This is a writing piece I wrote and submitted back in October to the Scholastic Competition. At that time, there were very few people I showed it to; however, I have decided to expand this blog to include some of my wider interests, as those of you who read it may have guessed by some of my previous posts. One of my interests is writing, so I believe this is an excellent way to kick off the addition of these types of posts to the blog. I present…
Door 319
There is a room in life that traps us. No way to escape it except through wishful thinking, patience, and a door. You’d hear this and think it to be a riddle. I read this and know it to be true, for I have been in the room. It shows itself differently to everyone who experiences it. For some, it is a circular hole in the sand of the beach. For others, it’s lodged in a precipice upon a snowy Alpine mountain. In rare cases, someone might go through life and never see their room. That seems like the ideal situation, to never be trapped, but somehow the more a person finds themself in their room and manages to escape, the stronger and kinder they are. Humans are drawn to those who have escaped the room ten, twenty, even forty times, while those who never see those four solid walls tend to subconsciously push others away. It’s not their fault; their life has just been free of hardship and pain to the point where they lack the ability to understand that others can be trapped.
For me, my room is a rather plain, indiscriminate hallway. There are white walls, some basic modern art that all looks the same, and stereotypical hotel-floor light fixtures. My feet stand on top of a slightly stained beige carpet that absorbs any sound my footsteps dare to make. In my hall, the only sounds I can hear are voices around me that echo the same, tired advice. “Just open the door,” one whispers as it ghosts past my ear. “Walk to the end of the hall towards the exit sign” another explains to me in a condescending tone. A third, exasperated voice asks me, “Why don’t you just walk out and leave?” I wish it were that easy.
When I would find myself locked in at other times, the door might have taken a while to appear. Perhaps a minute or two, even up to a week, or sometimes, it showed up and opened immediately. In those cases, once I had spotted it, it was permanent and unchanging. It never abandoned me. Like me, most children grew to trust the door and seek out its beckoning promise from a young age, and we began to take its appearance for granted. The harshest lesson for one to learn is that eventually, the door will not open. It will show itself, fill the heart with wishes and desires, open millimeter by millimeter, then slam shut at the cruelest yet most perfect moment. To further prove its point, the outline will remain against the wall to show what it used to be. An escape. A guaranteed safety net granted to me at no cost except that of living. The hardest thing to figure out at this point in life is what makes this particular hall I’m trapped in inescapable. What makes the door close shut and lock in this instance? Is it me who has changed? The door? The person behind the door? Or the very reason I am in the hall to begin with?
I’d been lucky enough before to always see the door. Never has it taunted me or tricked me, and never have I doubted its presence. However, this time, the second after I took four paces down the white tunnel, a faint outline of the door shone at the end. The door, a miracle for tired eyes, slowly creaked open until I saw a person’s face peering out from behind it. This was new. Normally, I never saw who unlocked and opened the door for me. A prickle of uneasiness ran down my spine as I wondered, “Who is this person?” Something tugged at the back of my skull as I riffled through all the names and faces I’ve seen through life. They were familiar to me, and I somehow felt that I should be calmed by their presence, even though the change in the usual hall situation disturbed me. Suddenly, a wave of relief washed over me as I recognized them; I knew I was safe. For this was a friend who always saved me, always helped me, always loved me. And yet, as I ran down the hall eagerly towards their smiling face, my fingers outstretched for the doorknob, they slammed it shut. The outline of the door dissipated in the dusty white wall, and my momentum carried me face-first into the harsh wood paneling.
I fell flat on my behind, momentarily stunned, then stood up slowly and dusted myself off. Tentatively, I walked to where the knob glowed with a metallic hue. I could feel myself drawn to it. I could hear the voices from behind it calling out to me. Something about this door was so tempting and promising and yet, something about this door was false. This door was full of lies. Indeed, as I held the back of my hand close to the metal knob, I could feel it radiating fiery heat and snatched my hand away. My feet backpedaled and I struggled to figure out what was going on. Why did they lock the door? How am I supposed to escape? My mind ran in circles and circles in tandem with my pacing feet as the walls spun around me, the art blurring together into a monotonous red-blue-white line in my vision, and I found myself flat on my behind again.
After a minute or two’s worth of inner monologuing and debating, I decided to look around for another door, or even a nice unlocked window. The second I stood up and turned back down the hall, an entire series of sleek, wooden doors appeared along the walls, each with a number on top, starting at 301 closest to me. This was new. These doors had never shown themselves to me before; in fact, this entire hallway had a tinge of uniqueness in my mind. It put me on edge, and I kept myself alert. When I held my hand up to the handle of Door 301, I could sense no imminent danger coming from it, so I grabbed and turned the handle. Locked. I moved onto Door 302. No change from the first one, I thought, but locked all the same. I continued on and on until I reached Door 319. I wouldn’t be able to recount what was going through my head when I reached it– I just had a sense that this was my escape. Something about this one was different; for one, it had a slot for a card, just like most hotel doors.
Unsurprisingly, since all eighteen other doors refused to open, when I tried to twist open the golden knob my hand skidded off the metal and the door remained shut. I still had the gut feeling that this was the one, if only I could figure out how it opened. My feet stepped back, and I felt my heel hit a small, plastic rectangular card resting on the carpet. There were no words on it, only a black, shiny strip, like the one on a Visa credit card. I stooped down, picked it up, and slid it through the plastic sensor. With a green flash and ding that reverberated down the white plastered hall, the handle unstuck, and I was able to turn it ninety degrees right. The lock clicked, the door slid open, and I stepped through into the bright mid-July sun. I heard the door close behind me and turned around to figure out what had just happened, but the only evidence that remained of Door 319 was a small, plastic rectangular card with a black, shiny strip.
