“The Door to Different”

PART I

Evan Thatcher had never wanted to move to Wyoming, but the divorce had left him with few options. The apartment was cheap, which was about all it had going for it. The walls were thin enough to hear his neighbor’s TV, the windows let in more wind than light, and the carpet felt stiff under his feet, as if decades of dirt had been pressed into the fibers and never quite scrubbed out. It wasn’t home, but that was the point. Home had been a small house in Portland with a backyard that his ex-wife now owned outright. This was just a place to start over.

He had driven across three states with his life packed into the back of a U-Haul, and now the moving boxes sat in the center of the living room, waiting to be unpacked. The first thing he set up was his bed, then his coffee maker. Everything else could wait. The apartment had come furnished, though the décor suggested an elderly landlord with questionable taste. The floral-patterned couch sagged in the middle, and the table in the kitchenette bore deep scratches across its cheap laminate surface.

The longer he lingered in the silence of his new home, the more restless he felt. It was too quiet, too still, and the weight of it settled uncomfortably over him. He grabbed a box cutter from his bag and began opening the nearest carton, pulling out dishes wrapped in newspaper. He set a few plates in the cabinet above the sink before returning to the living room.

That was when the red door appeared.

Evan froze.

It hadn’t been there before.

His fingers tightened around the roll of newspaper still clutched in his hand. He had looked at that wall minutes ago—had walked past it, had stacked boxes against it. It had been nothing but bare beige drywall. But now, a door stood there.

It didn’t belong—not just in the sense that it hadn’t been there when he moved in, but in a way that unsettled something deep in his brain. The rest of the apartment was dull, with beige walls and white trim, but this door was an explosion of color. Garish reds and golds swirled together in ornate carvings, patterns too intricate to fully take in all at once. The wood itself had a high gloss sheen, polished to the point of reflecting the dim light from the single overhead bulb.

Evan ran a hand over his face, suddenly exhausted. He had been awake for nearly twenty hours, running on gas station coffee and sheer determination. Maybe he had missed it before—he hadn’t exactly done a thorough sweep of the place. Still, something about the door set his nerves on edge.

The handle was brass, gleaming and untouched by time. He hesitated, then reached out to grasp it, half-expecting the metal to be ice-cold, but it was warm against his palm. He turned the knob just enough to test if it was locked. It wasn’t. The door shifted slightly, revealing nothing but inky blackness beyond the threshold. The darkness was absolute, like a hole punched into the fabric of reality. He couldn’t see the floor, the walls, or anything beyond the frame. A rational part of his mind insisted that it was just an unlit room, that he was being ridiculous, but a deeper instinct screamed at him to shut the door and walk away.

He let go of the knob and stepped back. The door didn’t make sense. He turned away, refusing to look at it any longer. He pulled the curtains closed and sat on the edge of the mattress, rubbing at his temples.

Sleep. He just needed sleep.

* * * * * *

Evan woke to early morning light creeping around the edges of the curtain. His back ached from the drive, and his neck had a sharp kink in it from the way he’d slept. He groaned, pushing himself up. The apartment still smelled faintly of old carpet and dust, but the air felt different, as if the space had been disturbed in his absence.

He stepped into the living room and exhaled in relief. The door was gone.

A dream. Or maybe exhaustion had played tricks on him. He shook his head at himself and went about making coffee, shoving the unsettling memory aside. By noon, he had unpacked most of his essentials and started arranging things in a way that made the space feel at least somewhat lived in. The strangeness of the previous night faded into the background, reduced to nothing more than a weird, exhausted hallucination.

That was, until the door came back.

It appeared as he was brushing his teeth, reflecting in the bathroom mirror as if it had always been there. He turned too fast, smacking his shoulder against the sink. When he stepped back into the hall, the door stood at the end of it, right where his coat rack had been.

He had never before seen anything move into place without being seen or experienced anything truly unexplainable. But here it was—the same gaudy colors, the same polished brass handle, the same impossible, unnatural presence.

It wanted him to open it. He could feel it.

Evan swallowed hard. He wasn’t a coward. And maybe—just maybe—if he opened it now, if he confronted it, it would finally go away.

His fingers curled around the handle. The knob turned easily, and the door swung inward.

Again, only blackness greeted him.

He stepped closer, gripping the doorframe for balance, leaning forward just enough to peer inside. The air beyond was stale, like an attic sealed shut for decades. He couldn’t see a single thing, not even the floor. He tested it by tossing the toothpaste in his hand forward, expecting it to either land with a thump or disappear entirely.

Instead, it just wasn’t there anymore.

No sound. No impact. Nothing.

Evan took a sharp step back. He grabbed the door, slamming it shut, and braced himself against it. For a long time, he just stood there. When he finally let go and turned away, he didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. He already knew what would happen.

Tomorrow, the door would be gone.

PART II

Evan had always considered himself a rational man. He didn’t believe in ghosts, omens, or anything outside the realm of logic. If something didn’t make sense, there had to be an explanation—something mundane or real. That belief was the only thing keeping him grounded as he stood in his living room the following day, staring at the empty space where the door had been.

