Died 1000 Times

I've died a thousand times and been reborn every morning. Inside my head the waking world seems as fleeting as the dream itself minutes after awakening.

I stand inside a room with a million doors. Each door has a number and a letter on it. They look like cheap apartment doors, the kind with a generic last name written on the easily replaceable door knock. The doors stand freely and I walk around some to find a different number and letter on the back. Some have signs that say, "do not disturb" or "knock loudly, bell does not work." Ironic that these two stand side by side. The room itself stretches as far as I can see and the doors have no pattern to their dispersment, some are grouped closely together, others stand alone.

In this place the paralysis of choice never enters my mind and I open the first one that strikes my fancy. The designator is D5. I swing the door wide and there's nothing. Nothing at all, nothing but blackness, whole and solid. The kind of blackness that creeps into your thoughts from time to time. I imagine that it would feel like oil if I reached my hand out. I'm seized with a terrible fear and attempt to close the door at once. It takes all my strength to swing it shut and I immediately felt better for having done so. I felt that I'd never be happy again if I didn't close it.

I turn and run off. I run for a while, past many doors, trying to catch a glimpse of the end of the room. I can see no walls but when I looked up there's a ceiling with fluorescent bulbs. Except for this I could be outside.

I stop in front of a door marked I9 and grab the handle. It's very cold, almost like ice. I jerk my hand away and see where the warmth of it has left a mark on the brass. The condensation on the handle is already beginning to re-freeze. I decide not to open this door and instead open the one directly behind me, marked J4.

Alone in a small white room, no bigger than a classroom stands a grandfather clock. Next to the clock stands a little blonde girl in a butterfly costume. She smiles when I walk in and holds out her hand.

"Here, these are for you." In her hand is a small assortment of jellybeans. I take one and pop it into my mouth. It's was a berry of some sort. The little girl begins to prance around the room in circles, waving her arms and singing:

Razzleberry, dazzleberry,
Look at my wings,
I'll fly away from here,
And leave all my things.

She stops after a minute and turns to me. Her face is the picture of innocence.

"My name is Journey and I'm waiting for my mother."

Almost on cue a door opens on the other side of the room and a tall woman with long red hair breezes in and takes the little girls hand. She pays no attention to me and seems to not even notice my presence in the room.

"C'mon Journey, its time to get up and go to school."

The little girl smiles and waves goodbye to me as they leave the room. The door they came in shuts and I am left alone with the grandfather clock. I walk over for a closer look. It's beautifully crafted out of mahogany and the pendulum appeared to be solid gold. It chimes once and a small door opens at the top. A tiny field mouse appears and runs down the side of the clock. It runs across the floor and out the open door that I had come in. Without thinking, I chase after it. The mouse runs for a couple feet and squeezes into a mouse hole at the bottom of another door.

I open that door and gape at the scene before me. Cubicles, lots and lots of cubicles. And they are all manned by ants. Each ant wears a tiny headset and sits in front of a tiny computer. Flies buzz about the room with bookracks, dropping off memos and carrying reports. I quickly close this door. Too much like work.

I begin to tire of this room with millions of doors. What good is it to have endless possibilities and only a few hours to explore them? I start to look for the door that will lead me out, or for a door marked, Restroom.

I begin to open and close doors quickly at random with only a cursory glance inside. I catch snippets of conversation here and there. A raised voice or a scream. A moan of pleasure and the sight of exposed flesh. The honk of car horns and the sound of train. Monkeys on swing sets and bears on roller-skates. I hear gunshots in one room and applause in the next. It's like running down the hall of a movie theatre and stopping for a moment at each one.

The mouse from the clock scurries across my path, chased by a black cat with white feet. The cat stops when it sees me and meows. I lock eyes with it for a few seconds and think loudly the word:

BOO!

The cat runs off.

Suddenly I hear a static sound like someone searching for a station and leaving the dial halfway between two. I recognize the sound of my alarm clock. I sprint towards the door that the sound is coming from and kick it open with all my strength.

The sun shone through the blinds and made a linear pattern on my closet doors. It was morning and I felt neither rested nor refreshed. I had this strange sensation like I'd been jogging and felt slightly out of breath. As I got in the shower and started to wash my hair I began to sing a song that abruptly popped into my head.

Razzleberry, dazzleberry,
Look at my wings,
I'll fly away from here,
And leave all my things.

Written by Garret Ellison

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