What Behind the Door Lurks?

      As he opened the door of the darkened building and stepped into the glitzy vestibule, he heard a loud sound echoing off the walls. Before him a long, dark corridor stretched, illuminated on each side only by a series of book lights, one every few feet.

     John’s girlfriend Jane had texted him a half hour before and told him to join her at the abandoned building, Google Maps directions to which she had attached to her text.  Although the place looked familiar to him, its age and years of the area’s constantly-changing climate had made it almost unrecognizable.

      Yet, the woman’s message sounded so strange and urgent that he felt he had to follow her instructions immediately. After all, he had no idea what danger she faced.

      As the boyfriend came closer, he found that the building, the parking lot and all the surrounding streets seemed deserted, and strangely eerie. But he could find no sign of his lady love, her car or how she had arrived at the strange place.

        Could she have had just enough time to text him before someone attacked her or spirited her away?  Another thought entered his mind–Jane had again played one of the practical jokes that had punctuated their six-month relationship. Maybe she had once again pranked him.

       He continued to follow along in the dimly-lit space and found that, rather than continuing in a straight line, every 10 feet or so the path twisted and turned. The structure reminded him of the funhouses in the many old-timey amusement parks that once populated the resort area where the couple had met.

      On and on the boyfriend walked, pushed forward as a combination of fear and anger multiplied with each step.  Then, out of the darkness, a heavy wooden door opened on the right side of the passageway, almost knocking him off his feet.

     Guess I better enter, he thought, I have to solve this mystery.  I hope my girlfriend had a very good reason for telling me to come here and nothing has happened to her.  If this is another one of her gags though, she will have hell to pay.

     He cautiously stepped through the entrance and walked gingerly along another winding trail illuminated again by book lights. At the end loomed a room stacked high with books with reading materials from all kinds of genres, mystery novels to science fiction to reference works.

      A crash startled John as an old version of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary fell from its top-shelf position on the side of the room, covering him with dust and almost knocking him out.

      The dictionary fell open to the word faithfulness, and as the young man stared at the definition, something swept him into the book and through another strange passage leading to a dimly-lit room.

       A theater stood at the front of the room and, in the center, Jane looked down on her beau from a podium on a bilevel stage, behind which she read from what appeared to be a legal book.

       John Smith, the Court of Modern Day Romance has summoned you here because you stand accused of cheating on your girlfriend with the blond-haired secretary in your firm and a number of other women.  If you admit to the charges and pledge repentance without a repeat of the offenses the court will allow you to go and live the rest of your life in peace.  Should you not repent and continue with your evil ways, you will be forced to live out your life only as a footnote in history in the Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.  How say you?

      Totally perplexed and in disbelief about the entire scenario the boyfriend closed his eyes hoping the nightmare that apparently had taken him over soon would end. When he opened his eyes, nothing had changed.

      He tried to turn around and escape, but a strong, almost magnetic force prevented him from leaving the room, as he remained trapped inside the pages of the book.

       “Jane,” he shouted, “you have no idea what you are talking about.  Somehow you have gotten into my head with this strange little drama.  I never loved anyone but you. It looks like you have some mysterious power over me. Please stop trying to force me to participate in your little game; in no way have I ever cheated on you. You have convinced your so-called witnesses to fabricate lies. Make this whole fantasy go away now.  

      But if you have somehow cooked up this whole deal to punk me I don’t see how our relationship can continue.”

        Then Judge Jane presented witness after witness, including Marie, the blond secretary, who swore that they had slept with John.

        Noone came forward in John’s defense to refute any of the  claims of the many women who testified.

        Just as the magistrate slammed down her gavel and prepared to have the eternal sentence carried out, the podium disappeared, the book closed and the boyfriend found himself whisked away to his car outside the strange building.

       He awoke from what he figured out must have been a bizarre nightmare or an elaborately staged joke. Then his cellphone rang and Jane appeared on its screen.

       “Gottcha,” she said, “Happy Birthday. Since you have served as the local librarian here for five years, I thought you would appreciate the literary humor. A few of your co-workers helped me decorate the building which served as the town library before the council replaced it with the modern, more digitized version.  We also enlisted the help of the local theater company to carry out this little drama. Sorry if my present scared the hell out of you.”

       After John got over his temper tantrum about his girlfriend’s latest stunt, they both roared with laughter about the joke.  As a partial payback, he insisted that she treat him to the most elaborate and expensive birthday dinner their town’s most exclusive eatery could provide.

       He wasn’t sure if he would devise a response to her gift equally as original as her little drama–or even if he had the imagination to dream one up.