It was gone—just like before.

He exhaled slowly, rubbing his hands down his face. He had barely slept, lying awake in bed, waiting for some new sign of the door’s presence. He had expected to see it at the foot of his bed, or maybe in the closet, lurking behind his hanging clothes. But nothing had happened.

And now it was just… missing.

Evan stepped closer to the spot, pressing his palm against the wall as if he could somehow feel where it had been. He ran his fingers over the solid, undisturbed surface, then stepped back. He was well aware of how stupid he must have looked, standing there like an idiot, expecting to find evidence of something that shouldn’t have been there to begin with.

“Maybe I was just dreaming,” he muttered, though the words rang hollow.

His coffee had gone cold by the time he sat down at the kitchen table, staring at his half-unpacked boxes without any real intention of dealing with them. He absentmindedly scrolled his phone, looking up strange phenomena, disappearing objects, and sleep paralysis—anything that could potentially explain what was happening. But none of the articles matched his experience. By midday, he had convinced himself that it had been a stress-induced hallucination. Perhaps, he rationalized, moving had rattled him more than he thought. Maybe the isolation of the new apartment had left him vulnerable to tricks of the mind.

Maybe.

* * * * * *

It was nearly midnight when the door came back.

Evan had spent most of the evening avoiding his own thoughts, distracting himself by any means necessary—organizing his bookshelf, rearranging furniture that didn’t need moving, and watching a movie on his laptop just to fill the space with sound. But the moment he turned off the screen and stood up to get ready for bed, he felt it—a shift in the air, a prickling awareness crawling up his spine. He knew before he even turned around.

The door stood right in front of the hallway entrance, as if it had been waiting for him to notice.

His stomach turned. It didn’t just feel out of place. It felt alarmingly unnatural.

Evan clenched his jaw. He wouldn’t let it get to him. He wouldn’t let some stupid hallucination, some impossible trick of the mind, dictate how he lived in his own apartment. And yet, as he stepped closer, his hands felt clammy.

The door was exactly the same—garish colors, intricate carvings, brass handle gleaming in the dim light. It was like something torn from another time and place, shoved into his world without care for how abnormal it looked.

Evan had to know. He had to prove to himself that this wasn’t some twisted fragment of his mind unraveling. His fingers brushed the handle, tentatively at first—and then he turned it.

The door swung open without resistance, revealing the same suffocating darkness. It was like looking into a bottomless void, a place untouched by light or sound. It didn’t feel like just a dark room—it felt like the absence of space itself.

He leaned forward, just enough to peer inside. Nothing—nothing but endless black.

He needed to test it, to prove it wasn’t his imagination. His eyes darted around the apartment before settling on an empty plastic cup sitting on the counter. He grabbed it, holding it in his hand for a moment before tossing it into the open doorway.

Like the toothpaste before it, the cup vanished. There was no sound or impact. It simply disappeared.

Evan’s throat tightened. He staggered back, slamming the door shut harder than necessary. His fingers hovered over the handle, but he didn’t dare open it again.

Not tonight.

Maybe not ever.

* * * * * *

He woke to the sound of rain tapping against the window. The room was still dim, early morning light just beginning to press against the curtains. For a few long seconds, he lay motionless, listening, grounding himself in the normalcy of the moment. Then he sat up, his gaze snapping toward the hallway.

The door was gone again. The hallway was empty, nothing but the coat rack standing where it belonged. There was no sign that anything had ever been there, no proof that what he had seen had been real.

Evan exhaled sharply, swinging his legs out of bed and running a hand through his hair. He wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or disappointed.

He spent the morning going through the same routine—making coffee, pacing the apartment… and waiting for the door to return. Because deep down, he knew it would.

PART III

Evan wasn’t ordinarily superstitious, but after two nights of the door appearing and vanishing without explanation, he reconsidered. He spent the next day watching the apartment like a paranoid wreck, waiting for it to return.

By nightfall, however, nothing had happened, and his nerves had frayed to the point where exhaustion overruled fear. He forced himself to sleep, but it was shallow and restless. He dreamt of doors—some familiar, some wrong, some stretching too tall for his apartment ceiling, warping the space around them. He saw them in the walls, the floor, and even in the sky, looming like gateways to places he could neither name nor comprehend.

When he jolted awake at 2:42 a.m., drenched in sweat and clenching his sheets, it was there again. This time, the door stood beside the couch, directly in his line of sight, as if it had been watching him sleep.

Evan didn’t move at first—didn’t so much as take a breath—as his mind fought to catch up with the reality in front of him. The door wasn’t supposed to be there, but it was. It was always there, it seemed, whenever it wanted to be.

But this time, the longer he stared, the more something about it felt different. At first, he couldn’t put his finger on what had changed, but then it hit him: the door was closer.

His body ached with tension as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, bare feet touching the floor. He moved cautiously, as if any sudden motion might startle the door into doing something worse.

He had to do something.

