Science Fiction - Daily Short Stories
The Doorway - Evelyn E Smith
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- Broadcast on:
- 08 Oct 2024
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So you can get big flavors and big savings, king supers, fresh for everyone, fuel restrictions apply. The Doorway by Evelyn E Smith. A discerning critic once pointed out that Edgar Allan Poe possessed not so much a distinctive style as a distinctive manner. So startlingly original was his approach to the dark castles and haunted woodlands of his own somber creation that he presented the literary by the sheer magic of his prose. Something of that same magic gleams and the darkly tapestry little fantasy presented here beneath Evelyn Smith's eerily enchanted wand. A man may wish he'd married his first love and not really mean it, but an insincere wish may turn ugly in dimensions unknown. "It is my theory," Professor Falabala said, helping himself to a cookie, that no one ever really makes a decision. What really happens is that whenever alternative courses of actions are called for, the individuality splits up and continues on two or more diversion plans. Very much like the parthenogenesis of unicellular animal. Delicious cookies these Mrs. Hughes. "Thank you, Professor," Gloria simpered, "I made them myself. "You must give us the recipe," said one of the ladies, and the others murmured agreement, glad to get their individualities on a plane they could understand. Since most decisions are hardly as momentous as the individual imagines, Professor Falabala continued. And since the imagination of the average individual is very limited, many of these different planes, or as they are colloquially known, space-time continuums may exist in close, even tangential relationship. Gloria rose unobtrusively and took the teapot to the kitchen for a refill. Her husband stood by the sink muddly, drinking whiskey out of the bottle, so as to avoid having to wash a glass afterward. "Bill, you're not being polite to our guests. Why don't you go out and listen to Professor Falabala?" "I can hear him perfectly well from here," Bill muttered, and indeed the professor's malefluous tones, provided every nook and cranny of the thin-walled house. Long, winded cultists, what is he a professor of? "I'd like to know." "Professor Falabala is not a cultist." A firm Gloria angrily is a great philosopher. Bill Hughes said something unprintable. "If I'd married Lucy Allison," he continued unkindly, "she'd never have filled the house with long-haired cultists on my so-called day of rest." Gloria's soft chin trembled, and her blue eyes filled with tears, she was beginning to put on weight, he noticed. "I've been hearing nothing but Lucy Allison, Lucy Allison, Lucy Allison, for the past year. You said yourself. She looked like a horse." "Horses," he observed, "have sense." He was being brutal, but he couldn't help it and didn't want to. Professor Falabala was only the most long-winded of a long series of mystics. Gloria was forever dragging into the house. "The trouble with the half-educated," he thought bitterly, "is that the culture in the most peculiar places. I'll bet she would have let me have peace on Sunday," he said. It just goes to show what happens when you marry a woman solely for her looks. He drained the bottle, then hurled it into the garbage pill with a resounding crash. "Gloria's shoulders shook as she filled the kettle. I wish I'd decided to be an old maid," she sobbed. "A very unlikely possibility," he thought. Even now, shop-worn as she was, Gloria could have a fairly wide range of suitors, should something happen to him. She looked sexy, but how deceiving appearances could be. Professor Falabala was still talking as Bill and Gloria emerged from the kitchen. "I believe that it is possible for an individual who exists on a limited plane of imagination to transpose from one plane to an adjacent one without difficulty. Great heavens, what was that?" Something had whisked past the archway leading into the foyer. "Don't pay any attention," Gloria smiled nervously. "The house is haunted." "My dear," one of the ladies offered, "I know of the most marvelous exterminator." "The house," Gloria assured her coldly, "really is haunted. We've been seeing things ever since we moved in." And she really believed it, Bill thought. "Believe that the house was haunted, that is." Of course, he had seen things, too, but he was enlightened enough to know that ghosts don't exist, even if you do see them. "Professor Falabala," cleared his throat, "as I was saying, it is possible to send the individual through another, well, dimension, as some popular writers would have it, to one of his other spatial existences on the same temporal plane. It is merely necessary for him to find the door." "Nonsense!" Bill interrupted. "Holy unmitigated nonsense!" Every head swivelled, to look at him. Gloria restrained tears with an effort. "Perfed!" someone muttered. But ridicule apparently only stimulated the professor. He beamed. "You don't believe me. Your imagination cannot extend to the comprehension of multifariousness of space." "Nonsense!" Bill said again, but less confidently. "I believe that I have discovered the doorway. "Professor Falabala," continued, "and the way is open. "However, must people fear to penetrate the unknown, even though it is to enter another phase of their own existence. "I do admit that the shock of spatial transference, no matter how slight, combined with the concrete awareness of a previous spatial relationship, would be perhaps too