The day after the fight had been a difficult one.

His mother had tried to stop him as he left the house early in the morning with his backpack on his back, but she hadn’t been able to.

She hadn’t dared.

At first, he went to the city center and just… walked around.

Lucas did that sometimes, walking helped him think, and he had a lot of things to think about.

He stopped in front of an old house near the city’s main square. Nor was anyone looking at the place, nor was it calling attention to itself in any sort of way.

It was a normal, run of them mill, slightly rundown house, one of many such houses around town.

Which made it ideal for testing.

He had woken up with the strong feeling that it had all been a dream. Breakfast with his dad, the endless almost monochromatic plains, all of it…

So he had to test it.

He walked up to the door and reached for the pommel.

Every logical fiber in his body told him that, surely, as soon as he turned the knob he would find it closed. Surely, someone in the middle of the city wouldn’t leave their house unlocked.

Yet…

Something deep inside of him was telling Lucas it would work.

He grabbed the doorknob and turned it.

The mechanisms inside the door didn’t seem to like being moved but, without much effort, it opened with a click.

He pushed the door open and found himself looking at the same apparently endless plains of grass he had seen the night before.

He felt his heart skip a beat. Behind him, people kept on walking by, seemingly unaware of the physics breaking event happening right in front of their eyes.

He let go of the door and walked a few steps back. The door, seemingly unable to stay open without him holding it, began to close.

Before it fully closed, and without looking away from the door, Lucas grabbed the arm of the closest person he could find and spoke to them while pointing at the door. “Do you see that?”

In the corner of his eye, he saw the person worryingly look at the place he was pointing before speaking. “The… The door?” She asked.

It hadn’t closed yet, and the monochrome plains were still visible. “No, not the door, the plains behind it.” He said.

At that point he wasn’t able to stop himself from looking at the person. It was a woman in her early thirties that, with a horrified expression in her eyes, looked at Lucas and at the place he was pointing to. “Are.. Are you alright?” She asked. “Do you need me to call anyone?”

Lucas let go of her arm and turned to leave, not into the city, as by now a lot of people were looking at him with varying degrees of anger, fear and worry, but towards the still ajar door.

“Hey! Stop!” He heard a man yell behind him. “Come here!”

He didn’t stop.

Instead, he walked right into the door, crossing the threshold and closing the door behind him.

The noises from the city center didn’t vanish right away. They lingered in the air, almost like a fading memory of the world outside.

Lucas felt his heart race and a smile appear on his face. It had been real, all of it.

For some reason, no one else seemed to be able to see the plains, but he would have time to understand why that was.

Right now, he felt like walking.

He looked around, at the endless lines of tombstones, to the grass lazily moving on unseen wind and to the steel gray sky. Same as the last time he had been there, he felt like he knew exactly where he needed to go.

He picked a direction, neither west nor east, neither north nor south, and started walking.

He walked past a few faded tombstones, a couple brand new doors and one that looked like it had been taken out of a toilet stall and, soon, he found himself next to a tombstone he recognized and a door that he had walked out of the previous morning.

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He reached for the doorknob and thought of his room.

As soon as he heard the click, he found himself walking into his bedroom.

Although it had taken him almost an hour walking to reach the city center, it had taken him less than five minutes to walk from that other door back to his bedroom.

Whatever that other place was, it seemed to bend the rules of space. He smiled as he realized that he had access to what basically amounted to a personal wormhole tunnel.

He turned around and prepared to leave again through the same door, back to that otherworldly cemetery, but stopped himself when he heard a noise coming from the floor below.

Somewhere in the house, his mother was crying.

He hesitated for a second before opening the door and walking, not into the plains, but into the halls that would take him to his mother. He walked down the wooden hallway and grabbed onto the stair’s handrail.

From where he was, he understood where the crying was coming from. His mother was in the kitchen.

He was starting to walk down the stairs trying to not make a sound when he heard it. The characteristic sound of glass hitting glass and of wine pouring out of an open bottle.

He scowled, anger rising from within him as he turned around to walk back to his room. In his anger, he didn’t notice how his backpack brushed against a picture frame, prompting it to fall to the floor.

“Lucas?” He heard his mother say back in the kitchen as he heard her come towards the stairs running.

He also ran to his room.

As he opened the door to his room, Lucas saw his mother coming up the stairs while yelling his name. She was disheveled, her hair turned into a fairly good impersonation of a bird’s nest.