Evan went to the kitchen, gripping the counter to keep his hands from shaking as he thought. The two previous times, the door had swallowed whatever he threw into it without a trace. That had to mean something.

He needed to go further.

His eyes drifted to the front door, where his sneakers sat neatly beside a pile of boxes. A plan took shape in his mind. A fishing line. If he could send something in and pull it back out, maybe he could figure out where it went or prove definitively that things weren’t just disappearing.

He rummaged through a box of miscellaneous junk and found a roll of twine. Not the best, but strong enough for what he had in mind. He grabbed the empty coffee mug from the counter, tying the twine tightly around the handle before returning to the door.

It looked the same as before.

Evan took a deep breath, set his feet, and slowly turned the handle. The door creaked open. Inside, he saw nothing but darkness, just as before. He forced himself to move, lowering the mug into the void and letting it dangle at the end of the twine. It hung there, motionless, as if suspended in nothing.

Then he let go. The weight in his hands vanished. A sick, twisting sensation curled in his gut, but he kept his grip on the twine. He gave it a light tug and felt no resistance. He pulled again, harder this time. Still, he felt nothing.

Holding his breath, he reeled it back in. A moment later, the mug emerged from the darkness, completely unchanged. Evan stared at it, his mouth dry. For the first time, he had sent something into the space and gotten it back.

It wasn’t gone.

Which meant that if he went inside of it—

No, he thought. That’s insane. He couldn’t seriously be considering going through the door.

Or was he?

Even as he stood debating, he felt the door’s pull, sparking a curiosity he hadn’t known since childhood.

Evan frowned.

* * * * * *

The idea clung to him for the rest of the night. He didn’t sleep—he couldn’t. Instead, he kept testing, sending objects through and pulling them back—an old t-shirt, a spare set of keys, a wooden spoon. All came back—and he again wondered, obsessively, if he would, too.

At some point, he stepped outside for air. The night was cool, the Wyoming wind slicing through the parking lot. The streetlamp above buzzed faintly, flickering at odd intervals.

That was when he saw the frog. It sat on the pavement near the curb, blinking slowly at him as if contemplating its own existence.

A stupid idea struck him, and before he could talk himself out of it, he was crouching down, gently scooping the frog into his hands and carrying it inside carefully.

This was crazy, he thought, even as he marched back toward the door. But if it worked—

The door still stood by the couch, unchanged. Evan tied the twine loosely around the frog’s midsection. It shifted slightly but didn’t struggle. He felt the urge to apologize to it before carefully lowering it into the doorway.

It disappeared into the black. And for a long, terrible moment, nothing happened. Then, he pulled.

The frog came back—alive and unaffected. Evan carefully untied the twine, setting the frog back outside. It hopped away, never suspecting that it had just touched the impossible. Evan locked the door behind him and leaned against it, staring at the ornate monstrosity in his living room.

It was safe, he told himself. It had to be. 

That was the moment he knew.

Not only did the door want him to step through—but that he would.

PART IV

The moment Evan crossed the threshold, he knew he had made a mistake.

It wasn’t fear. Not exactly. It was something more fundamental—an immediate, bone-deep awareness that he had left something behind. That whatever place he had just stepped into did not operate by the same rules as the one he had left.

He stood frozen in the darkness. It took him a second to process his surroundings.

The room was small. No more than five by five feet, with plain white walls and no visible light source, though he could see perfectly. It was empty, except for a simple wooden desk at the far end, unremarkable and sterile, as if it had been placed there for no other reason than to be the only thing in the space.

Evan turned slowly, his eyes darting back to where the door should have been.

It was still there.

Relief crashed over him in an instant. He exhaled sharply, pressing a hand against the cool wall beside him, steadying himself. The door remained open, its familiar frame set against the darkness, leading straight back into his apartment.

It was fine. He could leave whenever he wanted.

He forced himself to move forward. The walls didn’t seem quite right—too smooth, too uniform. He ran his hand along one as he walked, half expecting it to shift beneath his touch, but it was solid.

When he reached the desk, he hesitated.

Something lay on the surface.

A single sheet of paper, neatly centered.

He picked it up carefully, scanning the words written in precise, narrow handwriting.

“Every door opens another.”

Evan frowned, fingers tightening around the page. The message was vague, meaningless. Was it a warning? A rule?

His gaze flickered back to the door. Still there. Still open.

He swallowed hard, setting the paper down exactly where he had found it. Time to go.

He turned toward the exit, taking a single step—

—and the door slammed shut.

Evan lunged, hands colliding with the wood, gripping the handle. He twisted hard.

Locked.

His stomach dropped.

No, no, no—

He threw his weight against it, rattling the frame, but it didn’t budge. The ornate carvings on the surface seemed darker now, deeper, like something just beneath the lacquered wood was waiting for him to give up.

A low, mechanical click echoed through the room.

He spun.

The wall behind the desk had changed.

There was another door.

It wasn’t the same as the first—this one was narrower, its wood a dull gray, its handle rusted and worn. There were no carvings, no polished brass. Just a door, simple and unremarkable, waiting for him to open it.