much for the keenly sensitive individualism." Bill opened his mouth. "I know what you're about to say, young man. "You don't have to be a mind-reader to know that," Bill assured him. His consonants were already a little slurred, and he knew Gloria was ashamed of him. It served her right. He'd been ashamed of her for years. Professor Falabala smiled. His teeth were very sharp and white. "Very well, Mr. Hughes, since you are a skeptic, perhaps you will not object to being the subject of our experiment yourself." "What kind of experiment?" Bill asked suspiciously. "Merely go through the door. Any door can become the doorway, if it is transposed into the proper spatial dimension." "That door, for instance," Professor Falabala waved his hand toward the doorway of what Gloria liked to call Bill's study. "You mean you just want me to open the door and go into that room," Bill said incredulously. "That's all?" "That is all. Of course you go with the awareness that it is the threshold of another plane and that you step voluntarily from this existence to an adjacent one." "Sure," Bill said. He had just remembered there was a nearly full bottle of coward in the bottom drawer of the desk. "Sure, anything to oblige." "Very well. Go to the door and keep remembering that of your own free will you are passing from this plane to the next." "Look out, everybody," Bill called rocklessly as he pulled open the door. "I'm coming in on the next plane," no one laughed. He stepped over the threshold, shutting the door firmly behind him. A wonderful excuse to get away from those blasted women. He climbed out of the window as soon as he collected the whiskey and give them a nervous moment, thinking he'd really passed into another existence. It would serve Laria Wright. For a moment, as he crossed, he had a queer sensation. "Maybe there was something in what Professor Fallabella said. But no, there he was in the study. All that mumbo-jumbo was getting him down. That was all. He was a nervous man. Only nobody appreciated the fact. Taking a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket, he reached for the lighter on his desk. It wasn't there. Time and time again he told Gloria not to touch his things, and always she disobeyed him. Company was coming and she must tidy up. Cooking and cleaning. That was all she was good for. But this was carrying tidiness too far. She'd even removed the ashtrays. And where did that glass-block paperweight come from? He'd had a penguin and a snowstorm, and he'd been happy with it. This was too much. He told Gloria off, stealing a man's penguin. He opened the door into the living room and bumped into Lucy Allison. "Don't you think you've been in there long enough, Bill?" she asked accurately. "I'm sure your guests would appreciate catching a glimpse of you." "Why, hello, Lucy," he said. "Surprise. I didn't know Gloria, I didn't invite you." "Gloria, Gloria, Gloria." Lucy cut off his sonnets. "You've been talking about nothing but that dumb little blonde for months." Because of the people in the room beyond, her voice was pitched low. But her pale eyes glittered unpleasantly behind her spectacles. "I wish you had married her. You'd have made a fine pair." Gently, caressingly, the short hairs on the back of Bill's neck rose. "Come back in here," Lucy said, hauling him back into the living room, where a number of people who had been enjoying the domestic fracas suddenly broke into loud and animated chatter. Dr. Hildebrandt was telling us all about nuclear fission. "Can't find an ashtray," Bill muttered, seizing on something tangible. "Can't find an ashtray in the whole darn place." "We've been over this millions of times, Bill. You know," she smiled at the guests, a smile that carefully excluded Bill. "I'm allergic to smoke, but I never can get my husband to remember. He isn't to smoke inside the house." "Now, take the neutron, for example," Dr. Hildebrandt said through a mouthful of pate. "What is the neutron?" "What was that?" The wraith of Gloria crossed the foyer and disappeared. Bill took a step forward, then stood still. Lucy smiled self-consciously. "That's nothing at all. The house is merely haunted." Everyone laughed. "For I got something," Bill muttered, and dashed back into the study. He yanked open the bottom door of the desk. Sure enough, there was a bottle of shinley, nearly a third full. "There are some advantages," he thought, as he tilted it to his lips, in having a limited imagination. End of The Doorway by Evelyn E. Smith We wear our work, day by day, stitch by stitch. At Dickies, we believe work is what we're made of. So, whether you're gearing up for a new project, or looking to add some tried and true workware to your collection, remember that Dickies has been standing the test of time for a reason. Their workware isn't just about looking good. It's about performing under pressure and lasting through the toughest jobs. Head over to Dickies.com and use the promo code Workware20 at checkout to save 20% on your purchase. It's the perfect time to experience the quality and reliability that has made Dickies a trusted name for over a century. When you need meal time inspiration, it's worth shopping king supers for thousands of appetizing ingredients that inspire countless mouth-watering meals. And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices, plus extra ways to save, like digital coupons worth over $600 each week, and up to $1 off per gallon at the pump with points. So you can get big flavors and big savings, king supers, fresh for everyone, fuel restrictions apply.