You stand before a hallway wedged between two doors. Another open hallway stands behind you. Do you go: left, right, forward, back?

Left

You decide to turn left. There is an empty hall with no windows and no doors. The floor is grass—real grass, with occasional bald patches of soil. The soil is damp and the air smells fresh. Daisies and petrichor and a gentle breeze on your cheeks. You reach the end of the hall, but there's nothing else.

You turn back and return to where you began. The idea of nature inside a place like this, that the room somehow captured sunlight and the way linen sheets feel fresh out of a dryer. You return to the room. It’s so pleasant that you are satisfied with the simple pleasures within. But you are forgetting something, aren’t you? Something else? Your stomach pains with...something? But if this room cannot provide whatever it is, then it must not be important. This is where you suffocate on your own joy.

FIN

Right

What if you’d turned right? 

You decide to try, but your body will not pivot in that direction. However, you are determined, and so you turn in a circle to the left until you are pointed in the correct direction. Here, there is a short corridor with walls painted a pleasant pistachio and you think maybe you will paint your whole house this color when you get back there. The corridor ends with a golden spiral staircase below a stained-glass ceiling. You hear pigeons outside, and you can see their silhouettes as they fly past the stained-glass.

Down, down, down you go. The stairs are buffed and shiny as though brand new, but the lower you go the more the walls show their true age. Soon, it's gone dark. There's a thick, clunky flashlight in a receded hole in the wall. You take it and turn it on. You look behind you but the stairs have disappeared. You must go further down. The flashlight’s beam only goes so far. You have no choice but to continue. You must keep going, down, down, down. You hit a stone landing and there is another pocket in the wall. This one holds a key and a map. You think that is horribly cliché and leave them there out of spite. The stairs are now stone like the landing. Two more steps and you turn back to get the key and map, just in case, but they are gone.

Do you: sit down and cry to yourself? 

OR

Keep going?

Keep going

These stairs aren't going to get the best of you, so you keep going further down. The flashlight begins to flicker, and then cuts out completely. You smack it against the heel of your hand and the sound reverberates. Smack. Smack. Slice. The metal base is old and it catches on your skin. You are bleeding in a strange dark stairway and you turn to go back up but there is a solid stone wall at your back. You continue down, down, down, guiding yourself with your hand on the wall. One more step and the ground drops out from under you. You tumble through the air, and keep tumbling and tumbling and tumbling and tumbling...

FIN

Sit down and cry

There's nothing else to do but lament your situation. You go over all the steps it took to get here, all the bad decisions that seemed good at the time, all the advice you should have considered. You fall asleep when the tears run out, clutching the flashlight to your chest like a security blanket.

You wake up in your bed five days ago. You step out of bed and trip over something—the flashlight. It rolls under the bed, and when you reach to pull it out, the cover comes loose. You pull it off and inside you find the key and map. Suddenly you're standing in a doorway… [RETURN TO TOP]

Forward

The path in front is the most straightforward. The walls are lined with mirrors, and the hall ends in a beautiful cherry wood door. As you walk, you catch your reflection. You are ageing. Slowly, at first, then more rapidly. You think you should run but your limbs are creaking, and your back begins to curl over itself. Slowly, slowly you make your way. 

The door at the end of the hall sounds as though it is singing. Not like there is someone on the other side, but like the door itself yawns and the clearest notes you’ve ever heard vibrate through your skull. Something waits for you there, something beckons.

The walls are still lined with mirrors but now turning would pang through your neck and down your spine, and you know what you will see. Maybe turning back would have the opposite effect, but you must know what's behind the door. You continue, propping yourself up against the wall. You reach out your hand, skin translucent and paperthin, bruises covering your arm, and reach for the knob. Before you do, the door opens and Death welcomes you in for tea.

FIN

Backward

Backwards takes you to your own bedroom. Before any adventure had a chance to begin, you’ve returned to a comfortable life. You close the bedroom door behind you and return to your laundry, carefully separated by color. Tomorrow you’ll make some egg salad and maybe if you’re feeling dangerous you’ll add extra mustard. Evenings pass in your easy chair, guessing the answers on syndicated game shows from fifteen years ago. 

When you die many years later, you leave behind a library full of dog-eared travel books that never left the house. You woke often in the middle of the night thinking of a room with doors and hallways and choices, and you think about which you would have chosen, given the chance. You like to imagine there was a way to choose them all. You fall back asleep considering what could be on the other side of a closed door. 

Someone finds you after you’ve begun to decay, destroying the easy chair’s upholstery. There is a stone where your heart once was. You are buried in the city in an unmarked grave, still dreaming of choices left behind.

FIN