Door to the Mind

_____________PART 1_____________

I navigate the long corridor lined with doors on either side. The wallpaper was like something you would see in a movie. Red and yellow stripes drizzle the walls like caramel. I continue to walk down the corridor until I see the end of the hallway come into view. Every door I had tried to open was locked up until now, but the door in front of me was different. It is a brass color with intricate carvings lining the frame, and they slip around the rough corners like snakes. I rub the carvings gently. The rigidity of the carvings contrasts the smooth look of the brass. The frame is also warm to the touch like it is being heated from the other side. I hesitate to open the door, but I feel an urge to open it. Disregarding the wrenching discomfort of terror in my stomach I open the door. The corridor is blasted with a huge wave of heat. I hear a voice in the back of my head say, “Go through the door.” I cannot disobey the voice, so I continue through the doorway. The light coming from the other side is immense, nearly blinding. I take a few steps out into the new terrain. It is a vast desert with nothing for what seems like miles and miles. The horizon is plastered into the sky like an oil painting. Heat waves crash up the sides of the dunes like strong waves. I find myself atop one of the largest dunes nearby. I am already sweating profusely, and the sweat stains on my shirt are drying faster than I can cool off. Then I hear a new command say, “Go back.” I turn around to go back through the door, but it is gone. I start to panic a little bit, but another command booms in the back of my mind. “Walk until you find an exit” it commands. I start walking into the scorching desert, descending the gradual slope of the massive dune I am stationed on.

I walk for what feels like hours. I do not feel like I have though. In fact, I do not feel like I have gone anywhere. I have little to no exhaustion, and I am barely sweating. The large dune I began on has disappeared far off behind me, and the endless expanse of sand ahead of me still has not shown mercy. Just as I am thinking of giving up, a bright red door rises out of the sand about ten feet In front of me. “Go through the door” a stifled voice says to me. I trek up to the door and open it. What is beyond this doorway is unusual. The lack of what is behind the door is unusual. A black void begins to creep out of the open door and surrounds me. I can hear whispers and screams, unusual sights. Figures appear and disappear as I fall into this void. I fall faster and faster and faster losing control of my body. I steady my body enough to see where I am falling to. A glimmer of light flickers some ways below me. I get closer and closer until I realize that the glimmer below me was the light reflecting off a vast ocean.

Light begins to break through the darkness until every ounce of the gloom is dissipated. I smash into the water, expecting to break every bone in my body, but the water catches me gently. I sink further and further until I reach the bottom of this large oasis. I float around the water, feeling like I have an endless supply of oxygen. The sea floor is translucent, and I start to make out something on the other side of it. I wipe away the light layer of dirt on the floor to reveal something surprising. What I see is something familiar to me. It is my room, with me on my bed. I watch my bedroom door burst open, and someone rushes to my bedside. They start dumping water onto my head. Suddenly my endless supply of air is not so endless. I feel myself swallowing water and suffocating. “Michael! Michael! Wake up!” an extremely muted voice yells. I can just barely hear it, but it is getting louder and louder. My vision starts to go black. This must be death. I must be dying.

_____________PART 2_____________

I stared at the stained glass adjacent to the pew I was sitting in. Beyond the window must be something real I thought. I thought that frequently, especially on Sunday mornings. Part of me wanted to disprove everything about spirituality, but the bigger part of me couldn’t. I just couldn’t figure out how. Believing in a higher power didn’t feel right to me, and I wasn’t about to start praying to some almighty deity. Over the years I attempted to discover more about what I really wanted from spirituality. It was not a healthy life, or to fulfill some proverb that I wanted. I simply wanted to find some startling self-truth. It sounded silly, but it made absolute sense in my head. I tried Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and even witchcraft. Most people argue that you need to spend years studying and practicing a religion, but I just could not seem to get a knack for any of it. None of it felt right.

One night I was browsing a reddit thread about meditation, hypnosis, and spirituality when I stumbled across some interesting information. People were doing those old and ridiculous games to try and hypnotize their friends. I’m a skeptic, but this just sounded stupid. Maybe part of me at the time was afraid of the thought of being in a trance, completely vulnerable. I shook off any ideas about it and closed my laptop. There wouldn’t be anything like that going on around me that’s for sure. That’s what I told myself until my friend had an idea. He was always doing some weird stuff. He would do anything if it meant he could feel something out of the norm. He thrived on out of body experiences. I don’t mean psychedelics; I mean he had strange ritualistic behavior. He began researching all about witchcraft, paganism, mythology, and a whole load of other weird stuff in middle school. I guess we became friends because of our skepticism, but his simple doubts turned to constant existentialism, dark arts, and unfortunately, needing a guinea pig. Now my friend would never actually call me that, but I just take on the role because that’s how it seems to me. They text me with some weird thing they want to try, and well, I do it with them.

We decided to meet at my house that night. He told me he would bring all the supplies, and he would have to stay the night. Around Nine O’clock that evening, I heard a knock at my window. It kind of spooked me at first, until I remembered that he was weird, and he refused to go through doors. It was superstition about portals to Hell or something. I opened my window and he crawled in. He started looking around my room like he was confirming something, and then just dumped his bag of stuff in the middle of the room. The contents included items like strangely scented candles, incense sticks, and other little trinkets I was afraid to ask about.

“So, what is all this stuff?” I ask, questioning his motives in my head.

His replied was somewhat villainous “It’s all for, to put simply, clearing your mental barriers.”

At that point I still had absolutely no clue what he was truly up to. I had the condition that I would not be used for any satanic rituals. I figured that whatever he was going to do could not be that bad. I let him finish setting up all the stuff he brought, and he began to give me instructions for the process we would be going through.

“Ok the rules for this are as follows,” he said getting serious “Rule one: You can only follow the commands I give you from the outside. Rule two: we must avoid going down staircases, or into any dark rooms. Rule three: If any rooms filled with clocks open, avoid them at all costs. Rule four: Do not speak to anyone, especially a man wearing a suit with a top hat.”

The rules were straight forward, and honestly it all seemed very simple. I gave him an affirming nod, and we began what he called a ritual game. He sat down on my bed and placed a pillow on his lap. He beckoned me over to the bed.

“Um, you don’t want me to lay on your lap, do you?” I said obviously uncomfortable.

“No, I want you to do a handstand on the bed. Of course I want you to lay on my lap!” he exclaimed sarcastically.

I scratched my head for a moment, pondering my choices. It did not seem like I had too many options. Against everything I wanted, I trudged over to the bed and laid down. I slowly laid my head back on to the pillow that was methodically placed on his lap.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked.

I thought for a moment before replying “Yeah I guess so. Let’s get this over with.”

He started to give more instructions “Close your eyes and try to fall asleep, but do not lose concentration on my voice.”

I did what he said. I laid there for a few minutes, smelling the candles and incense he had burning. They made me feel relaxed. I could smell each individual scent enter my nose like the refused to blend. As my body reached a state of full relaxation, he started to chant.

As he gently massaged my temples, he chanted at a low whisper “ostium ostium rubrum flavo colore flavo ostium ostium aliud.”

I had no clue what it meant, but I began to drift away into a dream state. I could still hear his voice, but it was very distant. I kept slipping further and further away from reality. The smell of the candles and burning incense sticks had faded long ago, despite how strong they were. I awoke in a long corridor, with red and yellow striped wallpaper on either side. Doors lined the endless hallway further than I could see. That’s when I heard a voice speak. "Walk."