Dimension Door: Chapter 1 - Worth

It was my first day college when I decided to open a door I’d been sure hadn’t where where it was a moment ago. Little did that I know that by opening this mysterious door I would quite literally be opening a set of doors that would open up countless possibilities, while forever closing the set of doors I’d thought I was destined to pass through. I would never be a simple frat boy, drink away the celebrations with all the responsibility of a ten year old and the maturity to match. Perhaps I should be sad? Perhaps I should be glad? But in practice I must say my feeling were mixed and had remained so for the better part of my life.

So let me tell you why I’d felt this way.

I had been a fairly confused boy, and yes I mean boy. A boy in a man's body perhaps? But a boy and not a man. I had never been the type to take responsibility for my actions and I’d always chosen to believe that “things” would work out no matter what I did. So when the door stood against my bedroom wall with all it’s simplicity, I chose to open it. The door swung ajar with relative ease and I stepped through, in a trance by what the door had shown me. All but ignoring the intricate carvings light chiseled into the hard wood of the door frame. Perhaps if I’d payed attention to the tale which the carving held then I would have second guessed myself and decided to step away and go on with my boring life. Perhaps I wouldn’t have come to hate myself and the simplicity of a normal life. I will never know.

The Isle of Leazil was a gathering of islands in the mid-pacific of the Heruth rings. The Heruth rings being a series of worlds grown on the surface of four giant stone rings that interlocked with one another in much the same way a chain would. I had lived there for a lifetime, entranced by all the mysteries this new world held. One thing that I shall forever be grateful for was that this world very quickly taught me humility. The civilization of this world was a simple, medieval even. With little to no purpose I wandered for a year, visiting the cities and town, the signs that paled in comparison to everything I knew and even the palace of King Leazil. Though our meeting was more in the form of us meeting eyes for a second during a public ceremony.

That meeting of eyes was all I needed, for the King's eyes widened before quickly finding something else to look upon as if he didn’t wish to trouble me with whatever had shocked him. The King's reaction had troubled me, as all who gazed upon me had done the same as him. Even he, the King of the Isles could not bare to look upon me for more than a second. I was no different to these people, so why was I so disgusting a creature that they could not bare to gaze upon? I had wondered in my ignorance.

In a childish fit I ran from the Capital and returned to the country. I returned to the tree where I had appeared not a year before and found that the door was gone. A door had opened, I had stepped through and a door had closed. It was that simple and I refused to understand this for the longest time. But in my ignorance the last bits of the world as I had come to understand it, came crashing down. They tore at me as they shattered against the hard reality that I was never going home and that I would never see my parents again.

I had retreated within myself and had been determined to starve and become nutrients for the tree that stood in the clearing of where home had once been. If it hadn’t been for Mason Green then perhaps I would have died there, but I will never know now. Mason lived with his wife and daughter on his farm. It was a small farm, but larger than what a small family of three could comfortably handle. Mason’s eldest son had died the summer before from the common cold, a notion that befuddled me. The common cold had killed his son, an illness that could easily be dealt with. But this was a common occurrence as I had come to realize when half of the nearby town had died from the very same “common” cold.

I had worked for Mason as a farm hand. In return he gave me food, a place to sleep, friendship, a bit of coin and eventually his daughter's hand in marriage. She was fourteen years my junior in life, yet she was far more mature than I could ever have been. When we had finally married she had turned nineteen and her father had insisted that we marry after he’d learned of his daughter's fondness for me. The notion had befuddled me, but I was quickly becoming an old man and hadn’t bedded a woman before.

So it was that on the peek of spring we were joined in marriage. All of the village had come to attend and all had congratulated us on “finally” getting married. More than a few had chided me on making the girl wait for so long and Mason had scolded me in a drunken fit for having to force our joining. I had still had mixed feeling about marrying a woman fourteen years my junior, but to these people such a joining was common. And although not even my wife could bare to look at me for more than a moment, I was content.

Then the lands turned to flames, blood, flesh and war. I’d had expected it to some extent when the knights came with a proclamation from the King. There was war between the realms and the King needed fit young men and women to fight it. I had to place a hand on the shoulder of my eldest to stop him from running off in excitement to join the war and become a “hero”. However he shook me off and with his brother and his sister, the three ran off to have an “adventure”. When I had spend the new several month crying, the only one there to sooth my tears was Seraph, the dog my daughter had insisted I got her just when she was fourteen. For I knew that if they returned they would not be the innocent children they had left as. My wife had left me behind some years ago while giving birth to our daughter and so Seraph and I spent the years together until eventually he died as well.

My children never return.

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With more than a decade come and passed since the war had ended, I accepted that my children would never return to me. I packed up what little momento’s I could find and set out to travel again. The world was large and although I had lived for near sixty years, I hadn’t explored even part of it.

I had done much as I had when I’d first arrived, but on a much grander scale. I wondered from village to village, town to town and city to city. Eventually I arrived again at the capitol, after nearly thirty years since I’d last visited. The Capitol had become larger still and the white walls that surrounded the city shone brighter with fleshly polished white stone. If before the city had been alive then now the city was living. The city streets were jam packed with travelers and traders, merchants and nobles, the rich and the poor. I had seen it before, the memories blurry with age. Seeing this place again, seeing how it had grown, it was beautiful beyond words and once more I was taught humility. Yet I decided that finally I would ask the question which had been firmly seated on the tip on my tongue for all these years.