Evan’s skin went cold.

He turned back to his original exit, gripping the handle and yanking with all his strength. The ornate door didn’t so much as shudder.

He cursed under his breath, forehead pressing against the wood. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen.

He had planned for this. He had tested it.

Everything had come back.

So why couldn’t he?

* * * * * *

Evan stared at the new door for a long time, refusing to move.

A sinking realization crept through his bones.

There was only one way forward.

His fingers twitched at his sides. There had to be a reason for this.

Maybe the doors had some kind of logic. Maybe they weren’t random. Maybe—

He cut the thought off before it could spiral further. He had two choices: stay in this tiny, windowless room forever or see what lay beyond the next door.

He ran a hand over his face, swallowing down his fear.

Then he stepped forward.

The rusted handle was cold beneath his palm.

The door creaked open.

And he walked through.

PART V

The second door led somewhere new.

Evan stepped forward cautiously, even as every instinct in his body screamed at him to turn back. The first room had been small, sterile—this one was different.

He found himself standing in what looked like the remains of a massive ballroom. The ceiling stretched high above, cracked chandeliers dangling like broken ornaments, their once-glass prisms now jagged shards reflecting the dim, flickering light from nowhere in particular. The walls were lined with towering columns, each one chipped and worn, but too perfect to be real.

The air carried a strange hum, an almost imperceptible sound, like the low murmur of a distant crowd.

But he was alone.

At least, he thought he was.

Evan turned slowly, trying to find the door he had just walked through.

It wasn’t there.

Panic flared, but he did his best to suppress it. This was what had happened before—the doors didn’t stay in place. They shifted and moved—replaced themselves.

He just needed to find the next one.

He took a slow breath and started forward, footsteps echoing across the scuffed marble floor. The ballroom felt used, but not abandoned. No dust. No cobwebs. As if something still existed here, something that came and went.

Something watching.

Evan turned his head sharply.

Nothing.

The feeling didn’t fade.

It was the same insidious awareness he had felt before, standing in his own living room, staring at the impossible door.

There were no windows. No doors. Just the endless stretch of marble and ruined grandeur.

The murmur rose slightly.

Evan froze.

The sound was shifting—growing clearer. Not a hum. Not distant.

Whispers.

He took another step, then another. The whispers grew louder. He tried to isolate a single voice, but there was nothing distinct, just the sensation of a thousand conversations bleeding into one another.

His stomach churned.

Something moved in his peripheral vision.

Evan whipped around—but he saw nothing. No movement, no figures—just columns.

He refused to panic and kept walking, kept moving forward, scanning the vast space for any sign of another door.

Something skittered across the floor behind him.

He turned too late.

The whispering surged.

A chill ran through his spine.

Evan forced himself to move faster.

The ballroom stretched infinitely, or at least, it felt that way. But there had to be a way out. There always was.

He passed a column, and in the reflection of the broken chandelier, he saw it.

A shape.

A shadow where there should have been none.

The whispering stopped.

Everything went silent.

Evan turned his head—

The shadow was gone.

Then, a sound—a faint click.

His eyes darted forward, and he saw it—a door. Not the ornate, rusted one—something else.

It was simple, wooden, and bare—a way out.

He moved toward it quickly, his muscles coiled tight, expecting to feel something lunge at him from behind.

The space around him felt too full, the ballroom too occupied.

The whispers started again.

Faster now. Urgent.

The shadow flickered at the corner of his vision, darting between columns, too fast to follow.

Evan reached the door.

His hand hit the handle.

He yanked it open—

And stepped through.

* * * * * *

Evan stumbled forward, the door slamming shut behind him.

He turned immediately, reaching for the handle—

The door was gone.

Again.

The air in this new space was different.

Still. Dry. Empty.

He swallowed, pushing himself upright.

This time, he stood in a library.

Endless shelves stretched into the distance, but the books were wrong.

There were no titles. No markings.

Evan reached for one and flipped it open.

The pages were blank.

A slow, terrible realization settled over him.

No dust. No smell of paper. No signs of age.

This place was not real.

And neither were the books.

He put the book back and turned around.

There had to be a way forward.

There had to be another door.

But something told him it wouldn’t be that simple this time.

PART VI

Evan stood in the aisle of blank books. The library was vast, the rows stretching into the distance, disappearing into a dim haze that made it impossible to tell where the shelves ended—or if they ended at all.

The silence was worse than the whispers.

He reached for another book, flipping it open. More empty pages. He ran his fingers over them, feeling their texture, their weight. They were real. Or at least, they felt real. But why were they blank?

Evan’s jaw clenched. This place felt wrong, just like the ballroom had. The air was thick, unmoving, as if he’d stepped into a space where time didn’t function the way it should. He exhaled slowly and closed the book, setting it back in place before glancing around.

No doors.

Not yet, anyway.

If this place followed the same rules as the others, he just needed to keep moving.

