The Codex of the Untaken Exit — A Cascading Doorway

A quiet horror about the door you don’t take

Photo by Rafael Leão on Unsplash

Warning: imagery of hanging; suicidal thoughts; passive suicidality; vague massacre

I was in the stock room on the day the shadows came.

We had a beaded curtain there, instead of a door. A cascading doorway.

It let more light into the shop, made the place more appealing, you know?

The beads were wooden — smoothe.
Flattened wood circles that had been varnished,
treated,
finished off properly.
Quality.
Joined by individual metal rods; hook-and-eye.
Let the light in, made the curtain heavy.
It swished, clunky, when you went through it.

As you walked through, a strand or two would always jerk and wobble, back and forth, at chunky angles (the body at the end of a rope.)

It was too heavy for the wind to move it much, and too loud —with the beads, I mean — to allow anyone to steal from the back room without alerting us. People still tried, though, from time to time.