Through One Door and Out The Other

Date: 10/30/2025

The air in the depot is thick as treacle — heavy, slow, and humming with exhaustion. It clings to my skin like someone else’s sweat. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, too bright for an empty place. I can almost hear the echo of footsteps that don’t exist anymore. The big boss calls my name, voice booming from nowhere and everywhere. He orders me to change rounds — last minute, of course. I check my watch: quarter to eleven. There’s no chance in hell I’ll finish on time. I sigh, but don’t bother arguing. My willpower left on the last van out. Back at my frame, I start sorting letters that seem to multiply when I’m not looking. Piles within piles, boxes within boxes. Their paper edges whisper as I work, soft as teeth on bone. Somewhere between one stack and the next, my focus slips. When I blink, I’m no longer in the depot. I’m walking into town. It’s only when the clock tower looms above me that my stomach drops — my HTC is gone. My high-capacity trolley, my anchor, my reason for being. “Oh, shit,” I mumble, too tired even to swear properly. I take the scenic route back. Somehow, my feet lead me to a pub. It’s the old kind — warm light, crooked beams, the faint scent of old beer and older secrets. I push through the door expecting the comfort of noise, but the chatter stops dead. Dozens of faces turn toward me. Pale eyes. Still bodies. The silence feels thick enough to drown in. “Jesus,” I mutter. “Alright, don’t all rush to say hello.” No one blinks. No one moves. I half expect Peggy Mitchell herself to burst out from behind the bar, waving a towel and shouting “Get outta my pub!” She doesn’t — which is somehow worse. I take the hint. I move to leave, but the door I came through is gone. The pub stretches like a bad reflection. A man’s voice behind me calls out, “There’s a door over there.” It’s a window. Too small for reason, but reason’s not much use to me anymore. I clamber onto a sticky table and squeeze through. Someone below mutters, “Idiot,” as my shoe catches on the frame. When I drop down on the other side, the world’s changed. The air is hot and sweet. The streets are cobbled and sunlit, lined with pastel houses that hum with lazy warmth. It’s Italy — or something pretending to be. Mat appears beside me, as he often does in dreams. “Come on,” he says, nodding toward a chapel up the hill. The building is impossibly pretty: tiled roof glittering like dragon scales, stained glass bleeding colours that shift as I move. But inside, it’s vast — too vast. The ceiling rises until it disappears into stars. A barn dance spins beneath it, laughter and fiddles echoing into the void. Everyone’s in cowboy hats and boots, joy blazing from their faces. Until they see us. The music stumbles, stops. We are the only white faces there. The silence is heavier than the air in the depot. Every stare says the same thing: You don’t belong here. We leave quickly, the chapel door sighing shut like an exhale that doesn’t want us back. Outside, Mat shrugs. “They’re filming a scene for Hollyoaks,” he says, like that explains anything. Before I can respond, a small boy appears, crying in the street. “I’m lost,” he says. We turn to point him toward the chapel — but it’s gone. The hill is bare. The air where it stood feels bruised. When I look down, my trolley is back. My old metal beast, scuffed and groaning. My friends are here too — five angels disguised as posties — helping me with the post as if this day were normal. We climb a narrow flight of stairs to a leaning house. The front door hangs ajar, breathing in and out. “Hello!” I call. “Special delivery!” Laughter echoes from inside. Children, maybe. The sound dances through the floorboards, playful and sharp. “Hello?” I say again. A small shape darts under the stairs. “I can see you, little boy!” “Who are you calling little boy?” snaps a woman’s voice. She’s small, sharp, her face twisted with scorn. She snatches my PDA and scribbles fuck you as her signature. Hands it back like a prize. I laugh because it’s either that or scream. “Lovely handwriting,” I tell her. When I turn to my friends for a shared grin, they’re gone. The house is silent. The laughter fades to static. And then Ash is standing there, smiling, a camera cradled like a secret. “Got a new toy,” she says. “Remember when we used to take funny photos of the kids?” The memory flickers, slippery and uncertain. She lays a fluffy blanket down, scoops up Monkey, my cat, and starts posing him. He tolerates it with saintly annoyance. Click. Click. Click. Then she asks, “Can you take one of me and Monkey?” “Of course.” I lift the camera. The viewfinder hums. In every photo, her mouth stretches too wide — a black pit devouring her smile. “Ash,” I start, “maybe don’t look—” She snatches the camera anyway. Her eyes widen, then soften. “Oh, Amanda,” she says, her voice trembling with awe. “I look beautiful.” And for a second, she does. The darkness blooms out from her like ink in water. Her body wavers, breaks apart. When I blink, she’s gone. So is Monkey. So is everything. I’m back in the depot. The lights buzz overhead, too bright, too loud. My trolley waits beside me, stuffed full of letters — every one addressed to me. The clock ticks from 10:59 to 11:00. And from behind the sorting frames, faint but certain, I hear it: the click of a camera shutter, taking one last picture.