* * * * * *

He started walking, trailing a hand along the spines of the books as he moved through the towering shelves. The deeper he went, the more familiar the bookshelves started to feel. At first, he couldn’t place why. They were just wooden shelves, after all. Rows of them, endless in every direction.

Then he saw it.

A stack of books sitting on the ground, toppled over as if someone had knocked them down in a hurry. That’s when he recognized them.

These books weren’t blank—they were his.

The same battered copies of novels he had owned for years, their covers worn from use, spines bent in all the places where he had stopped and started over.

He crouched down, slowly picking up the top book—a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five with a coffee stain on the corner. His coffee stain.

His stomach twisted as he flipped it open.

The pages were empty.

The book was his, but the words were gone.

He reached for another one, and saw the same thing. Every book from the pile was his, but hollowed out, its contents erased.

His memories of these books still existed, but here, in this place, they had been wiped clean.

His gaze darted to the shelves around him, scanning the endless rows.

The realization struck him all at once.

These weren’t just books.

They were stories.

His stories. Everything he had ever read. Everything he had ever known.

All of it, sitting in this place, stripped of meaning, turned into nothing more than empty pages.

He turned a slow circle, dread curling tight in his ribs.

How much of himself was sitting here?

How much had this place already taken?

* * * * * *

Something shifted behind him.

Evan spun.

A door stood at the end of the aisle now.

It hadn’t been there before.

It was taller than the last one, narrower than the first. The wood was dark, almost black, the handle a dull iron that looked worn from centuries of use.

He took a slow step forward.

The air changed.

The silence was no longer empty.

Something breathed.

His fingers clenched at his sides. The sound wasn’t close, but it was there—a deep, steady inhale and exhale, not mechanical and distant but alive.

Evan didn’t hesitate.

He grabbed the handle and ripped the door open.

Darkness.

Not like before—not the endless, suffocating black void of the first door. This was different. He could see a faint shape ahead, something waiting on the other side.

The breathing grew louder.

He didn’t stop to think.

He stepped through.

* * * * * *

Evan hit the ground hard.

The door slammed shut behind him with a sound that reverberated through his bones. He sucked in a breath, wincing as he pushed himself onto his elbows. The impact hadn’t hurt much, but the fall had felt wrong.

Too fast.

Too far.

He looked up—and found himself back in his apartment.

For a long second, he didn’t move. He just stared. The living room was exactly how he had left it. The same scratched-up table, the same sagging couch, the same pile of boxes near the front door.

His chest heaved as he slowly got to his feet.

Had he imagined it?

Had it all been some kind of hallucination? A dream?

He turned in a slow circle, searching for something—**anything—**that felt off.

Then he saw it.

The painting on the wall.

Evan’s stomach turned to stone.

It was supposed to be a generic landscape—something dull, something cheap, something he had hardly noticed when he first moved in.

Now, it was different.

The landscape was wrong.

The sky was the color of deep rust, the trees black silhouettes that bent at angles no trees should bend. And in the distance, almost too small to see—

A door.

A door just like his—just like the one he had stepped through.

Slowly, carefully, he reached out.

The painting blinked.

A single, massive eye opened inside the frame.

And then, the door returned.

Standing right in the middle of the room, just as it always had.

PART VII

Evan didn’t move.

The eye inside the painting didn’t blink again. It remained wide open, its pupil fixed on him like a singular, unyielding void.

His skin crawled.

He forced himself to look away, shifting his focus back to the door in the center of the room. It stood exactly where it always did—as if it had never left.

But it had left.

He had left.

He knew that now.

Evan clenched his fists, trying to put the pieces together. Something had changed. The apartment looked the same, but the painting wasn’t the only thing wrong.

There was something else. Something subtle.

His eyes flicked across the space—over the furniture, the walls, the carpet. The layout was the same. The colors were the same. But the air felt different. Almost… thicker. Like it wasn’t quite his apartment, but a perfect copy.

The thought sent a deep, instinctual dread curling inside his chest.

Had he actually come home?

Or had the doors lied?

* * * * * *

He moved cautiously across the room, every muscle tense, his body waiting for the inevitable shift—for something to break the fragile illusion of normalcy. He reached the kitchen, the countertops gleaming under the dull fluorescent light.

That was when he noticed the clock.

The digital readout blinked 12:06.

Evan frowned. The clock in his apartment had always been off by a few minutes—not six. He had never bothered fixing it. It had always read 12:12 when it should have been midnight.

He checked his phone.

No service.

He clicked the screen off, his grip tightening around the device.

Another small detail.

Another wrongness.

His stomach clenched.

The doors had never taken him home.

They had only taken him somewhere close.

* * * * * *

Evan turned back to the door.

It loomed larger now, or maybe that was just his perception shifting. He had thought he was in control. Thought he could test it, experiment with it, figure it out.

But the door had always been ahead of him.

It had known.

Evan exhaled sharply, shaking his head. No.

He wasn’t going to stand here, waiting for the walls to close in.

He was going to end this.

He took a step toward the door—

And something knocked from the other side.

The sound froze him in place.

Knocking, patient and unhurried.

