Chapter 3
I stand in front of the door, unable to move.
“Come on in,” the man repeats, opening the door further and accompanying his words with a gesture of invitation.
The carpet has changed since I last lived there - it is no longer light brown but green - and the walls, once painted white, are now covered in blue wallpaper. Apart from the poor taste of the new owner there’s nothing objectively wrong with the place. And yet I find the ambience disquieting.
Leave now, I tell myself, and yet I can’t.
The man waits, the door remains cracked open.
“I used to live here,” I say, and the man nods as I walk inside.
I look around the living room.
“May I see my room?” I ask after an indefinite time.
“You know where to find it,” he replies, before letting himself drop on an ugly blue couch.
I go through the corridor and at the end of it, on the right, I find my room. It’s completely barren now, and, apart from its size and shape, it bears no resemblance to what it used to be. There’s an eerie tension in it, as if it were about to fall apart, transform. I stand close to the entrance, hesitating to step inside.
I am still next to the door when I detect a vibration propagate along the floor, although I doubt the reality of my perceptions.
Then, suddenly, the floor squeaks and a crack opens right where my bed used to be. At first the crack is narrow, but then its lips widen and I clearly see that below the room where I am now lays my old room, unchanged.
Right next to my tiny bathroom there’s the sink, with huge light bulbs illuminating the mirror. There’s the fake bamboo chest with my stuffed panda sitting on it. And there’s my bed, covered with the pink flowery duvet I used to love.
I approach the crack. I am so absorbed in my own thoughts that I don’t notice the man walk in the room.
When he speaks his voice catches me by surprise, and I gasp.
“Is this what you were looking for?” he asks.
“I don’t know what I was looking for,” I reply, as I observe the crack into which I am irresistibly tempted to leap.
“Your life will change forever if you do, beware,” the man says in reply to my unspoken thoughts.
I raise my eyes for a split moment, before letting myself slip into the past, oblivious to the present and the future.