The Forbidden Door

I work in an office building. What a boring way to start, right? On the contrary, this is no normal office building. So you won't be surprised to hear that this isn't a normal story.

I had been working in the building for two years before I noticed anything was amiss. I had shown up every day in my suit and tie. I walked to my cubicle, which had no pictures on the desk. No sports teams represented on a coffee mug. There was nothing personal to it at all. This stuff wasn't against the rules or anything. You see, before I found out the truth I had no interest in these things. I had no clue who I was, or what I was born to do. And I never even considered that there was anything wrong with that. Well, worry not. Because I found out that fate had been holding a special surprise for me. It would need all of my attention, and that was why I hadn't lent it to anything else.

It was a Thursday when I first noticed the door. Just after lunch, I was walking through the fourth floor. Who knows why I was up there that day. I worked on the third. But as soon as I passed by the door I stopped dead. It was brilliant, fiery blue and looked ancient. The paint on the wood seemed fresh, as if it wasn't dry yet. In an otherwise drab office space I couldn't believe someone had taken the liberty of rendering it such an expressive color. I was tempted to reach out and open it. The copper handle beckoned to me, but I was somehow taken aback. This was far too strange for my ordinary life and frankly none of my business.

I went back to my desk and finished my work. It was my job to decide what to call different ingredients in the nutritional facts. You know, the ones you see on any food label? The trick is that there are some words that drive people away within certain demographics and some that make people feel that they are buying wholesome, healthy food. This was my useless occupation, which easily absorbed the rest of the day like it had swallowed up the last two years of my life.

As I left for home, I ran into my coworker in the lobby. Sarah was a kind woman, who I had always had a bit of a crush on. I was definitely attracted to her in a physical way but there was something more to her. I saw her at some point every day. She stuck out like a sore thumb to me with her profound calmness and warmth. I could especially tell I was moved by her voice. Her timbre was unordinary, at the same time piercing and relaxed.

We spoke for a minute or so every time we saw each other. Some kind of connection had formed between us over the two years since I was hired. Sarah was pretty high up in the company, but not my direct boss. She had already been working as an IT supervisor well before I started working there.

It struck me that her voice and the door were the only two unusual things I had ever seen in the double lozenge shaped office building. I was tempted to ask her about it but was once again moved away by my desire for a reliable, simple life.

We bid each other goodnight in a kind of flirting sweetness and I walked out to the parking garage. When I reached my car I wished I had worked up the nerve to ask about the door. What was that room? Why was I so unexplainably interested in it? I shook my head free of the thoughts and buckled my seatbelt. That night when I got home I had the strangest dream.

I was at work. I got off on the fourth floor from the elevator. Down the hall, around the corner I approached the place where the blue door had been. But it wasn't there. Walking past me and humming to herself was Sarah, who paid me less mind than usual and kept walking toward the elevator. She had only glanced at me momentarily as we passed. It was very casual. Then I woke up.

When I arrived at work the next day I immediately went to go see the door. It was definitely there. Paint just as fresh as the day before. A knob of polished copper, asking my hand to give it a twist. I speed-walked past it to keep myself from stopping. Then went back to my desk again and worked the rest of the day. It bothered me, but I managed to keep myself from checking for two more days. Then the next night I had a very similar dream. I had never had one repeat before in my life.

The days passed and I often stopped to look at the door. Tantalized by it, I eventually was paying it a visit at least once a day. On top of that, I had the dream over and over. That the door wasn't really there. In the dream, Sarah was sometimes around and sometimes not. Always we barely interacted. I would always wake up pretty quickly and break into a cold sweat. One day I knew. I had to figure something out about the door once and for all.

I woke up early that day. Getting ready was a chore because I just wanted to go open it already. Luckily I had a key to the building so I could go up and take a look before business hours. I held my breath on the elevator ride. What if the door was locked? I had to know what was behind it. The bell dinged, the lift doors opened, and I practically ran down the hall. When I came around the corner I almost tripped and fell in fright. The door was nowhere to be seen. I went back to my desk, waiting to wake up. I didn't. I worked the whole day through, looking for something that would give me a hint. This had to be a dream.

