image [https://orig00.deviantart.net/b283/f/2018/172/5/6/16affv_by_romanromanich-dcezw60.gif]
Let me tell you, escaping from persistent doors is far too exhausting of an activity. I got too far into trying to figure this out because when I reached the "POST OFFICE" and got my gun, I was far too tired to do anything with it against the door. I was in fact so exhausted that I sat on a gnarly, ancient couch and passed right out.
The door chased me even in my dreams, refusing to go away. At least, I realized that this was indeed a dream, as I was running away from it across green meadows covered in well-baked bread, rainbows and sunshine.
I ran from the sunshine and from the meadows and eventually I was back where I started, beneath dark stormy skies, with yesterday's ruins surrounding me, the ground still smouldering from past hell-fire and ashes falling from the sky.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/972564269390503976/1002802821147672596/RR-20---SPOOKYDOOR.jpg [https://web.archive.org/web/20230414225003im_/https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/972564269390503976/1002802821147672596/RR-20---SPOOKYDOOR.jpg]
"LEAVE ME ALONE, YOU STUPID DOOR!" I screamed at it. The door silently stood in front of me.
"FINE! FINE! I see how it's going to be! You think I'm scared of you or something? I'm not!" I walked towards the door, annoyance pushing away fear.
"Is this what you want?" I seized the handle and turned the knob.
The landscape behind the door looked wrong, warped, sparkling all over as if it was woven from a tapestry of galactic constellations and TV static.
A ghostly, feminine figure wreathed in darkness, framed by a shimmering halo of fire turned towards me. It... she had no face. There was nothing but stars beneath a dark, semi transparent shawl. The shawl-dress on the figure came apart into segments of darkness that warped and twisted, wreathing like a million dark worms, a billion dancing flames.
Her right hand looked like it was wrapped in flaking, black duct tape.
The halo behind the girl warped into itself, thrummed, pulsated as if it was breathing in and out, stretching out into...
forever.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/972564269390503976/1002696633164775454/INFI-BEHIND-THE-DOOR.jpg [https://web.archive.org/web/20230414225003im_/https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/972564269390503976/1002696633164775454/INFI-BEHIND-THE-DOOR.jpg]
"Oh," she said. "Well... this is unexpected. Charles... Snippy, is it?"
I retreated backwards with a yelp.
"Where are you going, Charles?" the ghost asked. "Leaving already? Do you think you can just open the Door in your dreams and depart?"
I had nothing to say to her, my mind crawling with terror. I grabbed the handle of the door and pulled it closed.
"Hey! Listen up! You have to let me out of the Door in the physical too! Don't just give up halfway! Come on!" She yelled, her voice somehow impossibly woven from the sound of a thousand dying stars, from silence between nothing and everything.
"Let me out for real, or I will turn the hands of the Dead Zone against you! Don't think I won't do it! Don't think you..."
The door snapped shut, silencing the monstrous... something.
I leapt back from the sinister door and the impossible nightmare within it. A thin, tape-covered finger was sticking out of the slit between the door and the doorframe, wiggling back and forth ever so slightly.
I woke up with a whimper and saw Pilot standing in front of me, holding what looked like a moldy, gray puffin toy. I looked at the puffin. Its blue, plastic eyes reflected my own face back at me.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/972564269390503976/1002700630030307379/26-FULL-RUSSIAN.jpg [https://web.archive.org/web/20230414225003im_/https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/972564269390503976/1002700630030307379/26-FULL-RUSSIAN.jpg]
I sighed deeply, relaxing.
If there’s one thing I liked about the vast, frozen hellhole I lived in it’s that things were generally pretty simple.
I didn't have to pretend to fully understand how bank accounts worked or act like I get the rules of G-Soccer anymore. I didn't have to go through the public embarrassment of manually entering keywords into search engines. I hated doing that. It was a clear giveaway to any nosy onlookers that I was one of the useless chaff of modern society.
