One

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I was standing in front of the white wooden door.

It was a nice, fancy door, a symbol of perfection, plain and clean, free of stains,  or any flaws, just like the door to any fancy girl’s bedroom.

I lay my hand on the handle but retreated after a second, as I had absolutely no idea what was inside. It could be either a gleaming palace or a cell in hell with burning lava. Panting nervously, I’d been pacing around in front of the door for quite a while.

The door was on the first floor, right next to the gate of the tall building. It would have been a better idea to have this door on the top floor, so that I could get rid of my anxiousness by climbing all the way up, which would be exhausting enough to drive away any thoughts or emotions in my mind.

My destiny, however, was to open that white wooden door. No room for negotiation, nor a second choice. I didn’t like the way I was forced to take the risk, although there was a chance for having something fabulous inside. Yet one thing for sure would be waiting for me behind the door: a brand new life. Probably an adventurous one, I hoped.

It was getting dark, so I was running out of time. For a baby like me, it would be dangerous to stay outside at night. Anything could happen.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before I reached out to rotate the handle and pulled open the door.

Inside was nothing more than a small, narrow room. In fact it wasn’t even a room but more of an iron box surprisingly warm and cozy, with a soft white pillow on the floor. I sighed with relief, crawled in and sat on the pillow with my head buried between my knees.

The door shut gently and left me with the secured darkness.

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Two

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I promised that I would never leave the room with the white wooden door. The principle of my life was safety first and opening the door would be life-threatening, especially with the monster waiting outside, seeking a chance to eat me up.

I had been in my bed for years and dared not to set my toes on the floor. Whenever the monster heard my steps, or even the slightest rustle of fabric sliding, it would start roaring, which might draw more attention from other monsters idling around.

There were no windows in the room, so no way for me to escape except the white wooden door. I never knew why the monster didn’t just knock down the fragile door and get me directly. Maybe it was a pleasure to torture the food before tearing it apart with its blade-sharp fangs.

Holding my breath, I lifted my body in slow motion and pressed my ear to the door. The heavy, regular breaths of the monster rushed into my ear. The sound was weak, but it was always there. I had the feeling that it was asleep, but still as starving as I was.

I lied down again in relief, wrapped myself up with blankets, and shut my eyes in the lullaby of the monster’s breaths.

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Three

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I was in my car, smoking a cheap cigarette.

With one of my arms resting on the window, I let out a puffy cloud of smoke that drifted out. On the other side of my car stood the grand building in which the white wooden door waited for me on the top. The building thrust up above the sky, its top floors smothered in the thick quilt of fogs.

 I was supposed to enter that door hours before but refused to go even an inch nearer to the building. The slightest thought on the door made me sick.

I knew what was inside that stupid door, that thing. Or, it was more appropriate to call it a puppet of that person. She used to be really important to me, for she was the one who survive me from the monsters in some unknown way. But one day, she simply turned into a puppet, and I never knew why. But that was why I became tired of her.  

Since she was puppetized, our conversations repeated everyday in exactly the same way.

“Why are you unhappy?” asked her in a robotic voice.

I rolled up my eyes.

“Why are you unhappy?” said her again, in the most tedious tone in the whole world.

I thrust up both my middle fingers.

“WHY ARE YOU UNHAPPY?” she turned up her volume automatically to the loudest in order to threaten me, but remained in the same emotionless tone.

I pushed both sides of my lips up with my middle fingers to form a smile.

“Why are you unhappy?” Realizing that I was not unhappy, she opened a smaller white wooden door on her belly, shot a tuna sandwich at my face and turned to leave, whispering the same sentence over and over again while I ate the disgusting sandwich and cursed maliciously at her back.

I hated her, hated the room, and I was always planning to leave. However, as a kid I couldn’t afford a quiet single room for myself, which forced me to go back through the door everyday or to be homeless.

Every second I spent behind the door felt like a decade. I had to wait desperately for the sunrise to save me, as in the morning I had to go to work for money to buy materials for her to make sandwiches, or I myself would be the one starving to death at night.

What a fucking ridiculous world.

I dropped the cigarette butt on the ground and took out my phone to order a takeout from the restaurant across the street. In a few seconds, the cook came out and yelled at me to make sure whether I wanted tuna in my sandwich.

I just decided to stay in the car tonight until my phone ran out of power and I had to go back for charging.

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Four

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I was in an elevator that didn’t have a button for the 18th floor.

Over and over again I checked the note from my friend, which said she would be waiting for me in the room behind the white wooden door on the 18th floor. The elevator was moving from 17th to 19th then from 19th to 17th for ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever…

I hated the no smoking sign.

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Five

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“Good night!” said my friend.

“Good night!” I replied.

“Have a good weekend!” said her.

“Okay! Bye!” 

I was still smiling and waving when my friend closed the white wooden door in front of me. The clatter of cups and the murmur of voices from the party inside became obscure.

Great exhaustion had sucked out all my strength. I leaned on the door and squatted down slowly for a rest, but looked up to the sound-control light when it extinguished.

The door was at the end of a narrow hallway, right next to a window. Moonlight shone in through the window, silhouetting me against the door. That would be a perfect sketch of me, I thought to myself.