I approached the castle in clothes fit for a beggar, worn with wear and dirtied with travel. I walked right up to the guard at the gate and asked to meet the King. I had expected to be refused, turned away and told to return to be with my kind of refuse. However they surprised me by readily agreeing to my request. So there I stood before the elderly King who was older, much more aged by the years and much wiser than our first “meeting”.

“So… we meet again.” The elderly King stated more than asked as his vacant eyes stared into the distance, lost in a memory.

“Yes… I remember you.” He nodded, his voice weary and tired.

“And I, you.” I said returning the nod.

The elderly King had a question that sat on the end of his tongue and had been there for as long as if not longer than my own. We each had a question and perhaps that question was the answer we’d both been hoping for.

“What was it you wanted to say to me, all those year ago?” I asked the simple question that would end the finally shreds of my understanding of the world.

Then for the first time in thirty years a person's eyes locked with my own. The King held my gaze until his eyes began to water and his eyes began to wonder. His eyes drifted from my own to my forehead, then my nose, my ears, my hair, my forehead again, my chest, my arms, my hands, my crotch, my legs and finally my feet; where his gaze stayed until it finally fell to the ground.

“You are a man...” He said as if realizing this for the first time.

I nodded slowly and waited for him to elaborate. For there were many men and I was not the only one in existence. The King himself being a man, though I was sure I needn’t explain this to him.

“But more.” He finally finished after a long silence.

Then I shook my head.

“I am just a man, nothing more.” I said with a strained smile.

The King nodded slowly but narrowed his eyes as if silently calling bullshit on my statement.

“Then what are you?” The King asked through grit teeth.

I took a moment to think on the question. What was I? How does a person answer that? No… how do “I” answer that? I was a man, nothing more. But no one could bare to look upon me, not even my children. That question, when I was about to answer it was when enlightenment struck me like a truck.

“I am… no...

I came from a world of smoke and flames with nothing but a shirt and pants. Through brush and dirt I’d walked the plain to seek out what life was worth… I’d found a village, a town and a city; but they’d all been not my turf. The village was drab, the town was a slab and the city was a bore or worse.

I’d walked the plains to soothe my pains for life was of no worth. But a farmer's son who had come and done, would find a son of earth. I’d thought too hard and gone too far to find what was to find. For all this time my worth was here amongst the plants and vines.

For life had thrived and though I’d thought I’d live and die amongst these times. I’d taken the daughters hand, taken her in my band and made the sons of mirth. Through thick and thin we’d made it work and things were looking grand. But then our daughter had muddied our water and taken her mother from the stand.

The war had come and they’d each had stayed, but here was not their worth. The first was terse and had no worth for he would die a serf. The second was glum and slick as a bum, but had died a simple slave. The third was taughter but would live like water and flow to the lowest glade. While I was stone and dumb as a crone I’d waited for all but naught. I’d visited a village, a town and a city before realizing there was worth. For worth was everything and everywhere and anywhere so long as we’d have searched.

I visited the king to ask a question for an answer that I had known. I was not a man, I was not a thing, I was nothing if not a sin. I’d sought out worth, but in my mirth I’d rejected my own turf. I was more than but a man, I was more than a farmer and more than even a father. I was me, a man, a thing, a sin, a question, an answer that couldn’t be worse. For my worth was worse than even earth, for I was a fool and something worse.”

The King had looked at me incredulously once I’d finished my rendition. I couldn’t blame him for I’d mostly thought up the rhyme that summed up who I was on the spot. And I wasn’t very good at rhyming.

“Then what are you now?” The King asked asked absently as he thought over the things I’d said.

“Leaving.” I said with a smirk.

I opened the door that appeared by my side. An action that I’d always been capable of ever since I first set foot through it. I’d simply been too self absorbed to realize it tugging at me all this time. So obsessed in finding purpose that I couldn’t see what I already had.

“Goodbye, King Leazil. Make sure your son looks after my daughter or I’ll make him regret it.” I said with all joviality gone from my demeanor.

The King’s mouth hung open as he realized I’d refered to becoming royalty as the lowest point in society and I slammed the door in his face.

I stood again in my room which was as if I’d never left. No dust or soil, nor even a pest. My room was clean and whilst not pristine the room was the same as best I could glean. I checked a mirror, my face was a sheen, no age, no wear, no scar or seam. I shook my head doubting my sight, I could have sworn I’d spent more than a night.

I slammed my head against the mirror I’d been staring at for near an hour now as I rhymed and rhythmed and, fuck! I slammed my head again and screamed at the top of my lungs. I didn’t bleed, I wasn’t cut for not even a knife could wound a touch. I slammed my head against what remained of the mirror again.

My attempts had failed, I wasn’t sane! The rhymes were in me, I couldn’t tame…

I slammed my head against the wall behind where the mirror had once been and billowed out a guttural screech. I was of worth I could now see, but what’s seen is seen, it cannot un-be.

End of Chapter 1 - Worth