Large dark bags hung underneath her eyes.

He looked at her in contempt and crossed the threshold into the monochrome plains.

He closed the door behind him and slumped to the ground, his back against the closed door. He felt tears of ire fall down his face.

She had said she had been weak, that she would change, and what was the change she had ended up doing? Crying alone in the kitchen as she drank herself to sleep.

He had had hopes she would change, but she was too far gone. After his father’s death, she had chosen booze over him and her sister, and that had left Lucas alone, so alone.

But he was done. His father had asked him to help her, but he was done trying.

He was done trying to fix someone that didn’t want to be fixed.

Lucas opened his eyes, a new dark resolution shinning in them, and he stood up.

He walked to the door that looked like a bathroom stall, opened it and crossed it without giving it much of a thought. Sure enough, he found himself walking into a bathroom.

He opened the bathroom’s door and saw that he was in the public bathroom inside a mall at the other side of town. He was far enough away, he thought, that no one should be able to find him too quickly.

Which was good.

He still had a lot of thinking to do.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————

“I’m so sorry… I… I didn’t know who else to call.” Said Laura as he put a cup of tea on the table for the man in front of her.

“Don’t worry, Miss Laura.” Said David Garriga with a smile in his face. “Lucas is also my student, so tell me, how can I help.”

Laura placed her face between her hands and sighed. “He… He left early.” She said. “I was just finishing making breakfast for myself when I saw him walking to the door. I… I tried stopping him, but… he has been so angry since yesterday…” She looked at her hands. “And I don’t think I can blame him.”

David took a sip of his tea and looked at the woman’s face. She had been crying, he knew she had, even if she had tried to hide the obvious marks behind a quick makeup job. “Did you fight?” He asked. “Was it the… you know…”

“The drink?” She said. “I… I haven’t had anything to drink in a month… but…” She hesitated.

“But?” Asked David.

“But I’ve been having a hard time getting him to believe in me.”

David looked around the place. Piles of cans and empty bottles of wine littered the place, but he could see there was an intent behind that, she had been cleaning. “I… I work most nights and I’ve been very tired since I stopped drinking, so I haven’t been able to finish getting rid of all the empty bottles and stuff, you have no idea how much trash gathers when you don’t properly clean the house in two years.” She said, trying to smile.

David smiled at her. “You could have asked him for help.”

“No.” She said, not one second of hesitation in her voice. “This is something I have to do myself, I need to show myself I can get over this.” She looked at the kitchen sink before speaking. “After he left, I was angry at myself, so I started cleaning. I was emptying the last of the wine bottles down the kitchen sink when I heard someone move upstairs. It was him… I know it was him… I know how his footsteps sound. So I chased after him. I…”

David took a sip out of the tea, chamomile, his favorite. “But something happened, right?”

She looked at him, doubting if saying the next thing she was about to say was the right idea. “Yes… how did you know?”

He smiled. His smile was heavy, but relaxing. “I’m not only good at reading books, Miss Laura, and it’s written all over your face.”

Seeing him smile made her feel at ease, he wouldn’t look at her like she was crazy if she told him. “I saw him… I saw him run to his room and open the door… I saw him walk into his room and then…”

She looked at him and made a gesture with her hands. “Poof…” She said. “He wasn’t there anymore.”

David’s eyes seemed to darken. “Are you sure?” He asked.

“Ye… Yes.” She answered.

He chugged the contents of the cup and stood up. “Don’t worry, Miss.” He said. “I will look for him and I will bring him home.” He started walking to the door.

She stood up and followed him. “How…” She said. “How do you plan on finding him? Should I call the police?”

“The police won’t help much in this situation, but I should be able to find him.” He smiled at her. “I’m a teacher, I’m good at finding lost people.”

Laura looked at him walk away before closing the door behind her, for some reason, she felt she could trust him.

And so, she had work to do. His son would come back soon, and when he came back, he would find the house clean and spotless.

And she was going to be there waiting for him with a hug and a nice cup of chamomile tea.

And so focused was she, that she didn’t notice the blond boy that had been listening in to the conversation from behind an overgrown bush sneaking out of the garden through a broken post in the fence.

And none of them saw the old guard dog leave his post to follow the blond boy into the city.

His friend was calling him. He needed help.