Any Door

She told me it was a key that would allow me to open any door at all; whichever one I chose.  The thing about it was that once I closed the door, I'd never be able to open it again.  Not with that key, anyway.  I didn't believe her - it wasn't the first time she'd lied to me, and so I was certain that it wouldn't be the last.  I was positive that if anything, it was just another set of meaningless words that she was throwing my way.  She told me that as soon as I held the key, she would vanish - gone into oblivion - and that if I should ever drop it after using it, I too would be no more.  I scoffed at her, rolling my eyes.  She looked me up and down and she told me in earnest that she had not raised her daughter to be so unwilling to accept the truth.

I put my hand out and told her that if it was to be done, it would be done then and not later down the road.  If she was going to disappear when she handed me that damned necklace - the necklace with the so-called "key" on it - then she had better hurry it up and give it to me.  She choked up for a moment and drew back, and I was sure that it was her falling back on her lie.  She said to me, I guess you'll get to make the decision for me."  When she handed me the key, she vanished.   Where she had been standing, there was now emptiness.

I looked at the thing in my hand, utter disbelief strewn on my face, I'm sure.  What could this thing be?  True, she had never taken it off as far as I'd known, but how could I have known that it leaving her possession was truly going to make her disappear?

She told me it would.  Stupid question.

And so I tried it once, on my neighbor.  I tried to use it to open his door.  Seems silly enough, but the door opened with a turn of the key.  I wasn't even near the door, and I hadn't even touched it.  When I turned the key back the other direction, the door closed.  I tried again, but this time the door did not open.  I'd simply imagined it the first time, and that was the only explanation that I would accept.

I won't bore you with the details of how I decided to believe what my mother had told to me when she handed me this key, but I did decide it was true.

At first I used this newfound power to do the things one might expect - the door to the vault of a bank, the doors to people's cars, the doors to rooms better left closed.  The thing I did learn the hard way was that opening doors is not the same as opening locks.  Once I opened the car door and got inside, it closed behind me and I found myself trapped inside.  Never mind that I could just use another door to escape, I could not unlock any door, simply open it.

The vault was more tricky to escape once I was inside.  There were no other doors to speak of, but I needed to escape regardless, as being found within the vault once it was opened next would be a terrible thing indeed.  I had to be creative.  With my creative thoughts, I said to myself "There is a passage that leads through the walls and out to the other side, and where there is a passage, there is a door to be opened."  I had to firmly believe it and I had to hinge every fiber of my being on that belief, because I knew that should I lose the belief part-way through the passage, I would surely die.

So I turned the key, and an entire section of the wall vanished, leaving a passageway outside.  As soon as I stepped out of the passage, it closed behind me and I could not open it again.

So this key not only let me open any door, it let me create ones where none previously existed.  Naturally I got into great deals of mischief with this, but things truly went south when I became bored of having everything I've ever wanted.  I looked inwards and said, "why do I feel this way?"  And so I opened a door to my own mind and I probed around, learning how my emotions worked and why they felt the way they did.  I proceeded to do this to many others, and I learned more than I think ten thousand years of life would teach me.

I next opened a door to the past, something my cleverness forgot to fix, and I saw my life from outside, from the version of me that was older.  I opened the door to the future and I stepped through to see things I cannot begin to explain.  I used this new-found idea to go back in time and see exactly what everything was like on exactly what days and months and years.  I learned everything.  I knew everything.  And that's when I realized I didn't know everything.

And so here I sit, in front of the door to understanding everything that ever was, is, and ever will be.  I sit here staring into the great oblivion and I have this strong urge not to walk through it, but to close it without walking through.

I think instead I'll open a door to another world in another time and I'll let another make that choice for me.