Evan’s hands clenched into fists. The room felt too still. The air too silent.

Another knock.

A draft passed through the apartment, though no windows were open. The lights overhead flickered, dimming just slightly.

Then, a voice.

“Evan.”

His stomach dropped.

He took a step back, barely aware he was doing it.

He knew that voice. It was his. It was him.

A perfect replica of his own voice, speaking from the other side of the door.

The knock came again, softer this time.

“Evan, open the door.”

No.

No, he wasn’t going to do that.

His body screamed at him to move, to run, to do anything but stand here. But the door—**his door—**was waiting for him to make a choice.

His fingers twitched at his sides.

If he opened it, what would he see?

Himself?

Or something else?

Something that had been following him through every door he had stepped through, waiting for the right moment to speak.

The voice came again.

“You can come home now.”

The lights flickered again.

He didn’t open the door.

He turned and ran.

* * * * * *

The hallway outside his apartment was different.

The doors to the neighboring units were missing.

The walls stretched further than they should have, the fluorescent lights overhead buzzing too loudly.

Evan didn’t stop. He ran toward the stairwell, his shoes slamming against the warped carpet.

This wasn’t his building.

The doors had taken him somewhere else, somewhere close, but not close enough.

A rush of cold air swept down the hall behind him.

The knock came again—only now, it wasn’t coming from inside his apartment.

It was coming from everywhere.

The walls.

The ceiling.

The doors that no longer existed.

A slow, deliberate knocking—a ripple of sound, spreading like something huge and endless was pressing against the thin film of reality, waiting for him to break it open.

Evan didn’t look back.

He reached the stairwell, gripped the rusted handle, and shoved the door open.

The stairwell was wrong.

The steps spiraled downward forever.

No bottom. No end.

Just the waiting dark.

The voice came again.

“Evan, you don’t have to run.”

The stairwell shuddered beneath his feet, the steps trembling as if something massive was pressing against the walls, warping the space around him. The air turned thick, heavy with a presence he couldn’t see, but could feel.

Then, the walls groaned—a deep, guttural sound that sent a shock of dread through his spine.

And behind him, from the impossible hallway he had fled—

The door to his apartment slammed open.

A gust of wind surged through the stairwell, not from above, not from below, but from behind.

The whispering started again.

Low. Persistent.

Calling his name.

Evan gritted his teeth, refusing to turn around.

He wasn’t going back.

He forced himself forward, his foot poised over the next step—

And then the whispering stopped.

The stairwell vanished.

* * * * * *

He was standing in his living room.

No stairwell. No impossible descent.

No escape.

Slowly, cautiously, he turned his head.

The eye inside the painting stared back.

PART VII

Evan didn’t move.

The eye inside the painting didn’t blink again, but it didn’t need to. The damage was already done. His body remained locked in place, frozen with the knowledge that something had watched him. And not just here—not just in this room.

It had watched him the entire time.

The apartment felt off now, like it wasn’t entirely his anymore. Like a copy of his home had been assembled, piece by piece, just slightly wrong.

He turned his head slowly, forcing himself to look away from the painting.

The door stood in the center of the room.

Not against the wall, not where a door should be. It had been placed here.

And this time, it wasn’t waiting for him to find it.

It was waiting for him to step through.

* * * * * *

Evan backed away, stomach tightening.

This wasn’t right. None of this was right. He had come back, he had stepped into his apartment—this should have been over.

But it wasn’t.

He needed to test something.

He turned and moved quickly toward the front door, grabbing at the knob. Locked. He twisted harder, pulling with all his strength.

It didn’t budge.

His chest heaved as he backed away from the entrance, sweat gathering at his nape. His eyes darted toward the windows next.

The view outside wasn’t his.

He could see buildings in the distance, but they were wrong—too tall, too narrow, their edges blurred as if they weren’t fully solid. The sky was a dark shade of red, bruised like a wound.

This wasn’t home.

The door hadn’t brought him back.

It had sent him somewhere else.

* * * * * *

His breathing steadied, but only because his mind forced it to. Panic wasn’t going to fix this. Panic wasn’t going to get him out.

The door had always led somewhere. Always given him another place to go. If it was still appearing, that meant it still had a purpose.

Maybe it could take him back.

Or maybe he was just chasing his own tail, running in circles while something—**something behind the doors—**toyed with him.

It didn’t matter.

He had no other choice.

Evan turned to face it fully, stepping forward slowly. The colors of the carvings seemed brighter now. The brass handle gleamed, catching the dim light of the warped cityscape outside.

His fingers hovered over the handle.

Just one more step. Just one more door.

His palm closed around the knob, and this time, he didn’t hesitate.

He twisted it hard and stepped through.

* * * * * *

Evan landed wrong.

His feet touched solid ground, but his balance failed instantly. He stumbled forward, his body thrown off by the sudden shift in space, the sudden change in gravity.

The air was colder and thinner.

He gasped, blinking fast, adjusting to the new world.

This time, the world was his—or at least, it looked like his.

