn't feel quite right.

"How would you know?" he asked, trying to be jovial, but his humour seemed to fall flat in the apartment. "If I lied, how would you know?"

The old man turned his head to look at Sam for the first time and his grin was as humourless as Sam's failed joke.

"I'd know," he said. A spasm seemed to cross his face, his muscles twitching uncontrollably before the contraction worked its way down his body in the space of a second. It caused the old man to shake his head uncontrollably and roll his shoulders before he regained full control. It was enough to set Sam's heart racing as he wondered exactly what kind of madman he was facing.

Sam took a step towards the front door, deciding that it simply wasn't worth it.

"Don't you want to see the door?" The man asked then as if sensing that he was losing his customer. "Don't you want to see another world?"

Sam froze with his hand on the door handle, his eyes still on the old man to make sure he stayed exactly where he was. You could never tell with crazy people.

"Mister, I don't even know what I'm doing here," Sam admitted. He gestured at the dark apartment, only lit by a single orange light in the doorway, and of course that flickering blue light down the corridor. "But I can tell you that if anybody has a magic door that goes to another universe, it's definitely not going to be you."

The apartment itself was a hoarder's wet dream, stacks of decades-old newspapers, telephone books and old magazines covering every surface, and in some cases going all the way to the ceiling. There was a funk to the apartment, an accumulation of dust, grease, sweat and despair that clung to everything. If any daylight had been allowed to enter the apartment, it might have helped, but only a little; it might have only revealed stacked boxes of broken treasures that the old man had been loath to get rid of due to whatever mental illness he was dealing with. It might also have revealed the odd thing that Sam had noticed even as the old man had spoken to him for the first time: the boxes and stacks of hoarded junk stopped at some invisible line in the living room. The corridor was empty except for the chair on which the old man sat.

The old man shrugged and slumped back onto the chair.

"I'm not here to hurt anybody," he said then with laboured breathing. "I'm just an old man." Wheeze. "If anything, I should be the one who's scared that one of you," wheeze, "is going to come in here and kill me." Wheeze, wheeze. "It's going to happen eventually, you know. That's how my story is going to end." Wheeze. He looked at Sam, almost slyly. "But you're not here for my story, are you?"

Perhaps it was the wheezing that finally convinced Sam. Anybody who was having that much difficulty breathing wasn't going to be a threat to him. The old man was all skin and bones, and Sam was confident that his own six-feet of height and 200lbs of muscles was enough to overpower one crazy old man.

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