The other end of the hallway was swallowed by darkness. I couldn’t see anything more than the line carved by the moonlight at the edge of the known and unknown. I imagined I had a cigarette between my fingers and pretended to light it. I had so much fun tonight, so I never knew why my heart was occupied by a strong sense of void and meaninglessness at this moment. I couldn’t go back to the room after saying all the goodbyes, nor could I just leave the door immediately.

I started to count my breaths before I spit out a gust of imaginary smoke.

I could see the sad look on my own face in my mind.

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Six

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“Fxck off,” said the guy who made copies of keys for a living.

“Just give me the key to the white wooden door.” 

“Fxck off.”

“Hey, I know I don’t have the original one for you to make a copy, but it’s your job to help people get in their rooms. Their own rooms. ”

“Fxck off. ”

“How rude! I’m the client. Do as I say. ”

“Fxck off.”

“Alright, alright, you win. I see that you have no other words in your vocabularies. I’m leaving…”

“Fx…”

“Fuck you off!”

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Seven

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The sky was clear and blue, without even the slightest trace of any cloud, and covered me up like a endless, giant dome. It was transparent, but couldn’t be looked through. The blue was too solid, too concrete, and too real, like the dreary sea without a single movement of wave.

That meant I was imprisoned by the sky. Such realization made me want to scream and run away. Lying on the grass alone, I knew I had to be calm. No one was in sight at the moment, but there would be people gathering if I did something weird. Anything weird. So I just sat up, got rid of the grass on my dress, and left the empty field.

I walked to the streets, trying not to be panic. The street I entered was empty, nothing more than mild breezes sliding past. The grand white wooden doors along both sides of the street thrust up and squeezed together, bending over to me near the sky.

Panic took hold of my heart all of a sudden. I felt my stomach shrinking and twisting, pumping the acid liquid up to my mouth. I was afraid. I knew the city of doors had been going after me. It haunted me. The city reached out its hand that kept approaching me, trying to grasp me tightly and then never let go.

Fortunately, I was too small for its giant hand. That was how I managed to sneak through the fingers every time the fist clenched with blasts of wind howling through the street. I didn’t want to be choked.

The seemingly everlasting row of doors came to an end as soon as I began to run. At the end of the street lied a set of stairs extending downwards. I stood at the intersection of the road and the stairs, studying the foggy vacancy ahead. Through the milky vagueness, I could tell that the stairs was linked to something at the other end, which would probably be my way out of the city. However, it was too tiny to be observed from my position. Perhaps it would be another set of stairs that brought me into another city of doors. I didn’t know.

 My heart was beating in my throat when I stepped on the stairs. The fact that I was leaving stunned me. My face was almost burning when I turned around for the last glance at the doors——

Suddenly a strong gust of wind blew from behind and tipped me over. I rolled down the stairs for a while before I restored balance and started running as fast as possible. I was out of breath, but I dared not to stop, even when the gradient of the stairs was growing steeper and steeper, and I was cast out the moment it turned vertical.

 I was floating towards the sky as I turned around and found the city magnifying underneath, with streets of white wooden doors duplicating like virus and stitching together to cover every inch of the earth.

 I wondered when my back was going to hit the sky.    

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Eight

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“The white wooden door never exists, neither do I.” said I.

“No,” said the door. “It’s just you.”

“Fxck off,” I replied.

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Nine

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I felt it very funny to see a white wooden door like that.

I hadn’t seen any white wooden doors since I had made the decision to escape from them and managed to got rid of the doors completely before the moment I met one here again.

How ironic! I giggled.

The sky was crystal blue with puffy clouds floating freely by. The door, like a monument, was standing upon an enormous pile of broken bricks. The surrounding forest spread out endlessly on earth to meet the sky at the end of the world. Everything was intertwined by wild vines except the door, which was still nice and fancy as a symbol of perfection, plain and clean, free of stains, like the door to any fancy girl’s bedroom.

I didn’t remember when exactly the building was torn down, leaving the door alone like this. It must be the only white wooden door left in the world, and I was the only human being left with the only white wooden door in the world. We were the only for each other.  

I chuckled. My laughter melted into the soft breezes and ran along with the whisper of leaves. I was laughing so wildly after hearing what the trees said about me that my belly went sore. They hated me, like how I hated that thing. I burst into even wilder laughter before I lost my balance and fell to the ground.

It was not until the sunset dyed the sky in heart-warming orange that I stopped laughing. Still panting furiously, I propped myself up and wiped off the tears I had laughed out while climbing up the wreck to the door and tearing it open.

The sunset framed in the door was gorgeous.

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Ten

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I was trapped in a ball made of white wooden doors.

It was like a central station with billions of doors around me, which were all rotating slowly to dazzle my eyes. No keys were required, just too many doors to choose from.

Before I got here, I had already gone through billions of white wooden doors and then billions of central stations behind the doors. This was just a new one with nothing special. Each time I went through a door, I would leave a burnt mark with my cigarette on it. Up to now I had never seen a burnt mark, nor did I greet the same door, or visit the same central station again.

All I needed to do was to choose a door, open it, enter another station, and choose again. It was my duty, rather than destiny, to be stuck in such a freaky circle, and I was pretty sure it would never come to an end.

I was standing in front of a nice, fancy door I was about to open. It was a symbol of perfection, plain and clean, free of stains, curves, or any flaws, just like the door to any fancy girl’s bedroom.