Hall of Infinite Doors
"What are you afraid of?" you ask yourself. Does the thought of what lies beyond each door strike fear in you? Or are you scared there's nothing there, nothing but the Hall and loneliness and emptiness forever? "I think I'm just looking for a purpose," you answer yourself. "I'm searching for answers in this place, for reason and meaning, and I don't think I'm going to find it behind any of those doors."
Your answer makes some sense on a deeper level than you're used to considering - beyond logic, below emotion. You can feel something primal prowling about in the depths of your thoughts, a sense of fate or destiny pulling you ever onward like the magnetic tug of a compass needle. You're searching for an end, you decide, something beyond the hallway and its rooms.
The ever-present fluorescent lights seem to flicker like quicksilver, so briefly you're not completely sure it happened. Did you blink, just now? Has the faint buzzing noise you're hearing always been? Are you only now noticing the sound of electricity in the Hall - or is the buzzing in your head? Surely it isn't a good sign that you've been talking to yourself?
Another of those ubiquitous wooden doors stands ahead on the left, about as durable as your feet are well-rested. It's a wonder, you think, that it hasn't yet fallen off its hinges. A sudden sense of forboding fills you. If there's nothing but emptiness, void beyond that door, what will happen when it inevitably falls apart? And if something waits inside - or outside, as the case may be - when the door is gone, will it enter the Hall as well? Perhaps this is how you got here, through some sort of dysfunction or breakdown in the fabric of this place.
You laugh nervously, and the shallow tittering of your voice echoing off the walls scares you almost as much as the thought of company, any company after all the miles and hours, days, years of silence. You've arrived at the door. Someone has taken the effort to paint this one a dull uniform shade of gray; the door is flaking badly and chips of the color litter the ground. Small scratches and fissures dot its surface; some, you think, pierce through to the other side, but you perceive only blackness when you put your face to a hole near the rusted hinges and peer at whatever is on the other side.
Your answer makes some sense on a deeper level than you're used to considering - beyond logic, below emotion. You can feel something primal prowling about in the depths of your thoughts, a sense of fate or destiny pulling you ever onward like the magnetic tug of a compass needle. You're searching for an end, you decide, something beyond the hallway and its rooms.
The ever-present fluorescent lights seem to flicker like quicksilver, so briefly you're not completely sure it happened. Did you blink, just now? Has the faint buzzing noise you're hearing always been? Are you only now noticing the sound of electricity in the Hall - or is the buzzing in your head? Surely it isn't a good sign that you've been talking to yourself?
Another of those ubiquitous wooden doors stands ahead on the left, about as durable as your feet are well-rested. It's a wonder, you think, that it hasn't yet fallen off its hinges. A sudden sense of forboding fills you. If there's nothing but emptiness, void beyond that door, what will happen when it inevitably falls apart? And if something waits inside - or outside, as the case may be - when the door is gone, will it enter the Hall as well? Perhaps this is how you got here, through some sort of dysfunction or breakdown in the fabric of this place.
You laugh nervously, and the shallow tittering of your voice echoing off the walls scares you almost as much as the thought of company, any company after all the miles and hours, days, years of silence. You've arrived at the door. Someone has taken the effort to paint this one a dull uniform shade of gray; the door is flaking badly and chips of the color litter the ground. Small scratches and fissures dot its surface; some, you think, pierce through to the other side, but you perceive only blackness when you put your face to a hole near the rusted hinges and peer at whatever is on the other side.