The Door

Somehow I knew that whatever it was beyond the door needed my permission to come in.

The question was, how long could I stand the noise?

Admittedly, I was pretty calm, considering the situation. I'd been in this room, with this chair, and this door for a while now. It wasn't dark, despite there being no windows or visible light fixtures. Curious, but not especially alarming, all things considered.

Besides the muffled, hideously distorted screeching, I was pretty comfortable. No injuries, it wasn't too hot or too cold, and I wasn't bound by rope or chain, which was nice.

I frowned. I seemed to remember being bound once.

Oh, did I mention I didn't remember waking up? Or anything else for that matter?

So, it should make sense that I felt relief over any memory, even one hinting at something quite unpleasant. The first detail of my past, however vague, emboldened me.

Suddenly, I came to realize my second absolute:

I had the power in this situation, and I made the decisions. Only I could open that door.

But did I really want to?

The moment I thought that, the wailing rose to thunderous levels. Still, I wasn't afraid. It couldn't touch me. However, I feared for the integrity of the room. It shook, as if the thing had finally started to pound the door in earnest. Finally, a crack appeared in the wall next to me, and I wondered what would happen to me if it collapsed.

Yet, even as that thought occurred to me, I didn't intend to leave.

At the same time, I knew that if I wanted to live - even if I never left - I couldn't let this room be destroyed.

So I screamed back, with a strength I didn't know I had. Together, the cadence built with a horrifying resonance until suddenly, my opposition, with a final, ear-splitting shriek, faded away.

For the first time since I became aware, there was silence.

With the sounds of that almost-war echoing around me, I finally realized my biggest clue had been there all along, and my world narrowed around me until I could hear only the fading of those screams...

Our voices were the same.

Over the thundering of my heartbeat, my mind worked frantically. If it wasn't an it, if I wasn't being tricked, there was someone out there. And judging from the alarmingly warped sounds that had come from them, they were in untold pain.

Who...who was outside?

I thought of everything I had heard since the beginning. The little noises I had missed, lost in thought, only to recall now - the whimpers between roars, the desperate scratching between bangs, the low moans amidst the clamor.

This...this was a person.

And I'd cruelly left them in that state. Alone, suffering, and clearly in dire need of help.

All because I didn't want to leave the relative safety of this place.

I couldn't live with that. Even...even if this was all a sham, I felt as if I'd found my purpose.

I was going to protect them.

Whoever it was beyond the door.

Step by step, I walked forward, and turned the knob.

***

I understood now.

As I opened my eyes, I was real. I felt.

And I took in everything.

I was sitting in a chair.

I was naked.

The room was dim, and the only visible light seemed to leak in from under the walls. My ankles and wrists were terribly chafed from the chains that encircled them. My toes and fingers were numb with pain from pervasive cold.

The rest of me, however, felt like it was on fire. Shifting around, I felt the cracking of dried blood and the screaming pull of slices in my skin. I looked down. Most of me glistened wetly in the light, and I realized I was flayed in more places than I wasn't. As new blood trickled along my limbs, I took stock of what was around me. I couldn't see very well, but judging from the outline of various strings hanging in front of me, there were whips. And as a glint of sliver flashed at their ends, I realized they were barbed.

Wincing at one peculiar throb, I realized there was one embedded in my left thigh, if the inflamed bump meant anything in particular.

I pondered the odds of escape.

I sighed, and yanked my arms free.

My breath left me in a punch, and as blackness threatened to consume me, I wondered if I was too late.

No!

Consciousness was a decision, and I could make it.

I had to. For her.

Suddenly, I heard the distant rumble of what had to be a vehicle, and I struggled to free my legs.

The rendering of flesh sickened me, and my anger grew as I realized the legs of my chair were wrapped with barbed wire. Still, I pulled as my calves gave way to blood, taking comfort in the fact that even though the slickness and strange lightness meant further injury, it aided in slipping my feet free.

I couldn't tell you how I stood, only that I did.

I couldn't describe to you the agony of digging in my thigh for that shard of metal. The trauma of pus and blood spraying from around my fingers. The breaks I took between forcing my body to breathe through the hurt. It was tremendous, the pain.

I couldn't tell you how slowly the time passed as I waited behind that door, my fingers and toes warm now, my left hand pinched tightly around that tiny prong of steel.

I repeated a mantra to myself as I stood by:

Don't die.

She couldn't survive this. I remembered finding her in front of that door in our mind, crumpled, but otherwise unharmed. I remembered gathering her in my arms, and gently placing her in that chair. She couldn't deal with her reality, so unconsciously, she created me.

Multiple personality disorder, they called it.

Characterized by the presence of two or more distinct personality states, typically induced as a buffer by the original in response to extreme circumstances.

I would do what I was created to do.

Protect her. Forever.

But first, I would have to survive.

So when the footsteps in reality came and the physical door was opened, I felt her scream in the room she built to hide in, and for the second time I screamed with her. I felt her understand what I was, and she was grateful. I took my chance and I drove the piece into his eye, so far I felt a give and a splash of blood and thicker things. As he spluttered and both our legs gave, I rode him to the ground and I took his other eye with my right thumb with a pop! and an explosion of fluid.

She showed me how she suffered in panicked flashes - as if I needed motivation to do what I was made for. I felt every second of torment, marked in my skin. I shut her down hard.

No distractions, I thought. I was busy. I took him, passed out now, in my ravaged arms and placed him in that chair.

Needless to say, when I was finished, I locked the door. My work was done.

Suddenly, I heard a knock. She wanted out. I laughed.

You are weak, I told her, and locked that door, too.

Ultimately, I had the power here, and the me who was behind that door, in that room, didn't make the decisions anymore. And somehow she knew that she needed my permission to leave. That's when the screaming started. It didn't bother me.

After all, I was used to the noise.