The Door
A futuristic mini-novella featuring Ray Luvah & Jeanette Applebelle

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

Chapter One

Someone’s left a door in the alleyway again, mutters Ray as he slips on his impermeable zoot suit and gets otherwise ready for yet another day at Window World. Though the door spoils Ray’s view entirely, the symmetrical tops of the fence posts he prefers to gaze at first thing in the morning, there’s no way he’s going to move it. By now, he shudders, there are snails behind it, cats, even the grasses that lie in its shadow will have become feral and stare up at him with sticky eyes should he dare to shift the door even so far as behind his neighbour’s garage where he won’t be able to see it. This is the third door this month. Ray’s read books about such phenomenons, other worlds that yawn behind the slightest opportunities to take root. Fortunately, he’s already got his shoes on, coffee to go and the Titan’s whining on the lawn, ready for lift off.

Chapter Two
At Window World, the Whacks are at it again. Ray’s private name for the store’s maintenance team. Nearly every time he goes in some bloody thing has been levitated and reconfigured. Today, it’s his desk. In fact, his whole little office, including his vase of lilacs, his Bozo the Clown coffee mug, a picture of his dog, Muttcakes, and the name tag reading Ray Luvah, Manager of Glass has been moved to the other side of the room, as far away from the photoreplicator as possible. What, has the Director noticed him working on his side projects and given word to these buffoons to relocate him?

“What’s up fellows?” Ray directs his question to one of the Whacks scuttling past him. “O just aesthetics, Mr Luvah, just aesthetics,” the feeble-minded twit responds, vanishing into a cubicle. Ray has no choice but to stomp over to where his office is now, a brand of obvious disgruntlement between his silver eyebrows, around the thinning cupid of his lips.

Only a few more years of this dishpit and then he is off to Walla Walla, the company’s retirement community on Jupiter where he occasionally receives reports of former colleagues whose days are now full of mojitos and nano-surfing. Ray sighs so deeply his moustache rises like the fringe of a Turkish carpet and then the laser phones begin to ring all at once.

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