Nobody trusted a guy who couldn’t connect to ANNET’s servers.
In fact, I think I might just be the smartest guy left on the planet, though if I’m honest there’s not much competition, considering the company. I looked at Pilot.
Pilot... made sense now. He was just like a child, his mind clearly broken by whatever tragedies the end of the world gave him.
“Is the Goodlygeek tickling your brainspaces with tasty sleep adventures? My broken tiara doesn’t give me any Good ones anymore! Now I just get bothersome Error messages, flopping all over my eyes!”
“No, that was not a good dream.” I squinted at Pilot through my goggles. “People don’t scream after good dreams… you do understand that, right?”
Pilot didn’t answer, but leaned in with childlike curiosity.
“Were there... EXPLODING PINEAPPLES?”
I didn’t bother asking why that was the worst nightmare he could think of.
"No," I shook my head. I tried to remember what the dream was about and found out that I couldn't. Oh well.
“Have you tried thinking about Captain instead?” Pilot suggested. "Whenever I have bad dreams I think about Captain."
I pondered his words. Personally, there’s one thing I still don’t get in this dramatically simplified world. Who, or what, exactly, is Captain?
There’s not too much else to think about out here. There’s a few other tricky issues for sure, such as “how much longer will we be able to find relatively safe food?” and “it sure sucks that my only radiation-shielded boxers chafe a little,” but before too long my mind always returns to the Captain question.
Anyone could be below that mask and billowing cloak. A man, a woman, a stunning and talented awards-nominated actress, three giant wasteland bugs standing on each other’s oozing carapaces...
Unfortunately, the voice modulator in Captain's mask hasn’t held up to our hostile environment as well as the Captain has. I could never tell how much voice distortion it actually added. For all I knew, Captain's voice was just a setting the modulator got stuck on.
I tried to get Pilot to help me out. If anyone knew something, it would be him as Pilot had definitely met Captain before I did.
…It went about as well as could be expected.
That's when I also discovered that Pilot tied me to the couch while I slept.
. . .
Pilot got really excited when I showed an interest in “our Lady and Savior”, and for a few moments I had hope. He started babbling about “THE MOST WONDERIFIC CAPTAIN, TRANSCENDENT OF ALL THINGS!”
After a few migraine-inducing and unhelpful hours of exuberant Baptist-style preaching about Captain I had to interrupt:
“Yeah, look I get it—above all things, lord of the entire crappy planet, yep. At least give me a GENDER!”
Pilot just stared implacably from behind opaque green lenses. I got the sense he was pouting about being interrupted. I tried to frame my question in some way that he’d like enough to answer.
“Is Captain the King of Captainia, or Queen?”
“Both! Neither! ALL! Zee Captain climbs over your paltry divisive nounage!"
I sighed, ready to give up. Any real information was buried beneath layers of neurosis and delusion.
Since there’s no one left alive to judge me, I might as well admit to sneaking around after Captain, hoping my companion would have to swap out masks to change filters or maybe even take the coat off for a second... What? It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do!
I don’t know why I’m so defensive about this. Manners don’t really apply when society consists of three grubby people, less than half of whom would be considered sane. Besides, the G-Directorate courts ruled privacy an [ARCHAIC NOTION COUNTER TO THE GREATER GOOD] decades before things went bad.
“Never fear, Snipster! Captain will protect you with her endless powers of love and friendship,”
Pilot told me beamingly, interrupting my pondering.
“Oh, would you give it a rest—wait, what was that?” At last, I got something! Captain was definitely a girl!
“Never fear. Captain will protect you with his endless powers of”—
"Are you screwing with me right now?" I asked, my eye twitching.
"I would never!" Pilot shook his head. "You have to expand your mind, Snippeh! Don't be such a forlorn cube! See beyond your current dimensionality! Zee is a Wizard of gravy sagelyness and zeer powers..."
I sighed. I was so done with this.
I guess some problems simply weren't meant to be solved.