Commended - Senior section

The Friends School

The room is dim. My body quivers as goosebumps rise on my skin. Tall pillars carved from stormy granite surround me, lining a room that goes on forever. The room seems to fade into the distance, as if a cloud of mist was creeping closer to me each second. Something about this room unnerves me, makes an uncomfortable twitch in my stomach. It feels like I’m losing time without a clock to check how much I’ve lost. The most curious thing is the doors surrounding me, lining every wall, every pillar, every metre of swirling marble floor. A particular door in front of me glistens under my gaze. An ebony framed mahogany door, stained deep red. The colour of blood. Every door that I look at seems to shine, like a ray of light skimming across the glossy surface. There is no sun here. A magnetic force pulls at my centre from all different directions, inching my body closer to each individual door at the same time. It feels like I’m being ripped apart. I want to escape.

The closest door is to my left, rising metres above my head. I shuffle towards it and immediately I feel the pull. My body moves automatically closer to the door and I feel like I’m floating. Before I know it, my hand is reaching out to touch the door but my fingers barely brush the surface when it swings open. A bright light pierces my gaze and I look away, holding my arm over my face to stop the pain in my eyes. When the glow subsides, I focus my gaze back onto the door. On the ground, there is a plank of sparkling deep red wood. It seems to blaze under the soft lights above, shining and shimmering like the deepest core of a bonfire. It’s the threshold.

The room in front of me looks like my house. In fact, it is exactly like my house. I stare in front of me, at my coral-coloured walls and the watercolour flowers on my bedsheets. My bedraggled bear toy that I’ve had since I was born is sitting on my pillow, just as I left it. But as I look closer, I realise it’s not a bear at all. It’s a cat. That’s not right. My toy is a bear, with crossed eyes and half-moon ears. I’ve never owned a cat toy. But everything else in the room is correct. I take a step and I feel a weird rush of nausea through my stomach. I have stepped over the threshold. This feels wrong.

As I look around, more and more things begin to look different. Instead of a bright peachy coral colour on my walls, the colour is dull and faded. The usual teal and purple watercolour flowers on my bed are yellow and pink. Photos are up on my walls, but I don’t recognise the people in them. A bubble of unease slides up my stomach and suddenly I feel sick. What happened to my room?

“Georgia! Dinner’s ready!” A familiar female voice floats into my room from the hall outside my door. It sounds like my mum.

My mother is an interesting woman, she is very driven and bustling. There’s never been a time where she cooked a homemade dinner for me. An uncomfortable twinge makes my throat twist and I feel like something’s wrong.

Mum is standing in the kitchen, wearing tight gym leggings and a sports bra. I stare openly, I’ve never seen my mother this fit and athletic.

“Georgia, dear, come set the table please.” Mum smiles widely at me but something catches my eye about the way her teeth glisten and her eyes shine with a secret.

I don’t like this.

I turn on my heel and run back up the stairs, ignoring my mother’s calls behind me. Something in the way she screams my name makes me think she doesn’t want me to leave. Ever. I sprint back to my bedroom and slam the thin door behind me, turning the lock I’ve never had before and shaking the handle to make sure that it won’t open.

The mahogany door I entered in is fading, as if it were chalk on the ground weathered away by the sun and wind. As soon as I touch the door, it reappears as clear and strong as ever and swings open before me. The familiar force starts behind me as I push myself through the doorway. Over the threshold.

Immediately I feel the pull from the tiers of doors surrounding me. But there’s a buzzing in my head that wasn’t there before. Almost like each of the doors is whispering to me as I watch them. A cacophony of creeping voices. I don’t understand the language but the words seem to burrow under my skin. Weaving themselves into every small crevice on my body. I face the door I just exited and back away slowly, making sure that whoever was trying to impersonate my mother doesn’t follow me. But too late I realise that my back touches another cool, smooth surface behind me.

The sucking energy yanks me through the door and I find myself tumbling back onto a hard concrete floor. The voices are gone. I blink at the room before me, confusion crowding my thoughts. The square-shaped box is made of old wooden planks filled with rot and dirt. A small, thin mattress sits in the corner of the room, wrapped in a threadbare blanket. Covered in teal and purple watercolour flowers.

I gasp. This is my room. But this isn’t my room. I rush to my feet. It’s like the walls are closing in on me, pulsing closer with each thump of my heart.

Somewhere in the distance, a car door slams shut and voices are yelling. I drag myself across the floor and hide behind the rickety bedframe. A horrible feeling swirls in the pit of my stomach and my breathing quickens.

Suddenly, the bedroom door swings open with a bang and two dark figures storm through.

“Georgia! Get off the floor right now,” My father’s voice snarls at me. But the man who pushes his face right in front of mine is not my father. Well, he resembles him, but his soft brown eyes are hardened and dark. The laughter wrinkles outside his eyes are no longer there. His olive skin is riddled with dark, swirling black ink. His teeth are yellow and rotted.

A woman who looks like my mother stands to the side, wearing a dirtied yellow sun dress. Her usual peachy skin is puckered and swollen black and blue, with scabs dotting her arms. She is cowering before my father, physically standing close but mentally far away. Her blue eyes are hollow, greyed.

Tears spring to my eyes. These are not my parents.

As my father swipes at me with a large hand, I scramble backwards across the floor to the fading door I entered from. I push back against the hard wood and tear myself through the forces trying to hold me back. In less than a second, I’m over the threshold. I close my eyes and take deep breaths, trying to rid the image of those versions of my parents. I have to get back home.

This time, I’m careful. I step away from the door slowly and it feels like I’m wading through rivers of molasses. The scene before me is breathtaking once again. Endless halls and rows of doors made from shining Brazilian rosewood, African black wood, pink ivory, and bubinga. Metals of every sort, some I have never seen before. It stirs dread inside me, the thought I’ll never find my way back to my own reality. It is impossible to think of every door, every bedroom, every different place behind those glowing thresholds. Impossible to think of how long I’ll be trapped here, searching every room, every possibility until I find my own reality. Impossible to think of all the universes of me.