His apartment complex stood ahead, with the same beige exterior and the same layout. His car was still in the lot, covered in a thin layer of dust from the dry Wyoming air. It was exactly as he had left it.

Except for the people.

Evan stared, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. Figures were walking the parking lot, moving between the cars and standing near the sidewalks.

At first glance, they looked normal. But they weren’t. They weren’t walking right.

Some shuffled forward in stiff, unnatural strides, as if their joints weren’t fully attached. Others moved too smoothly, too fluidly, gliding instead of stepping, their bodies flowing in a way that broke every rule of anatomy.

None of them had faces.

Evan’s stomach clenched.

He took a careful step back.

One of the figures twitched.

It stopped moving.

Then, slowly, deliberately, it turned its head toward him.

It had no eyes. No nose. Just a smooth expanse of pale, featureless skin.

But it was looking at him.

And then—

The others stopped, too.

All at once.

Every single faceless person in the parking lot turned toward him, their heads tilting at sharp, unnatural angles.

A low hum filled the air.

Evan didn’t wait.

He spun on his heel and ran.

* * * * * *

The door had to be here.

It had never abandoned him before. There was always another door, always a way out.

He just had to find it.

His eyes darted wildly as he ran, scanning the lot, the sidewalks, the buildings—

Nothing.

He rushed toward his apartment complex, shoving open the outer door and sprinting into the hall.

His unit was at the end, the same as before.

He reached it, grabbed the handle, yanked—

It opened.

He stumbled inside and slammed it shut behind him, pressing his back against the wood, chest heaving.

Silence.

His head tilted slightly, listening.

No footsteps.

No movement outside.

Slowly, cautiously, he turned toward the living room.

His blood turned cold.

The door was already waiting for him.

Not just one this time.

Two.

Side by side, standing in the center of the room.

One was the ornate door—the one he had always used, the one that had first appeared in his apartment. The colors gleamed under the light, the brass handle waiting, expectant.

The second was different.

Darker. Older. The wood looked warped, the handle rusted and pitted. There was no pattern in the carvings, just deep, jagged grooves that looked clawed into the surface.

Both doors waited.

Both doors led somewhere.

And this time, he had to choose.

PART VIII

Evan stared at the two doors. The ornate door—the one that had haunted him since his first night in the apartment—was exactly as it had always been. Bright, intricate, polished. It didn’t belong in this world, but it had never pretended to.

The second door was different. Rough. Jagged. Used. It looked old in a way that suggested others had passed through it before him. And if they had, then maybe—just maybe—they had found a way home.

Or maybe they had never come back at all.

Evan swallowed hard, shifting his weight, resisting the urge to pace. Which door was the lie?

His fingers twitched at his sides.

He had spent so long trapped in this game, stepping through doors, crossing into places that weren’t quite real, places that weren’t quite his. Every door had led to something different. Every door had pulled him further from where he had started.

But what if one of them could take him back?

What if this time, he could end it?

* * * * * *

Evan exhaled through his nose, steadying himself.

The longer he hesitated, the more the doors felt aware of him. The ornate door almost seemed inviting, its golden hues brightening ever so slightly, as if urging him forward.

The darker one remained still, quiet.

No invitation. No illusion of comfort.

Just a door.

A choice.

Evan clenched his jaw and moved toward the second door.

His fingers brushed the rough, splintered wood. It felt wrong under his palm, like the texture was shifting against his skin, resisting him.

That only made his grip tighten.

Whatever this was, it didn’t get to win.

He grasped the handle, twisting it with force. The door groaned, its rusted hinges screaming as it swung inward, revealing—

A mirror.

Not an empty room, not a void, not a new world. Just his own reflection.

For a long moment, he didn’t move.

His reflection didn’t either.

Then the other Evan smiled.

A slow, deliberate grin that didn’t belong to him.

Evan staggered back.

The grin widened.

The other Evan raised a hand—

And knocked on the glass.

Three sharp knocks.

Evan’s stomach dropped.

He took another step back, but the air behind him shifted.

The ornate door.

It was still there.

Still open.

And for the first time, it was pulling him in.

A rush of air surged around him, dragging him backward, toward the brightness, toward the colors. His feet skidded across the floor—he tried to fight it, tried to resist, but the force was too strong.

The last thing he saw before the ornate door swallowed him whole was his own reflection, pressing both hands against the glass, watching him leave.

* * * * * *

Evan landed hard.

The air slammed from his lungs as his back hit something solid, something real. His body shook from the sudden shift.

Then he pushed himself up.

His apartment.

His actual apartment.

He turned wildly, scanning the room. Everything was back—the furniture, the carpet, the dull, beige walls. The painting was normal again, the sky blue, the trees straight.

His clock.

Evan rushed to the kitchen counter, his hands fumbling as he checked the digital display.

12:12.

His chest heaved.

The wrong time.

The right wrong time.

Evan gripped the counter, forcing himself to stay standing.

It was over.

Somehow, impossibly, he was home.

His knees almost buckled from the sheer weight of it, but he refused to let himself fall.

