{"type":"stories","id":"mysterious-doors","title":"Mysterious Doors","url":"/stories/mysterious-doors","summary":"Friedre wages an escalating battle of wills against a door that refuses to stay shut, resorting to increasingly drastic measures to defeat her wooden adversary.","date":"2023-02-12","tags":["Fiction","Humor","absurdist"],"categories":["writing"],"body":"“Hmm, that was odd.” Thought Friedre, staring at the anonymous white-painted door in front of her. She was sure she had closed it moments ago. But now, she turned back after making tea, and it was open again.\n\nShe placed her tea down on the table behind her and gingerly tiptoed towards the door and closed it again, a puzzled look on her face despite the satisfying click it made as she did.\n\nShe faced the table to pick up her tea and turned around.\n\nIt was open again.\n\nNow more annoyed than intrigued, she again placed her tea on the patient table and padded towards the door. She pushed it shut with a solid thud and walked backwards, keeping an eye on that rules-breaking door.\n\nOne step from the table with her comforting tea, the door swung open wildly, clattering against the frame.\n\nShe ran at it, shutting it with a well-placed shoulder barge and jumped back. It swung open again, narrowly missing her shoulder.\n\nShe pushed it again, and it swung open just as quickly.\n\nThis merry dance repeated for several rounds before she fell to the floor, mentally and physically exhausted, staring at the aggravating panel of wood.\n\nThis situation needed a new strategy. She crawled back to the table and sipped at her tea, her back passive-aggressively to the door. She could feel it taunting her.\n\nShe placed her empty teacup on the ground, moved to the other side of the small table and slid it across to the wall. She then ran at the door, pushing the table towards it as fast as her legs could carry her, forcing the door closed with the weight of the table.\n\n“That’ll tell it.” She thought, walking back across the room with a satisfied swagger, dusting down her hands.\n\nThat was when a door-propelled table smashed into the back of her legs, sending her metres into the air and crashing down onto her backside.\n\nShe sighed with frustration and lay back on the cool floor, feeling a chilly breeze wafting through the open door frame. She stared at the ceiling and decided a short nap would help concoct a solution.\n\nShe awoke with a start and sat bolt upright, her eyes staring widely at the yawning portal. The idea hit her in a flash.\n\nShe rummaged in a bag in the corner of the room and found what she was looking for.\n\nWhistling casually, she skipped and danced towards the door like she was pleased to see it. What a remarkable ruse, she thought.\n\n“My, what a fine door you are!” She declared to the door. It met her gaze plankly.\n\n“Such fine timbers, such skilful paintwork, such shiny fittings.”\n\nDid she detect a wobble in the hinge there?\n\nSeizing her opportunity, she plunged onto the door with her rusty trusty saw. Chopping and churning it into a hundred shreds of wooden pieces until nothing was left.\n\nShe emerged from the sawdust haze, coughing and spitting, her hands raw and her saw blunt.\n\n“That’ll tell it.” She said.","links":[],"fields":{}}