Fantastic Pages

There was only one rule: don’t open the door.

The man asked why.

The boss down at “Fantastic Pages” told him the door was a “magical portal to the realm of fiction. Anyone who steps through will be dragged into their favorite novel. Trapped until they fully understand author intent.”

And that was just about the steamiest pile of bullshit the man had ever heard.

At first he laughed.

The boss frowned and her eyes focused on his. “If you open the door, I will fire your ass. No hesitation.”

He nodded.

Then when the boss went out on break the man rummaged her desk for the shop keys.

But none of them fit the oogity boogity “magic door.”

So he put the keys back and wondered where else to look.

Then the man saw a golden shimmer nailed to the door itself.

He frowned and raised his eyebrow.

He tried this key and the door swung open.

The man stepped into a tunnel of pages and the pages fluttered and shifted and flew apart and coalesced into an image of swirling gray.

He turned back and a bitter wind rose up out of the dull western glow but it carried no warmth and it whipped his face.

The man winced and coughed.

He hugged himself against the cold and shivered.

There was no movement on the horizon and there were no birds in the sky.

He rolled a lump under his foot and looked down and saw a shriveled apple resting in the dead grass and ashes.

There was an old farm house, with a gravel driveway.

And the man wracked his brain to try and remember: how did Cormac McCarthy describe the cannibal house in The Road?