The Doorway by TW Smith (microsoft ebook reader txt) 📕

Chapter 4

David watches his mother for a few moments trying desperately to think of anything that he may have done to upset her so.  She had always acted a little mystic, if not downright strange, when confronted with her past but what he had just witnessed was absolutely spook.  Trying to push the disquieting thoughts aside, he returned to the cooler to get himself a bottle of water.  As he looked around the beach, it seemed almost possible to forget the freaky event of moments past.

He absently sets his book unceremoniously beside his towel while simultaneously failing miserably at discretion.  He just can’t help his wandering eyes though because the girl walking by is very nearly flawless.  There was a minute where he seriously considers going after her and introducing himself. Before he could pull himself together, however, two other insanely beautiful girls had joined her and he was not sure that they were way way out of his league.  As the disappointment washed away, he returned his attention back to his little roost.  He was sure that there would be many other girl to walk by and he was sure to be interested in at least one of them.

Straddling his towel, he took one last look around the beach.  With nobody, well no heavenly bodies at least, in sight, he plopped down on his towel.  The next moments were peculiar to say the least and he was completely disoriented.  He could see a diminishing spot of light above him though the darkness that seemed to be engulfing him from every side and he felt as if he was falling.  He knew that it must be some kind of vertigo even though he had never suffered from any such condition before this.  Even stranger however was that he was beginning to feel surreally intangible.  It occurred to him that he could have passed out and may thus be hallucinating.

Amidst the descent, David heard what was surely a gunshot in the distance but he couldn’t tell from which direction it might have come.  A couple other cracks followed before complete and deafening silence resumed and he began to feel as if he wasn’t alone but he couldn’t see or feel anyone around.  It felt weird to be falling but not picking up speed.  He thought that it could be like the descriptions he’d read about dimensional portals.  His revelry is momentarily interrupted by the realization that he can no longer feel any part of his body.  In an attempt to stave off panic, he tries to look around and realizes that he can no longer see the glimmer of light that had been there only moments ago. 

To avoid dwelling on all the unknowns of his predicament and keep his overactive imagination from making things any worse, he guided his mind to the one thing he knew really well, <the book title>.

“Sienna has just met the British (double) agent and began to listen to what he had to say when the crack of a gunshot, followed by several more, convinced her that this is a good time to duck into the nearest apartment building for cover.  Following a controlled retreat and an interrupted discussion, they are forced to vacate the building through the back and down the fire escape.  After this, Sienna seems somewhat less sure of herself.  While it could simply be that she is falling for that phony, David wishes that he could somehow manage to uncover the secrets shrouding that transformation and thus gain some insight into the origins of the new Sienna.  The other question that comes to mind is why the fire escape is so high and the mystery of the missing ladder.  The only thing that comes to mind was that it served as a deterrent for any uninvited visitors.  He thinks he eyes are closed as he ponders these considerations but he can’t really be sure of anything just at the moment.

When the vertigo had diminished a little, David opened his eyes to immense grayish very blurry block-like shapes all around him.  There was no telling what these things may be but at least the fall wasn’t bothering him quite so much.  With nothing identifiable around, he stares unseeingly straight ahead for an indeterminable amount of time until a streak of color catches his eye.  At first, it looked like a bird flitting around him.  When at last it flitted close enough, he saw that it was his smaug towel.  The desperate grab at least made contact though it wasn’t good enough to secure his prize.  His mother’s words echoed in his head again, “don’t lose the key” but now he was sure somehow that the towel was the key she had been talking about.

He watches the towel fall away from him before noticing that the scenery was changing.  Instead of immense grayish very blurry block-like shapes, they were not immense grayish structures that decidedly resembled the kind of apartment buildings one might find in a city.  The thing that demanded his attention even more than the growing detail of what looked like the metal fire escape found on the alley side of city buildings was the fast approaching surface that was probably the alleyway.  It occurred to him in sudden very stark reality that “it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end”.  He really wasn’t ready to die.

“I’m too young to die!” he screamed to nobody in particular.  The only thing that prevents an all out panic attack is the little voice of reason trying to assert that if this was really real then the buildings would look as surreal as a Picasso.  As the ground is almost upon him, he notices movement below.  A roughly humanoid shape suddenly appears below him and drops away toward his own imminent doom.  Almost as if in response to this new obstruction, his descent slows dramatically though it’s really not clear why or if the decrease in speed would be enough to save his life. 

