Clowns and Doors, part three

You entered a circular room of doors by going down a stairway that has faded into nothingness. The door above the stairway hovers above and opens to a soft blue sky and an idyllic landscape, the place you came from. But that door is beyond reach. As far as the doors in the circular room, you’ve tried three. One leads to cold blackness, another pure sky, and the third a city under siege from above — where the screams of the children still haunt you. Your plight has been made all the worse in that the floor of the room has begun to fade into nothingness. The center is already gone. You now approach the next door adjacent to the others you have already tried.

You turn the knob and open the door. It is a living room with a large bay window, beyond which you see a pleasant yard with green trees and a blue sky. Almost directly in front of you is an old, beat up, comfortable sofa. A father and mother sit on either side of their son watching a man on tv shoot people who don’t bleed, but die with almost humorous cries of agony. They cheer. The boy holds a large pot of worms, and he shuffles these gleefully into his mouth. The mother and father occasionally take handfuls themselves, munching contentedly. They are all plump, plain, and happy.

There could be worse things … like nothingness. Then you realize that what you had thought were designs on the wallpaper in the living room are not designs at all, in fact they are cockroaches. They are moving not just over the walls in random and confused patterns, but over the floor and ceiling as well. You see them now, even moving over the couple. They don’t seem to care; they just brush them aside and continue watching the man on tv shoot people who never really die, but just fall down and stay down. The cockroaches even climb into the bowl of their worms. These they just shake off before eating.

You shut the door. You are sick. Somewhere in your mind the children behind the third door are still screaming, you try to turn off the sound. You cannot. Nor can you stop the floor from continuing to fade into nothingness. You are on a circular ledge now with little time left. You go to the next door and open it.

A dry overpowering heated air blast tinged with the scent of cinnamon and musk hits you, leaving you dazed at first, then pleasantly dull. You look into a large, cavelike chamber of debauchery. The figures in the room are like men and woman. They wear no clothes, and their skin is like that of a reptile or a snake. Their dark reddish eyes are dreary or drugged, smoldering. Their bodies wrap around each other regardless of sex or position. They are so intertwined that you find it difficult to distinguish one of them from the other. They heave together as a mass, expanding and contracting with mutual breaths. They pleasure each other.

A hand reaches out towards you knowingly. Strangely there is an attraction. The cinnamon, musky scent must be a drug because you are sure you are floating. And you realize how easy it would be to just take that hand and float over to the mass, stripping down and joining it, losing one’s self in it, forgetting the screaming of the children …

You shut the door.