Not yet.

His head tilted toward the living room.

The door was gone.

No ornate frame. No gleaming brass handle.

Just empty space.

* * * * * *

Evan stood in silence for a long time.

Then, slowly, carefully, he turned off every single light in the apartment.

He moved to the bedroom, shut the door, and crawled into bed.

He didn’t sleep.

Not for a long, long time.

But the door didn’t come back.

And that was enough.

For now.

PART IX

Evan didn’t sleep.

He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for something to shift, for the door to return, for some proof that this was another trick.

For the first time since this nightmare had started, his world wasn’t whispering back at him.

Still, his body remained tense.

But nothing happened.

No flickering lights.

No knocking.

No whispers calling his name.

Just his apartment.

Just home.

* * * * * *

The next morning, Evan moved through the space slowly, carefully. He touched everything—the counters, the table, the walls, just to feel their solidity. They didn’t shift beneath his fingers. They were real.

The coffee maker was where he had left it. The books on his shelf were no longer blank. His phone had service again, displaying familiar notifications, texts from people he hadn’t spoken to in days.

It was real.

It had to be real.

But there was something wrong.

The feeling followed him as he moved from room to room, nagging at the back of his mind. It wasn’t obvious, wasn’t immediate, but it was there. A weight, a presence, a misalignment in the very air.

He checked everything.

The fridge.

The drawers.

His closet.

Everything looked exactly as it should.

But the unease remained.

* * * * * *

Evan sat on the couch, fingers steepled against his lips.

What was he missing?

His eyes flicked across the apartment, searching for anything out of place.

Then he saw it.

The couch.

The sagging floral-patterned couch, the same one that had been here since he moved in.

The indentation on the cushions was wrong.

Not gone.

Wrong.

As if someone had sat there—but not him.

Not recently.

His skin went cold.

It wasn’t his imprint.

Someone else had sat here.

Had been here.

* * * * * *

Evan stood too fast.

No.

He was imagining things. Overanalyzing. The couch was the same couch. The apartment was the same apartment.

But the feeling wouldn’t go away.

Evan’s mind began cataloging every single thing he had overlooked.

The coffee mug.

The one he had set in the sink before he left.

Now, it sat on the counter.

The books.

The same titles, but one of them was in the wrong place. A single inch to the left, barely noticeable, but different.

His shoes.

He had taken them off near the door.

Now, they were turned the wrong way.

Evan’s throat tightened.

This was his apartment.

But it wasn’t.

* * * * * *

The realization settled in slow, dreadful waves.

He had been so desperate to believe he had made it home. So willing to accept that the nightmare was over. But now, standing here, surrounded by all the tiny, impossible details, he knew.

This wasn’t his world.

Not entirely.

Not enough.

The door hadn’t taken him back.

It had taken him somewhere close.

Just close enough to make him doubt.

Just close enough to make him stay.

He turned, scanning the apartment one last time.

No door.

No sign of an exit.

But he knew it was coming.

Because the door had never abandoned him before.

It was only a matter of time.

And when it returned—

He would open it.

Because he had to.

Because he always would.

Because he would never stop searching.

And the door knew it.

PART X

Evan sat at the kitchen table, staring at his hands.

He hadn’t turned on the lights. He hadn’t touched his phone. He hadn’t moved since realizing the truth—since the weight of it had settled into his bones.

This wasn’t his home.

Not really.

It was close, so painfully close, but the details were wrong. The coffee mug, the indentation in the couch, the minuscule shifts in objects he would have never noticed if he weren’t looking for them.

The door hadn’t taken him back.

It had only taken him somewhere familiar enough to fool him.

* * * * * *

The worst part was that he had almost let it.

Almost convinced himself that his own paranoia was the real problem. That he had finally escaped, that he could move on.

But the door wasn’t finished with him yet.

He felt it—a presence lingering at the edges of his vision, waiting.

The air knew. The walls knew.

Evan pressed his palms against the table. It wouldn’t let him stay here.

Not forever—not until he was certain.

Because that was the trick, wasn’t it?

He would never be certain. Not really.

Not unless he opened another door.

* * * * * *

Evan stood, his legs unsteady. His body felt lighter than it should have, as if he were already fading.

He turned toward the living room, and there it was.

The door.

It stood in the center of the apartment, not waiting, not lurking—just present. A silent fact, unchanging, unyielding.

He had expected it.

Of course, he had.

The door had always known.

Always known that he would keep searching.

Evan swallowed hard, licking his lips, his fingers twitching.

This was it, then.

His choice.

The same choice he had made a thousand times before.

Stay here, in this familiar lie, or step forward and try again.

And again.

And again.

Until maybe, just maybe, he found home.

Or until he stopped existing entirely.

* * * * * *

He closed his eyes, took a breath, and opened them again. Then he reached for the handle.

The brass was warm, welcoming and familiar.

Evan turned it—and stepped through.

The apartment was empty. The door had vanished.

And somewhere, in another place, in another world, a door appeared in a new home—

Waiting for its next victim to open it.