The Door

There's a door at the end of the hall.

It wasn't there yesterday. In fact, it hadn't been there the entire time he's lived in this house.

But now, there's a door at the end of the hall.

He tried his best to ignore it, he really did. Tried his best to go about his every day like it had always been there, like it didn't just suddenly appear and make him spill his coffee all over himself. But it sat there, in the corner of his mind, nagging at him until he decided to do something about it.

And, well - what else is there to do with a door other than to go through it?

It probably wasn't the smartest idea, in hindsight, to walk through a strange door that appeared in his house magically overnight without getting help or informing someone. But what would he say? "Hey, this is going to sound crazy but this random door appeared in my house and I'm gonna walk through it." Yeah, that wouldn't go over well.

He wondered, for a moment, what if this door had shown up in everyone's homes? Would they walk through it? A quick internet search of "random door appearing in my house" showed that no one else has reported going through this experience, and that his must be the only door that appeared.

And now he was even more curious, why would the door appear here of all places? Why not at some other place in the world? It appearing in his home must have some significance - and what was the worst that could happen? Sudden death? He gets trapped on the other side? He figures that his curiosity was worth it - as the saying goes, "Curiosity killed the cat, and satisfaction brought it back." Besides, it's not like he would be leaving much behind here, just a dead end job and piles of debt. Getting stuck on the other side of a mysterious magic door is probably the least of his worries.

So, with a deep breath, he opened the door.

The hallway he was standing in greeted him on the other side.

He didn't know what, exactly, he was expecting. A magical wonderland? The portal to Hell? The vast terrain of a barren planet? He really didn't know what it was he wanted to see when he opened the door.

But he certainly wasn't expecting to see his own hallway staring back at him.

It looked almost exactly the same as the one he was standing in, but - different, in some way. It took him far too long to realize that everything he was looking at was flipped, like he was looking at the hallway through a mirror.

After a while, his curiosity took hold again, and he stepped through the door, wanting to see exactly how different this mirror world was.

He couldn't help but be disappointed when it didn't seem that different, there weren't pictures flipped upside down, or furniture on the ceiling. It was the same as the house he lived in, but - reversed.

He wandered further into the house, tripping over furniture that was technically in the wrong place. His room was on the right instead of the left, his bed on the wrong side of the room. The tv remote in his room was reversed, all the numbers flipped backwards. All the books on his shelf were near impossible to read, the letters and words each flipped in ways that made his head hurt.

He stepped into the mirror bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror, and he couldn't help but wonder what has different there - it looked the same as a regular mirror, and worked the same as one too. It seemed like mirrors were the only thing that stayed the same in this mirror world.

He wondered, briefly, what would happen if he brought something from this realm back to his own. Would it revert to the way it was in his realm? Would it stay the same? Would it cause a rip in reality and tear the realm to atoms? He decided it would probably be best to leave those questions unanswered. He's already risked his own safety and well being for the sake of his curiosity, there's no need to risk the world he lived in for his own selfish mind.

The door that would normally lead outside tempted him, called to him and his ever growing curiosity. Walking outside - here, he was somewhat safe - at least, he thought he was - but outside- who knows what monstrosities would wait for him in the outside world? What if there were people in this realm? What would they look like? Would they look wrong, but wrong in the way that you can't quite put your finger on it, the kind of wrong your brain gets looking at your reflection in the middle of the night? How would the speak? This is a mirror realm, after all - if the books are written backwards, do the people in this realm - if there are any - speak backwards? He couldn't stray too far from the house - too worried that the backwardness would cause him to get lost, get confused with the backwards turns he would have to make to return to the house.

So, he fed his curiosity the safest way he knew how: he looked out the window. He blinked a few times as his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness.

He regretted it immediately.

There were people in this realm, it seemed. And it seemed like they knew he was there, knew that he wasn't supposed to be there. They were staring at him through the window - a group of them, maybe ten people, men, women, children and a dog - as if they knew he would look through it. They just - stared. Their faces held no expression, their clothes didn't move with the wind - it didn't even look like they were breathing and the certainly were not blinking. They were just - staring at him. And he stared back. They looked - wrong, just like he thought they would, but he couldn't make himself look away.

That is, until one of them pointed at him.

Suddenly unnerved, and feeling like he was no longer safe in the mirrored house, he decided it was time to head back to the door. Back to his own realm. But just as he got to the door, something caught his eye.

There was a door at the end of the hall.

Had that been there when he walked in?