2006 ADVENTure Calendar: Portals
It always starts out- at least for me- with a house in the woods.
Sometimes it’s snowing, sometimes there’s a roaring storm complete with lighting and bone rattling thunder and under this dark and roiling sky is the shadow of a wolf splashed against the almost visible world that you think, but cannot be completely sure is the real world.
Your world.
The world that you belong to.
Is it better to go to that house and get out of the storm? Is it empty? If you knocked would someone open the door or would you hear your rapping echo through dark hallways and dusty rooms where nobody lives but someone or maybe a few people died-
on a night just like this
when it was snowing and the figure of a wolf trotted unconcerned under a roiling sky to the house with a light in one of it’s windows and it’s back door unlocked.
The wolf and it’s shadow trot to the door and noses the door open and makes it’s way through the kitchen stepping carefully across the aged and faded green linoleum floor stopping every few steps with it’s ears pricked forward.
It’s dark orange eyes are focused not on what it can see but in a way on what it can smell, and what it knows will be coming any second now.
There. It hears it. The knock.
The wolf glides down the hall, through the unfamiliar and unlit rooms to the front door and the knocking.
It raises itself up on it’s hind legs and then…
” Oh, hey I’m really sorry but we were on a hike and this storm came out of nowhere and caught us. Look. If you could let us in for just a bit…it’s Hell out there.”
The man and his friends at the door are wearing brightly colored hiking jackets. They smell like coffee and sweat.
I pull the door open and I let the two men and the woman in and I try not to laugh so as to not show my teeth which no matter what form I take never change.
Hell out there indeed.
I push the door shut and the sound of it slamming closed is drowned out by the thunder and a few short gasps and a scream.
For me, it always starts out with a house in the woods and sometimes there is a storm and sometimes there is snow
and this is
in case you have any doubt
my world.
