The Red Door

 

“Open the door!” shrieked Michael, perhaps for the first time in his life, for his life has always been distinguished for softness.

I tried to wake him up, but he got carried away far into an illusionary world of dreams. He broke out in cold sweat. And the colour of his face faded away like a snapper fish.

Suddenly, he woke up and started babbling like a runaway patient from an asylum. His eyes were all watery. At that moment, I tried to comfort him.

“Don’t touch me!” he yelled. His face was pale like a death. “I told you that there is something fuzzy about that red door. I was right. It is the gate of hell. I don’t want to go nearby that door ever again in my lifetime”. Michael continued narrating the whole story. And he begged me to save him. I tried to convince him that dream gave him these heebie-jeebies.

He grabbed my hand tightly. We head towards the ground floor; a sensation of stupor oppressed me as my eyes followed his retreating steps. We reached towards the red door. It makes my blood run cold. The door that ought to be a lock for years; is now welcoming us.

The clock in the drawing-room struck twelve; the strokes echoed through the room one after the other, and everything was quiet again. The door closes on its own. All of a sudden, Michael loosened the grip of my hand. And an involuntary agitation took possession of him. He was standing like a ninety-year-old man with a hunched back. There was a sudden increase in the room temperature. His bloodshot eyes were staring at me without blinking an eye. He started limping like a zombie towards me.

I felt numbness in my whole body. I tried to run, but I couldn’t move an inch. I was scared out of my wits. In a blink of an eye, he started blathering in a foreign language. “Don’t touch me!” I warned him repetitively, and he turns into a deaf ear.

He gradually comes nearer to my face and whispers in my ears, “Get out!”

I felt a sudden rush of blood in my nerves. I ran towards the door. I tried to open the door, but my efforts were in vain. I screamed at the top of my lungs, ‘Open the door!”. I was sweating out a fever and shivered down my spine. In a turn of events, he started banging his head on the wall. I tried to stop him, but he pushed me away. I fell. And it was a blackout moment for me. I felt like the walls of the red room moved closer towards me to take me in.  I tried to escape that situation by covering my face with my bare hands.

“Help me, help me, someone please!!!” And I woke up. Michael was staring at me with a petrified look.