Robert Found a Door

“This is not a good start.” I groan as the cheery alarm rouses me. My mouth is dry and tastes like stale gin and bile. I’d apparently only made it halfway into my tent before passing out. And now it’s early, painfully early. The programmed alarm grows louder, taunting me into consciousness. I flail about to disentangle my torso from the sleeping bag I’d crawled into headfirst. I imagine I look like an enraged, hungover mealworm.

“Augh - Christ - I KNOW!” I finally tear off the sleeping bag, tripping backwards out of the tent and into the half-finished living room. 

It’s cold, maybe freezing. Sunlight intrudes into my house, promising a morning full of opportunity for me to squander. Squinting against the light, I navigate the cemetery of empty-bottle obelisks, on my hands and knees at first, until my feet remember their purpose. My phone is nestled between a ball-peen hammer and a pack of wood screws. 

I turn the phone over and am greeted by a cartoon flower bouncing back and forth to the rhythm of the alarm. “Hooray! It’s the first day of spring! You have 9 unread messages. You set a reminder to OPEN THE DAMN THING today.”

“Fine, but not because you told me to.” I dismiss the alarm with a flick of my thumb and drop the phone back into the toolbox. It lands with a distressing clatter but I don’t check whether the screen is cracked. I reach my arms overhead and begin a stretch, but nausea swells suddenly and doubles me over. 

My breath comes out in a steaming shudder as I urge myself into the kitchen. The cold has hobbled me; stiff knees shoot splintering pain when they bend. The floorboards are unvarnished and the rough wood grinds against my soles. I’d really rather not mop up vomit this morning. 

I make it into the kitchen,and clutch at the flimsy metal placeholder sink. I breathe deliberately and feel the churning dregs of liquor reluctantly begin to settle. I run water from the tap and start drinking from my hand. The cold water is shocking and I have to close my eyes and pull myself together. I remember I don’t have a mop yet, and the unvarnished floor would just soak up the liquid and stain, anyway. I’d learned that the hard way.

My eyes open and follow the trail of small, rust colored spots that leads from the sink across the kitchen floor and end under a canvas tarp. 

When I feel strength in my legs again, I haul myself over, and lean down to unfurl one corner of the fabric, revealing the trap door. The door is cut from the new floorboards, but the hinges are old, heavy brass, and the handle is a piglet's head. Cast from the same brass, its ears and snout are disproportionately large, and a ring runs through its nostrils. The animal’s expression is almost doleful. Two planks of scrap wood run across the door at awkward angles, and split where the long screws had been hurriedly set.   

“You ready?” I whisper not to the piglet, but past it, below. 

In response I hear a faint scraping of metal on stone. I instinctively replace the tarp and back away. There’s a familiar panic in my chest, but it has to compete with the hangover.

There’s an itch on my rear, and I thoughtlessly scratch at my cold, naked flesh. I realize now that I’m wearing only a thick, wool sweater. “Well, maybe pants first. And breakfast. Pants and breakfast.”

Scavenging for clothes, I pause in each room to admire my own handiwork. The work is solid, even after sitting unfinished for the last few weeks. It’s impressive what one person can do to an old building. Doubly so, when all that person has is an inheritance, the distant experience of a summer job, and a playlist of internet tutorials. 

After locating a clean jumpsuit in the lofted office, I track a half-finished pizza to the foyer. It had transitioned from delivery to frozen, but I gnaw at a slice, unfazed. Now, fully clothed, hydrated, and partially fed, I set to work. 

I feel neither resolve nor enthusiasm rise in me as I move through the brain-fog. Piece by piece, I gather my tools into the kitchen: a metal file, a wrecking bar, a handsaw, a steel mallet. I won’t use all of these, but I don’t want to be caught unprepared. The cordless drill is already here, untouched since the night I’d boarded the door shut. 

I lay out the tools with deliberation, as if I’m place-setting for a wedding reception. I lean against the utility sink for a while, considering the arrangement. I’m stalling really. Again. My hands are numb, at first from early spring air but now also with panic. My fingers tremor as I reach for the drill. I contemplate a few swigs from one of the bottles, but my stomach twists in a protestful knot. 

I take the drill in hand and give the trigger a test-squeeze. It whirs expectantly; the battery is still charged. There’s nothing else that needs to be set up, and I’d promised myself it would happen today. I lower myself onto one knee and place the drill bit into the first screw.