The sign never came, and I went back home and immediately to bed for another dreamless night. When I woke up I repeated the same routine as the day before, rushing into work to see what the situation was. Could yesterday have all been a dream? Maybe. But it had seemed very real to me. I got to work and let myself in. And you wouldn't believe it; the door was still not there. My day passed. The next day it was back. I started to try and track patterns but after another two weeks I was sure it was absolutely random whether I would see it there or not. And each day was definitely real. I could swear it. I started to wonder if I had gone crazy. No, it couldn't be that. The door was the only part that was strange. I was normal.

I fought with myself over this for weeks. Whenever I would talk to Sarah I would have the strangest desire to tell her about my fascination with the door. One Thursday I checked to make sure it was there. Then I went to Sarah's office and closed the door. She gave me an inquisitive look.

"Have you ever noticed the blue door on level 4 of our building?"

Her eyes went wide, as if she was coming out of a trance.

"Yes. That room is kind of a secret actually. I don't talk about it to anyone here at the company."

"What's behind it? It may sound weird, but I have some strange fascination with it."

"That's not strange at all really," She smirked. "But I can't tell you what's in there. I don't think you really want to know."

I knew she was right. What would I do with secret information like that. I didn't want any drama in my life. Things were perfectly fine the way they were. I thanked her for letting me confide in her and left the office. I had a weird feeling about our interaction though. Like maybe I was on some sort of autopilot during it. I felt uneasy, like she had guided me away from the topic so nonchalantly. It was kind of suspect really.

I had to look for myself. So I went straight to floor 4. The door was still there. Thank God! As I approached I felt the same uneasiness come over me as before. I reached out for the knob. It sent out a single rippling pulse that stopped my hand in its tracks, like a shock. What on Earth was that? I heard footsteps approaching behind me. High heels by the sound of it. There was no doubt in my mind who I would see when I turned around.

"Too curious for your own good," Sarah teased.

"I don't know why I can't let it go."

"Well, maybe you really do want to know."

I nodded affirmatively.

"You should know, there's no turning back once you see what's inside."

"Can't you just tell me what's inside? Then I can decide for myself with no risk."

"What's inside this room," She patted the door firmly. "Is what's inside of you. And if I told you, you wouldn't believe me."

We paused there. I furrowed my brow at the flirting tone of her assertion.

"Do you want to know what's inside of you? You've always hidden it from yourself."

"What do you know about me?" I asked, offended. "I'm not trying to hide anything. And I'll prove it to you!"

I reached out in a jerking motion, making it past the pulse from the door knob. When I clutched it in my hand it sent what felt like electricity up through my whole body. Suddenly I couldn't let go. I turned to look at Anne and we locked eyes. She began to smirk knowingly as I turned the handle. There was a sound like a squeaky spring being slowly stretched. As the door cracked open I was pulled in through the meager slit before it could open wider.

Shocked and claustrophobic I was floating in the dark. I felt a desire for more space and light. Sure enough my surroundings synchronized with my wants. A vast landscape bloomed before me with a sun coming up on the horizon. Fields of the greenest grass waved in the wind across distant hills. Graceful and colorful fish flew through the sky. I felt a warmth radiating from behind me and turned around.

There stood Sarah, radiant and bright as the sunniest day. Her wardrobe had changed to loose and flowing fabric hanging around her perfect form. Not entirely solid as her anatomy fluctuated, she glowed with a pulsing purple energy and I fell to my knees before her. Sarah spoke, her voice having changed to accommodate her blooming body. It washed over me with a depth of irresistible sensuality.

"What you find here is exactly what desires lie inside you. Actually it is the perfect combination of what desires lie in both of us. This space morphs and exists based on our deep, barely conscious agreement. The only reason it is here is that we are in agreement. Do you notice anything particular about our dynamic?"

"Yes," I said in a hypnotized voice. "I want to obey you. Whatever you want."

