The Door

You sit. You pretend to be stone. Still and cold and quiet as the earth. Only the earth isn’t so quiet any more. Chaos outside. Mostly shouting, some screams. The ever-present hungry crackling of fire, clean air just a dim memory fading.

A knock at the door. What did we used to do when someone knocked on our door? We can’t remember. Now we hide. Now we stay quiet. But once upon a time when someone knocked on the door we would... God, we can’t remember.

Because stone has no memory and that is what we are. Stone. Cold, save for the heat of her skin, the husky warmth of her breath and if you pretend. If you close your eyes and try not to breathe you can pretend there’s not even that. Not even this evidence that she, that you are even here. Were even here, that there was ever anything in this world to vouch for your presence.

“If we stay quiet they’ll go away.” You whisper in her ear.
“If we stay quiet they’ll go away.” Again.
“If we stay quiet they’ll go away.”

She’s nodding now, rocking back and forth and whimpering like some hurt animal and so are you. Because that’s all we are now. Animals. Hurt. Scared.

Trapped.

More knocking on the door. Very silly to keep knocking if no-one is home. But someone is home. Whispering was a bad idea. Impossible to hear anything over the fires but they know someone is here. They know you’re here. They’ve known for days.

They’ve known for days and you haven’t been able to leave for days and she’s sick. A little water left, but already green at the edges.

If the wind changes you will burn. But first you will die choking. The door traps you. Doors can be opened but fate has made you your own keeper, the choice is yours, you can open the door, you have the key. If you have the key you can open the door. They don’t have the key. They can’t open the door.

They can’t open the door, please. You hope. You pray. You hate to hope and you hate to pray and in the end you stop doing both because you’re stone. Two stones in the dark and the cold at the end of the earth as fire burns and the dead pound at the door and that screw in the hinge moves just a little more.

A little more.

“Please make them stop.”

It’s the first time she’s spoken in days. You hate her for it. For the shame that her plea burns in you. Yet the knocking stops. The hinge rests.

Hours pass, minutes, centuries.

Eventually you rise. You move slowly to the bathtub, every creak of a floorboard drawing a wince. You don’t want to move near the bathtub, it means going past the door. You can hear them out there and for a moment you don’t move. Can’t move. Can’t go any closer to it. The door stands there and it doesn’t move and it’s strong and it won’t move and it protects you and you love it and it traps you and you hate it and do you remember the last time you tried to get out? Do you remember why she is sick?

The bloody hand print on the frame of the door shouts what you try to bury. The irrefutable nature of the thing makes you want to scream. You can’t pull a shirtsleeve over it and you can’t forget it and she needs water so you keep moving.

Six cupfuls at best. You carefully, silently, scoop a handful of the cold puddle from the bottom of the tub. Painstakingly try to remove the worst of the green froth from the edges and take it back to her. She’s still breathing but colder now.

Cold as stone and she takes the water without a word and you hold her and there’s a moment. That’s all life is now. Moments, each one a grain of sand. A tick of the clock.

But there’s something special about this one. You try to kid yourself but you know. You kiss her hair and know that in a world where moments are fast running out for all of us, this one is as good as anything is ever going to be again.

And then that horrible pounding starts anew, maybe it never stopped.