[BBBBRIIINGG]

“Fucking god jesus!” I bolt up with a start, the drill falling from my hand. I hop aside as the heavy tool clatters around my feet dangerously.

[BBBBRIIINGG]

I’m gasping for air; I realize I hadn’t been breathing for a while. I try to shake the numbness out of my limbs as I move back into the living room for my phone. I dance around the liquor bottles to get to the toolbox. There’s a spider-web fracture spreading out from one corner of the screen when I turn the phone over. Through the cracked display I see a familiar smiling face haloed by the Caller icon.

[BBBBRII-]

“Jacob.”

“Bro-Brobby! Bobby Bee!” my brother’s voice is insistent and cheerful like morning sunlight. “How’s the digs?” 

“I’m fine Jacob. I mean,” I glance at the wreckage of bottles and filthy work clothes piled about my tent. “I’m the same.” 

“Yeah. Yeah I know what you mean.” His voice, softer. I hear a mechanical hum in the background; he’s driving.

After the observed moment of silence, he perks back up. “Listen, I just got back from some business at Dad’s office and Cheryl gave me some concerning news. She said you’d fired all your contractors?”

I feel my jaw tighten. “Okay, couple things. No, I didn’t fire anybody. They just finished the work I needed from them. I paid everyone in full, there wasn’t any contract violation or whatever. And anyway, that happened a month ago, why-”

“Wait, so you’ve been up there, alone, for a month now? Rob, that isn’t healthy. Why are you doing this? We’re worried about you.”

I weighed my words carefully; I was not going to get in a fight with my family today. “You are not the king of the family.You don’t get to tell me how to grieve.”

There’s a heavy thud and a clang from the kitchen. I reach down to grab an empty bottle by the neck.

“Fine. Fair enough.” The tension had left the conversation. “If you tell me this is what you need, I’ll take you at your word. So, how is the work coming, Mister One-Man-Army?”

  I saunter into the kitchen and hoist the bottle over my head, taking aim. “It’s good. It feels right. Something came up week-before-last, though. Slowed me down. But I’m taking care of it today. Then I can get back to-”

There’s another dull thud, the piglet’s nose ring jumps from the impact. I hurl the bottle and it shatters on the brass head, scattering shards across the floor. “-to being productive.”

“Whoa, what was that?”

“Wind knocked a glass over. I’ll get it later.” I move back to the living room and up the stairs. I don’t want to be around more bottles.

“Listen, buddy. It sounds like you’ve earned a break. Why don’t you come down tonight? We’ll make dinner and have a game night. Or we can go out. It’s your choice, we just wanna see you!”

I sit down at the top of the stairs and rub my eyes. “That’s nice Jacob. I appreciate that, I really do.” I can almost hear his smile falling “But I can’t get distracted right now; I’ve already lost too much momentum.”

“Robert, what if-”

“I need this. I just need to finish this and I’ll come visit. I promise.”

I hang up before he can get a word in. I take a beat to mute my ringer; I don’t want another distraction. I set the phone down, gently this time, and let out a sigh.

There’s a crash from the kitchen. It’s different this time, heavier and with a violent tearing to it. I bolt to my feet and freeze there, listening. I don’t breathe, but my heart is pounding in my chest. The silence stretches for what feels like minutes; until, just as I’m about to take a step down, the second crash erupts from downstairs. There’s a rending noise and I hear something large thrown across the room. 

I race down the wooden steps. As I approach the landing, my foot catches on the cuff of my pants, and I go down. I try to roll into the fall but the last step digs into my ribs and I tumble ass-over-head, landing on my back with the wind knocked out of me. I roll over and scramble to push myself back up, heaving and gasping throughout. As I rise, I spot another bottle in my periphery; my hand finds it and I brandish it as a club.

I limp to the kitchen entrance and pause there, barely breathing, adrenaline flooding my veins. I don’t know exactly what I think I’m going to do. I push into the room as all good sense leaves me.

The trap door has been ripped out of its framing. It sits upright and open. Like a coin that landed on its side, I distantly think. One of the hinges has been torn off; and the door clings to the remaining hinge like a baby tooth connected by its final fiber. The planks that boarded it shut are in pieces, some roughly dangling from the oak door, the rest strewn about the ground to mingle with the glass shards. The brass piglet’s head is upside down and askew. It seems to be following me out the corner of its eye. 

The room is quiet except for my breathing. My shallow gasps for air must be indistinguishable from sobs; I feel tears rolling down my face as I round the door and approach the open pit. 

But I don’t have to look. I already know. The house is empty now.