I had never really thought of it before but this seemed strangely natural to me. I wondered how I had missed it in our interactions throughout regular life. I was left to wonder if I was dreaming now.

"That's why we are in agreement. You've had the thought a million times but always pushed it aside before it could speak to you. That's why you have never done anything even remotely interesting with your life. You couldn't accept your most basic desire. To be mine to mould as I wish."

It is almost impossible to explain what this place felt like. As any desire rose in my mind, it manifested before me in unison with my thought. I grew a few inches taller, then reverted to my normal height. All the money I had ever wanted locked itself in a vault under my ownership. Even a baseball game I wished I would have won as a kid came careening past with screams of victory and disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. For an hour I played out thousands of momentary wishes in a shifting, disorienting display. The only thing that remained constant was Sarah's perfect visage radiating and smiling as I tried to solidify some sort of reality.

"It's a little overwhelming at first, I know. I've been experimenting with the malleable dream world for years now."

"So this really is a dream."

"Well, sort of. Dreams are just a different kind of life."

"Okay, you're losing me Sarah."

"Hmm, how to explain? Do you ever ponder how close you've come to making a completely different decision? How your life would have taken a totally different trajectory? Well, what I've discovered is that those lives exist too. Scientists, time travel films and novels, and all kinds of folks have speculated about the possible existence of parallel universes. Our sober and certain human minds in the throws of Western culture are designed to filter certain things out. To see just a manageable slice. But there's actually so much more. In fact, everything else exists somewhere, anything you can imagine."

"You're getting a little too crazy and deep for me here. How does this have anything to do with dreams?"

Sarah looked at me inquisitively, as if trying to decide how she could move my mind as she desired.

"Do you ever wake up and completely lose a dream?"

"Yeah, it actually happens most of the time for me. I don't remember much."

"Sometimes you remember more and sometimes less. Dreams can feel like they last minutes, hours, or days."

"Well, I've never had one last days before."

"Are you sure? Think about the last couple weeks for a minute."

I looked into Sarah's eyes blankly as my recent struggle with reality flashed through my head. Nothing in my surrounding space was solid, still a fluctuating flash of desires passing through my head. And consequently through my life. I realized she was right in some way, I truly didn't know what was a dream anymore. I could have been in one for my whole life at this point.

"Sometimes you recall more and sometimes less. But it always has some strange relevance to the life you wake up into. Some connection to what's been on your mind lately. My proposal is this. Each night when we call it a day and lay down to sleep, we pass through everything else. No possibility goes unexperienced. But we only bring back with us a little piece. Something we can grasp onto, something palatable."

"That makes sense. Sometimes I have dreams that I can't even describe in words. I'm left with just a feeling. And it slowly slips away."

"It slips into your carefully carved reality. An unconscious sinew running through your life."

"There's so much I just can't see."

"It's true, but maybe together we can see it all."

"You know I'm yours. Show me everything, Sarah."

The transformation that was occurring in me is once again hard to capture in words. Two weeks ago I had been completely embedded in a mundane life. I had no interest in the words of philosophers, so-called prophets, or any of that stuff that I had written off as hokey nonsense. I had thought I was in control of a bland, predictable life.

But it was suddenly so clear; each moment I had lived was a carefully woven fabric of possibility. A living fluid that I had only seen as a mechanistic and meaningless chain reaction of chemicals. My mind was navigating through a vast sea of desires turning into creation. But I had never dared to steer off the rails. I owed Sarah the entire multiverse, because that is what she had given me in one minute of talk. And in showing me through a seemingly magical door. Besides, even if there were no logical reason I had an inexplicable inclination to serve her. Here in this place.

"Well, before I can show you much I have to let you settle down. Notice how everything is still in such flux that we can't rest anywhere. The only thing you're sure about is me."

"What can I do to stop all of the apparitions?"

"You can't. You can only let them exhaust themselves as they arise. We will watch together, every desire you have buried and fought must now come to pass."

"We're going to be here forever by that rhetoric!"

