Door

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What the man had always thought of his home was that it was a shelter. He could
sit and sip on some hot cocoa while reading a good book in front of the fire, bu
t the windows were gigantic slabs of concrete. All the years he spent watching T
V, trying to block out the sounds from outside he never once considered leaving
his shelter. Every day he woke up, stretched and donned his slippers. Made break
fast, and sat down on the sofa. Some days he heard banging, others he heard muff
led screams and warbling cries from creatures he never wanted to lay eyes upon.
In time these sounds faded, one day he smelled soot and dirt and the man was con
vinced that the concrete slabs were holding back mounds of burned earth. The sil
ence was the worst. He could deal with the strange noises, it forced him to be s
cared and act, or try and listen, to think of ways of blocking out the screams.
The silence was just that, silence. His life had never been normal ever since he
woke up in front of the door, covered in burns and faced with a note at 10 year
s of age. But now his existence degenerated, he felt empty. He craved companions
hip, he cried and laughed and in a fit of rage, smashed his TV. He snapped. Mont
hs passed in silence, he gazed at the gigantic steel door, the hingers that coul
d hold fast against any bomb, the multitude of locks and bolts and welds that he
ld it shut. He shivered the day he noticed that all of these were bent inwards,
as though something had tried to reach him. A pressure wave? A monster? He didn'
t want to know.
He spent a week thinking, pondering. Did he really want to live like this? What
if the silence meant a new world had sprung up around his cold and lonely shelte
r?
He decided to leave. There is no fate worse than death, what's the worst that co
uld happen? The noose in the basement was forgotten. The man spent a year tearin
g at the door. He picked the locks and cut the bent hinges over the course of tw
o months. He used up every appliance in the shelter to tear up the welds. The bo
lts came last and took five pairs of tools to make loose. In a drawer deep in th
e garage full of ruined tools he found a knife that wouldn't break. He ransacked
his house for useful tools. The door became undone, slowly but surely each lock
gave way to the knife and his assault. Then one day, half-mad, he put on his ru
cksack, the warmest clothes he had and pushed the door.
It didn't budge.
He pushed again and the slab of steel wobbled. The floor of his shelter gave way
and the door fell down with a tremendous boom, it cracked the boards covering t
he cellar and flew through the cellar's floor and smashed the enigmatic power so
urce. The lights went out and he was in the dark. On the other side of the tunne
l behind the door he saw the faintest hint of light. He staggered towards it, co
ol dirt met with his boots, he smelled life. Plants and wind. A wide grin formed
on his lips as he stepped out of the tunnel and saw a creature for the first ti
me in his life other than himself. It was a little lizard, green and with a dumb
look on its face. It skittered away when he kneeled down and began to laugh. Bl
asted skeletons of skyscrapers towered above him, craters covered the landscape,
full of clear blue water and surrounded by green life. A hundred wars had been
fought over his head. He saw smoke way off in the distance, and walked off into
the jungle.
The first human he had seen in 20 years was a woman in a spacesuit taking sample
s of wild wheat.

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