Back

I'm back. Back here, back in this house. Back in the same fucking place I left.

Five days. Five fucking days I've been gone? Fuck.

I'm not stupid. Before I opened the Door, I packed a bag full of as much food and water as it could carry. I packed a flashlight, too, in case it was dark wherever the Door led. Then I opened the Door and stepped through.

Into a hallway. It was a long, featureless, white hallway. It was incredibly long, but I could still see where it ended with another Door (or perhaps this one was just a regular door, I think, ready to lead me outside to a world with sunlight and skies). So I started to walk.

And walk and walk and walk. And the other Door didn't seem to be getting any closer. So I ate something and drank some water (and, yes, saw a man about a horse, if you get my drift) and continued on. And on and on and on.

Still, the Door wasn't any closer. I turned around and saw that the Door I had come through was also far away. My immediate thought: motherfucker. My second thought: this is Zeno's Infinite Fucking Hallway.

Do you know what Zeno's Paradox is? Imagine a straight line. You can walk along this line to the halfway point. But to reach the halfway point, you first have to reach halfway to the halfway point. And first you have to reach halfway to the halfway halfway point. And so on and so forth, ad fucking infinitum.

But I couldn't turn back, so I walked on. And kept walking, while my food supply dwindled. I slept on the cold floor and I crapped on the cold floor and I walked miles and miles and miles. I thought I walked a hundred miles one day and then I looked in my bag and found I was down to one can of beans and one bottle of water.

At one point, I remember I came across a window in the wall. I looked out to see a city street lined with tall buildings of steel and glass. I must have been way up high, because I could see the city streets rearranging themselves. I looked out and saw a man walking down one of the shifting streets and he looked up at me and waved. I waved back.

Then I continued walking. I ate the beans slowly and portioned the water carefully. I wasn't going to let this fucking hallway beat me.

Eventually, however, I came to my last bean. I dropped my bag on the ground and clutched the half-filled water bottle in my hand and continued walking. The water bottle became quarter-filled and then one-fifth filled and then suddenly it was empty. I dropped it too and continued walking.

I became so very tired. I tried holding on the walls for support, but there was nothing to hold on to. I tripped and fell down and couldn't get the energy to get back up. I looked down the hallway I had come from and I could barely make out the Door I had gone through. I turned my head to the direction I was walking...

...and there it was. Five feet away. It hadn't been five feet away before, but now it was. I pushed myself up carefully and took slow steps to the Door and opened it.

And I found myself back here.