"Forever is a lot longer than you think."

Time passed. It felt like days. Sarah held me softly from behind as we witnessed the many dancing patterns of my life. She saw my adolescent hopes, my college wishes, and my professional dreams. Then something occurred to me.

"Sarah, I hate to bring this up. But dreams aren't always pleasant. Why is this only all of the good things I wish for."

"I knew we would have to go here eventually. Well, we're going to have to get this over with. Things ripen in their own time. It just so happens your mind hadn't processed the implications just yet. But now it's time for us to see everything else."

The landscape grew dark. I was filled with an unshakeable fear. Out of this terrifying void rose a giant scorpion, glowing red out of its crevices. It towered above me, arching its tail as if to sting me. Sarah leapt up and shoved it away, fighting it into the dark. But when she returned, she had changed. Her facial features were sharper and she had grown to be twenty feet tall. She was suddenly clad in a leather corset, a tight leather pencil skirt, and thigh high boots. She brandished a whip of proportional size.

"This is how it has to be my love. There is no pleasure without pain. And there is no pain greater than that which can come from those you care about. And sometimes pain is best caused by someone who cares about you. If you focus on me you don't have to be lost in the confusion of your fear's variety. But this you will still have to endure."

With that she cracked the whip firmly against my rear causing a sting more painful than anything I had ever experienced. I wept immediately, but she was just getting started. Sarah began to whip me all over, a sick pleasure written on her face. I curled up into a ball and cried as she beat me.

"Open up, dearest. I need to access your most sensitive parts."

I obeyed without thinking, exposing my body to her blows. She whipped me all over, a giantess in comparison to my tiny stature. She showed the smallest bit of mercy, which maybe hurt even more. I could feel a tiny thread of the love she had shown me, taking the form of the whip she now beat me senseless with. I have no clue how long this lasted, I suppose until I lost consciousness.

When I awoke, I lay on a heavenly bed. Sarah was spooning my naked body with hers from behind. She rubbed some sort of cool liquid on my burning, aching skin. It had a magical quality to it, radiating like a cool breeze and waterfall mist deep inside me. My gashes and welts healed in moments as she applied the sweet smelling oil. As her hand dried she placed it in between her legs coating it in what I realized had been her womanly juices all along.

She rubbed me down until I felt like a cloud. Tears rolled onto the bed and formed a pool of glistening colorful droplets. It was then she spoke softly.

"I'm sorry you had to endure that honey. You see, our desires are not always so sweet. My desires, your desires. They are mysterious, and the only way I can explain them is that you can't have anything if you don't have both sides. And we've been experiencing so much of the pleasure that pain had to come around just as strongly."

"I understand. I really do. It's strange but all of this seems really natural to me. But does this mean the kindness you're showing me right now has to be switched someday? I just don't know how much I can take."

"This is why you were drawn to the mundane, love. When you work in a regular office, the ups and downs are small. You receive little flirts from the woman you never had the guts to pursue. You get money and comforts for a boring day of work. And for this life of simplicity, you get an unquenchable feeling that there is something more. This is why the door came into your life. Why I came into your life."

"I said I don't know how much I can take. But with you here, I'd really like to find out."

"That's all I ask. I want to burn like flames, and rest under heavy blankets of cloud. I want to go through every degree of bittersweet desire with you. And together we will find our home. Whether it's off in the formless changing ether, or back where we started."

"Thank you Sarah. I can't wait to traverse it all with you! So what's next?"

"Now we have to test you."

And she snapped her finger.

I awoke in my bed, back at home. "What an odd dream," I thought. But wait! What was this nagging feeling I had. Something about that dream. It began to slip away. I climbed out of bed, groping toward a cup of coffee.

Work that day felt sort of odd and surreal. Boring too. I went through my reports, analyzing data of people's consumption preferences. I thought about how no one really knew they were being manipulated. They just read through those ingredients, not really concerned enough to know what they were being fed. Even those who thought they were careful, we could slip by something that made our production cheaper even if it slightly decreased the quality of the product.