Gateway

04 Oct, 2017

There. The last path possible was finally taking her somewhere other than an immediate dead end.

Dani whipped around the corner, eager to see it once more. As expected, there it stood. The dark oak appeared timeless against the pale grey concrete blocks, and even the lingering dust refused to settle on it. She stretched out her hand to finally grasp the chrome handle to this elusive entrance when she heard a faint beep.

She craned her neck to the left to identify the sound. After only a second, her eyes widened and she quickened the pace her arm was moving, but it had the sensation of pushing through quicksand. The door began to fade, along with the rest of the hallway, as she made one last desperate attempt.

She woke up shouting. “God DAMMIT! NO!” It was loud enough that her husband stirred from his sleep at the new disturbance.

“Honey, what’s wrong? Did you have a nightma-”

“I was so fucking close!! Caz, I almost grabbed it. I.. I almost finally knew…” she began to cry into his shoulder.

“Shh, it’s fine. You’re here and safe. Shh.” He held her in silence for the next couple minutes as the small weeping slowly got quieter. “There, now how about you go hop in the shower and I go get breakfast ready, hm?”

She only nodded, and slid off the bed towards the ensuite. Twisting the handles in the shower, she disrobed and waited for the water to warm up. After a couple minutes, she entered the embrace of the steam and tried to distract herself by thinking of what her show today would cover. This week’s topic was still “Thinking and Cognition” but everyday she was given a different ‘diving board’ idea to begin the day with. As she dried off, she stared at herself in the mirror. Giving her head a big shake, she roared once last time to clear her mind and went off to get dressed.

Casper didn’t dare bring up any conversation that Dani didn’t start herself. They finished the meal in relative silence, though he was sure she was mulling over something beyond his own comprehension. He saw her off, and began to prepare for his class for the day.

Getting to work was near-autopilot for her. She hadn’t thought about anything near as hard as this in a long while, and it nearly meant tuning out her show director as a result.

“Dani? Dani?? Helloooooooo?” She waved her hand in front of Dani’s face.

“Oh, shit, sorry, spaced out there for a sec” she quipped, still recovering from earlier.

“You good? We need you here. Today’s topic is ‘recurrence’. You ready?”

Dani lightly slapped her cheeks in an attempt to refocus herself. “Yeah, we’re good”

“Alright, on air in three, two” the director made a chopping motion to signal the cue. The red light illuminated in the corner and she started with her familiar cheery voice.

15 minutes into the program, she opened up the lines for what would be the first of 6 opportunities for people to call in and share their opinions on the day’s topics. A small red light indicated to her that a call was waiting, so she picked up the receiver, dailed 94 to send it to the board, and told the caller to go ahead.

“Good morning, I was just wanting to know. What’s your thoughts on recurring dreams? Are they just random luck or maybe, do they mean something?”

She was silent for a second. This had to be a coincidence, right? “Um, it’s funny you ask. I just had one last night that I think I’ve seen before.” She didn’t want to think about her failure again, so she elected to turn it back to the caller. “You sound knowledgeable, what about you?”

“I always think they mean something. Especially with specific signals that are repeated, those are crucial too. Sounds, smells, images. Does that sound familiar to you?”

‘Yes!’, she cheered in her head, ‘absolutely I know what you’re talking about.’ “I believe there might be something like that. What happens when those show up?”

The caller chuckled slightly and continued “Those are the most powerful feature. Often they offer the gateway to what’s truly behind the dreams.” He paused, allowing his words to linger before continuing. “What’s your gateway?”

Dani took a breath to respond, but noticed her director pointing at the time clock. They were allowed three minutes per caller, and her time with this stranger was wearing down to the seconds. At risk of losing him entirely, she quickly mentioned that anyone that wanted to continue this conversation could do so via her twitter handle, and she looks forward to the next caller after the break.

Moments after she flipped the mute on her microphone, her director burst in. “What the hell was that? You never go overtime. We have a schedule to keep and it gets thrown off if you even do it by a few seconds.”

“Sorry, I just…” she glanced down at her phone to find a light-blue LED winking back at her, “i-it won’t happen again though!” Dani said, feigning both innocence and genuine repentance.

“It better not” the director huffed as she moved back to the other room. As soon as she left, Dani tore off to the washroom to check if he had responded to her. She locked herself in and leaned against the sink. Opening the direct message, she took a glance at the handle before turning her eyes to the likely crucial message. ‘@dom_cobb, huh? No profile picture’ She wondered who he really was as she moved to what he wrote.

“What does this mean to you?” it read with a link to an image. Dani clicked the link and nearly dropped her phone when it loaded. It was a sketch, but a spitting image of the door. She couldn’t mistake it for anything else.

“What do you know about it?” She wrote back. Almost immediately, he replied with an invite. “3pm today at ‘Le Porte’ on 3rd”. She had thought to make sure she didn’t hit accept too quickly, but her curiosity got the better of her.

The last message she received was one word long: “Good.” before Twitter notified her that the account she was messaging did not exist. She took a breath, steeled her resolve, and went to resume her show, only looking forward to later and hopefully some answers.

"We found the room and then my alarm clock woke me up"