The Hallway

I come to in a hallway.  I don’t know who I am, or how I got here.  All I know is this hallway.  It stretches down into the horizon.  I feel like I’m staring into infinity.

Suddenly, I realise I’m being watched.  I turn around, ready to fight.  I see a man.  Maybe he looks like me, maybe he doesn’t.  I don’t even know what I look like.  He is dressed fairly casually, wearing jeans and a t-shirt.  Try as I might, I can’t quite figure out what they look like.

He clears his throat, and speaks.  His voice is low, almost gravelly.  “Perhaps… you should open one of the doors?”

I start to say “What doors?”

But then I realise they’ve been there all along.  I don’t know how many of them, but I know that they stretch as far as the hallway.

There must be hundreds.

I look behind where I started, but the hallway doesn’t go that way.  I guess I can only go forward.

I swallow, and put my ear to the first door.  The sounds I hear confuse me.  I look at my companion.  “It… it sounds like someone is skinning a bear.”

He raises an eyebrow.  “You can only find out if you open the door.”

I pause, my hand on the knob.  “What if I were to choose not to open it?”

“Then you shall never know.”

I nod.  This makes sense.  I open the door, and I look inside.

I close the door immediately.

My companion looks smug.  “Well?”

“There is someone skinning a bear in there.  It is another bear.”

“Oh dear.”  He shakes his head.  “Perhaps you should try the next door?”

I nod, and move on to the next door.  It’s not like there’s anything else for me to do.

“This one sounds like someone is attempting to bathe a cat.”  I open the door.

“What is it?”

“It is a cat bathing a person.”

I repeat the process one more time.  “This one sounds like hyenas at a feast.”  I open the door, and find a royal court, laden with food.

All the members of the court are hyenas.

This continues for many more doors.  I grow tired of being right, but at the same time, being wrong.  Eventually, something occurs to me.

“What if I were to open a door without listening first?”

All I get in response is an encouraging nod.

I try again.  This time, I do not listen.  I grab the handle, take a deep breath, and turn the knob.

I see a young boy.  The only thing I can tell about him is that he is blonde.  He is shivering.  The room is clearly much colder than the hallway.  I want to ask my companion if we can take the poor child with us.

He rests his hand on my shoulder.  “We cannot take from the rooms.  We can only close the door and move on.”

I nod, saddened by the knowledge that he is correct.  I begin to wonder why I am seeing these things.  I open the next door, and the next.  I see more children, getting progressively older.  On some level, I know it’s the same boy, but something seems wrong.

I can only see one feature of him at a time, and I cannot remember them from one door to the next.

While I can’t remember his face, or his blonde hair, or his brown eyes, I can remember what he does.  I can remember how I see him go from being a boy huddled in the corner of a frozen room to stealing food from a store.

I see a lot of stealing.

Eventually, something seems… different.  It’s the same boy, but… his hair is black.  I think that’s different, but I cannot remember.  I turn to look at my companion, to ask him what he knows, but all he does is smile and point to the next door.

“Please, continue.  We have many doors, and not much time.

Over time, I see the boy fall in with a gang.  I see him get more and more involved.  He gets older, he get taller.   

Eventually, he stops growing.  I imagine he’s an adult now, so I can’t call him a boy.

The man gets into fights.  It starts off simple enough, just the occasional bout in a bar.

It turns into much more.

I see him pull a knife.

I see him lose an eye.

His face has scars, but I can’t keep track of them.  Some are new, I think.  Sometimes, I think I recognise one of them.

I think he has become a hitman.  A wanted criminal.

I start to panic.  I think what might have happened if we had taken him with us.  I am about to confront my companion when I feel his hand on my shoulder.  The hand is heavy and calloused.

“These are things we cannot change.  It is too late for that.  This is a story, my friend, nothing more.”

“But why can’t I remember any of this story?  Why can’t I remember what he looks like?”

“You simply need to open more doors.”

And so I do.

Oddly enough, I don’t feel time passing.  I merely see it passing.

The man is getting older.  Perhaps he is in his early thirties.

He is successful at what he does.   I don’t know how I know this, because the only one I see is him.

I don’t know how much more of this I can take.  I turn to my companion, to plead with him to let me stop opening these doors, and seeing what has happened to the boy we saw so long ago.

I can see him now.

He is tall.  His hair is jet black, and very clearly dyed.

His face is a network of scars.

His hands are calloused, and have specks of blood on them.  I know that if I asked him, he would call them MacBethian stains.

He is missing one eye.  The remaining eye, now lonely, is brown.

I realise that I have been travelling with the boy all along.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were the boy?”

“Have you ever considered looking at yourself?”

I stop completely.  I never have.

I look down.  I recognise but one thing.

I recognise my hands.

I know that if I had a mirror, I’d recognise my face.

I know who I am.

I sink to my knees, sobbing.  How did my life go so wrong?

And yet, there are two more doors.

Two more deaths.

I open the second-to-last door.

I am not prepared for what I see.

I see myself.  I am lying on the ground, in a pool of my own blood.  I am very clearly about to die.

But this can’t be the end!  There’s one more door!

I reach out, and I fumble with the knob.

I open the door.

There is no room behind it.

I step through.