Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

Today’s story is brought to life by the following prompt…

This is my submission for Kevin’s No Theme Thursday.

The Other Side

Carl tightly holds the folded-up newspaper under his arm as he places the cups on the makeshift coffee table and gently lowers himself onto the couch. He lets out an almost exhausted sigh as he lays the newspaper on his lap, readjusts his glasses, unfolds the paper, scans the front page, grunts, and opens it up.

His eyes slowly scan the page’s headlines, drift momentarily through the articles, and then move on to the next page. He sighs once more before turning the page and repeating the process several times over.

His grip on the paper suddenly tightens, and his old, weary eyes widen. “G-G-Gloria!” he stammers softly through trembling lips, “G-GLORIA!” he cries out loudly this time.

“Carl, honey! What is it?” Gloria calls as she rushes from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.

“T-T-They’ve done it!” he says with excitement, turning to her, his eyes wide and glistening. “T-They’ve done it!” he repeats.

“They’ve done what, you silly old fool?” she scoffs as she plops down next to him on the couch, peering over the page of the paper.

“The door, they opened it! They opened it, and some of those scientists are going in today! It says right here,” he says as he slaps the newspaper.

Gloria lets out a frustrated breath and slowly reads the article, then looks up at Carl with a bothered glance and rolls her eyes. “I don’t know why everyone is so infatuated with this door. After all, it’s just a bloody door,” she grumbles.

“It’s not just any old door, Gloria!” Carl exclaims. “It’s a locked door that appeared out of thin air in the middle of town. Now they’ve opened it, and it looks like it leads somewhere else, somewhere that might finally explain why it’s here in the first place!”

“Oh, I know, Carl. You don’t need to tell me any more about the bloody door. I’m tired of hearing about it, and I couldn’t care less that they’ve unlocked it and that it leads somewhere, and I think the papers don’t care either; otherwise, it would be on page one, not page seventeen next to the wanted ads.”

He blinks softly, and his lips twitch. “H-How can you be tired of hearing about the door? D-Don’t you want to know where it leads? D-D-Don’t you want to know w-w-why it appeared HERE, in our town of all towns?”

“No,” she replies matter-of-factly.

“R-R-Really?” Carl asks with a raised brow.

“Carl, I couldn’t care diddly-squat about the door, and neither should you! Whoever put it there, put it there for a reason, and I just don’t think we should be bothering to care for something so inconsequential as a door; it’s not worth our time.”

His face screws up, and he stares at Gloria, then back at the newspaper, and then back at Gloria. “Well, honey, we’ve been married for fifty-two years…”

“Fifty-four,” Gloria quickly interrupts.

“Fifty-four years,” he corrects, “and we dated for seven years before that…”

“Nine,” she interrupts again.

He nods his head and smiles softly. “Nine years before that, and the door, it’s been standing proudly in the centre of town for eighty-one years,” he pauses and looks over his glasses at her.

“No, not surprisingly, you got that right,” she says.

He smiles nervously, takes in a fresh breath, and clears his throat. “Right, umm.” He mumbles as a fresh wave of sweat cascades from his brow. “Where was I?”

“You were telling me how the door has been here longer than we’ve been together, and then you’re going to tell me that the door showed up the same day you were born, and there has always been this unsaid connection between the two of you, like the one Fido used to have for Jeff the postman,” she replies.

“Yes, yes, that’s exactly what I was going to say,” he says with a gentle smile, as he relaxes back onto the couch and begins to read over the newspaper once again.

For a few moments, they sit there in silence before Gloria sighs loudly. “And?” she asks.

He turns to her with an inquisitive look upon his face. “And what?” he asks back.

She rolls her eyes again, “And what else about the door?”

He smiles softly, places the newspaper on his lap, and gently takes her hands in his. “Well, honey, there’s something you need to know, something you need to know about what’s going to happen when they step thr…” but his words catch in his throat, and he explodes in a sea of red. Gloria screams as she scrambles back and stares up at the open doorway and the red-drenched scientist who stands in it.

“C-C-CARL!” she cries, as her eyes grow wider and wider. “C-C-CARL!”