I hate going to work

I hate going to work.

It all feels so pointless, wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep. Why even bother repeating? It sounds stupid like my entire life has just been on this one big loop for as long as I've known and I've never been in the driver's seat. It doesn't matter though. I'll change tomorrow.

I pick up my keys, my wallet, and my work uniform before I remember I forgot my phone on my bed. I run upstairs and open the door, my room devoid of light aside from the morning sun peeking through my window. It was devoid of wallpaper, paint, or posters of any kind, a soulless and emotionless prison of my own making.

I dig through my dirty and unorganized sheets to find my phone, I'll be late at this rate. After a few seconds of digging, I finally find my phone and check the time. 6:57 AM. I'm late. Again. I sigh and head for the front door, not even bothering to fix my sheets or close my door when I leave my room. I've got everything now, all I need to do is open the door and leave. But something isn't right.

This time when I approached the door, the peeling off-white paint seemed to pulse, as if it was the skin of the door itself. And just the same, there was a slow wind from the other side of the door. I knew that was impossible, the door was completely closed. My hands began to shiver and my house grew colder drastically, it all was happening so fast, I struggled to understand what was happening. Like my brain itself was being prevented from comprehending the situation.

Through an open window next to the door, I could see the light from the morning sun grow dim and unfriendly, the grass outside turning a dull blue rather than its familiar verdant green. The morning birds did not cease their song but rather sang a new one. One I've never heard before, and would never hear again. All of them sang it, even different species came together to form this new piece, almost as if they were all part of the same choir. The door itself went unchanged. Ever still, waiting patiently in anticipation for my hand to grasp its handle and unleash the outside world itself, as if it doesn't exist until I open it.

My hand grew closer, and even though every fiber of my being was telling me it was all some coincidence or that I was just going crazy and it was still just a door, I hesitated. My hair felt as if it was falling out and my skin became itchy. The birds became louder and the grass somehow bluer in an almost unnatural glow. I couldn't do it, I could barely find the nerves to blink or swallow, there was no way I could ever even attempt to open the door. Still, it waited. It knew I had to open it eventually.

I steadied my breath and calmed my nerves. I was shaking everywhere I could feel and itching all the same, the itch was unbearable. But I couldn't scratch it, I was entranced by the door. I had to open it, it didn't even matter that I had to go to work. I just wanted to know what was behind it. If my reality was truly intact or the door was the only thing protecting me from what it had become. What felt like hours went by in mere seconds as the itch now settled in my bones, the bird's voices went hoarse, and the grass began to wilt in the corners of my vision, decaying until it was merely a black spot resting in the soil.

My muscles grew tighter, my eyes began to twitch and my teeth began to itch in pain. The sun outside was gone, replaced with an empty unexplainable purple void where the sky once was. The grass was no longer grass, it was a pile of muck polluting the very ground with its diseased new form. There were no birds anymore, nor the wails they emitted. The silence was deafening, piercing into my skull like a hot knife through butter, my head began to split and I saw stars in my vision. The door insisted I open it. It called to me, voiceless to reveal what it had been protecting from me, or perhaps what had been using it to protect itself. The door itself didn't seem to know, it simply wanted whatever foul presence behind it to be discovered the same as I did, to know the unknowable and end the chaos afflicting both of us. The door had become alive, a living breathing, hungry creature begging me to feed it the knowledge it craves. Yet the syllables were empty, and the words had lost their meaning. Time did not flow forward, in reverse, nor did it stop. It did not exist, it was only me, the door, and what was on the other side.

Through all better judgment and instinct, my body had had enough of its constant itching, the incessant gnawing on the back of my mind demanded relief, and the relief was turning the handle and opening the door to the world. A metaphorical Pandora's box, but if it's already been opened before, what does it contain this time? My nerves were shot and my arms were shaking, yet through something unexplainable, I was able to grasp the handle. The lock inside the door seemed so worthless, so insignificant to restricting whatever was on the other side, that it made me wonder why it was ever there to begin with as if a tiny piece of metal would ever restrict something so colossally alien to our world. I twisted the handle regardless, ignorant of the consequences. I want to know. I have to know. The door has to know.

Again my head cracked, I wanted to reel in pain, but my body would not let me. My legs were stuck in place and my gaze fixed on the door. And like my skull, the sky had begun cracking as well, not by a storm, but from the inside. A great bleeding tear split the heavens in half, revealing in the distance the form of a giant beast, laying dormant in the emptiness of the cosmos something so unfathomably large that if it were to exist it would dwarf even our solar system in size. It stared aimlessly into the depths of space, eyes on all of its sides allowing it to do so with ease, before finally focusing all eyes on one single point. On our planet. It began to wake, to flex its tired and unused limbs to prepare for locomotion. It was faster than anything I could imagine, it passed the great expanse in a matter of seconds, the eyes dominating its body were now dominating my own. My sight was no longer my own, it knew what I knew, but I didn't know what it knew. The door screamed, begging for me to hurry and open it, false promises that whatever it was containing was the answer to this all-encompassing and undefeatable threat. It was too much. I was about to die, I could feel it in my skin, my bones, my brain, my heart, my soul. I had to open the door. It had to be done.

It felt like a journey, like an impossible trek through the tallest of mountains, no peak could ever be greater than pushing this door forward, it weighed infinite, it stretched on infinitely, there was no end to the force required. The beast must have been holding me back, there's no other explanation. Through non-action it prevented me from taking any, I was simply stunned, and I had no hope of escape. Again the door screamed, it was my last chance. My energy was gone, I had no muscles, no tendons, no skin. I was a shell with a brain, merely experiencing what was automatically happening around me. I was a helpless observer, praying to something greater that my body would overpower this incredible terror and reach this unobtainable feat of strength, and finally, after an eternity, it ended. Through all logic, through some great feat of the divine, I pushed the door open in one quick motion and waited for the other side.

And just like that, reality snapped into place. The door was open now, just like I'd opened it a thousand times before. There was nothing on the other side, no apocalypse, no primordial force, no great beast from the beyond. The air outside was calm, the birds were chirping and the grass was dewy from yesterday's rain. I looked to the sky, and just like every day, the sun was shining. There was no great bleeding scar, no giant multi-eyed beast. Just the clouds, the great blue, and what lay beyond it.