I Was Outside The Door.

• Riley Jackson, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2016

The rain cascaded down the window of the car as we pulled up alongside the house. The rain always took me back to when I was a kid, watching two rain drops pour down the glass, pretending I was watching them race, times where a lot simpler then. The rain started to slowly ease as we approached the house, the neighbourhood surrounding it was a typical suburban place, somewhere that looked like a serial killer would live.

You know those neighbourhoods, almost everyone has lived in one, a place where the person across from you could be a drug king and the person next to you could be a collector of people’s heads. You know, typical suburban places. This house stood out from the rest though, it stood almost about 14 meters taller then the others surrounding it, it had four different chimneys, the house didn’t have a single fireplace. It was a peculiar house.

The garden out front of the house obviously hadn’t been tendered to in roughly 5 years, grass overflowing onto the footpath, reaching higher then my knee, and pot plants sitting on the porch. Dead. I could feel my mums beading eyes staring at me from the driver’s side car, I don’t know why we eventually decided on this place, it was creepy, haunting even. She gave a little friendly beep and drove off.

The smell of old rotting wood filled my senses as I creeped my way up the pathway, the grass slowly becoming thicker and thicker, a few old tires stood in a pile up against the stairs leading to the porch. As my eyes trailed up the path and up the stairs they met with the door, the door was the most peculiar part of this house. The house, which hadn’t been touched in at least 3 years, decaying, falling apart and definitely spelt out death trap, the one weirdest thing. The door was brand new, the lacquer still looking fresh against the bright red coat against the clean cut wood. It stood mightily against the dead wood, almost as a sign of protest against death. The door drew me closer to this magical entrance, occupying my vacant mind, I almost fell over the tires on the stairs while I approached the door.

The cold feel of the air became thick with the feel of anxiety, what which could keep this door so alive could be sitting behind it. Secrets to the universe? Immortality? Time machine? Who could tell. The coldness of the knob encompassed my hand as I held it, it felt just as new as the rest of the door. I slowly started twisting it but I realised the door was already ajar.

He couldn’t believe what lay inside.