Without warning, his peripheral acknowledged more movement around him but he was far too mesmerized by the ever increasing clarity and detail of the ground below.  Perhaps it was some form of dementia cause by the seemingly prolonged fall or possibly his overly active imagination but he could swear that he saw the scattered glass of a broken beer bottle.  It was impossible to gage in his current state of mind where the glass was in relation to his target area but he hoped that if he managed to survive that he didn’t have glass shredding him all up.  He barely had enough time remaining to consider what any of the possible outcomes.

They say that in your last moments, your whole life is supposed to pass before your eyes.  David had never understood what that meant.  He considered that it may be memories of major life events that surface from the depths of your mind but could never understand what about unavoidable death would remind you of the good times of your life.  Still, if you know that this is the end, perhaps it was merely a spiritual means of scribing your life’s experiences to the soul in preparation for the journey soon to be started.

David could never have prepared for this moment.  The vertigo returned with a vengeance Images that could be memories passed through his mind in a jumbled mess.  Some things he thought he might have recognized but there always seemed to be something unfamiliar about the things he was seeing too.  His bedroom was clearly the room he had grown up with but the walls were covered with posters of boy-bands and all of the books on the bookshelves were paperback instead of hard back.  The school where he sat in class had the same uncomfortable all-in-one desk/chair combinations he remembered excepting that the girl sitting in front of him was in desperate need of better conditioner and the teacher, Mr. Hudson, was insanely handsome.  All of his memories were a little off but the most disconcerting thing of all was the heaviness he felt.  It was like he had always imagined it would be if a time-traveler materialized in the same space as another person.  He welcomed the darkening of his vision as this most likely meant that he would not be conscience when he died.

David was knocked back into awareness by the jolt of his landing.  The first thing that of which he was aware, however, was a pain in his ankle; probably sprained.  His knees buckled but his hands impacted next and that part of his landing was more controlled.  He stabilized his momentum and balance and bowed his head to his chest, eyes closed tightly while the heaviness and vertigo passed.  He could hear someone speaking with an English accent asking if he was alright.  He wanted to assure this would be hero that he was fine but thought that speaking might not be such a good idea.

Once he was finally sufficiently under control to open his eyes, he glance quickly around hoping he would be able to figure out where he was.  The first thing to catch his eye was the splotch of brilliant color waving like a flag from an antenna attached to the fire escape several stories up.  He was sure that was his towel, the key, which he should get right away.  Testing his weight tentatively on his ankle, he gingerly pushed himself up.  A hand appeared in his vision.  He grabbed the hand a second later as his ankle threatened to buckle under him.  Something in his stance seemed wrong, maybe different but he was too busy trying not to fall to give this any attention.  Looking gratefully up with an appreciative smile in order to see who his rescuer was, he was immediately accosted and drawn in by the most brilliant green eyes he’d ever seen.  They were bright and piercing and beautiful and the man to whom they belonged, though he was smiling back, looked decidedly concerned.  Try as he might, he simply couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t, bring himself to look away.  This too seemed strange because most guys came into and went from his life without ever even being noticed.

Despite the convenience of this guy preventing him from falling and his impeccable attire, the very presence of this stranger, that he suspected had jumped into this alleyway only seconds before, was subject to the utmost of suspicion and scrutiny.  Of course the distraction of this man’s handsome features was not entirely welcome.  Perhaps less welcome, however, was the feeling of being so long exposed in the open in this alley with someone hot on the trail.  Paranoia had never been his thing and he had absolutely no idea how he knew this but he knew for sure that it was indeed pertinent.  While he really wanted to figure out what was going on here, the certainty of pending doom spurred him into action.

With the support of the man’s strong grip, the two hurried through a nearby ally and through a door.  David was in the lead even though he didn’t think that he had any idea which direction they needed to go.  There was something familiar about the whole situation that he was sure he could have easily figured out if he wasn’t so rushed.  When the door opened into the private room of a diner, the feelings of familiarity became too much leaving him no other option but to get off his ankle and collect his thoughts.

Once he is sitting at one of the tables, the man tells him that he is going to secure the doors.  There is an odd look on the man’s face that is