The Unusual Door

“The Unusual Door” is one of the outstanding stories of the first biannual International Short Story Contest 2018 written by Neha Kolhar, Euro School – North Campus, India.

The Unusual Door

Today was my last day of school since I was shifting to a new school and a new house. I thought to myself, “HOW will I ever make NEW FRIENDS! Everyone will think I’m a weirdo with a nerdy name like Horby wearing glasses and a sweatshirt trying to be cool when I’m not!” while I was thinking this horrible thought, my mom barged in and disturbed me, she told me to pack the few remaining things left out in my backpack since we would be leaving at any moment. I quickly shoved my things in and got in the car. We reached our new house by around midnight.

The next morning, I decided to look around the house. When I was walking around in the backyard, my foot stomped on something solid. I leaned in to investigate. What I saw almost blew my head off my body! It was a door as big as a window shaped like a diamond! I immediately ran to my parents who were still unpacking, I told them what I had seen. They sighed looking very anxious and made me sit down on the new sofa which was still covered with plastic. They told me, “Horby dear, please don’t go near that thing and forget what you saw. I know you’re a very curious boy, but please, for our sake.” At that moment, before I could reply, my mom immediately changed the topic mindlessly. She asked me how school was going. I replied, “MOM, school hasn’t even started yet!”

“Oh, right, sorry” she said and hurried off upstairs. At that time, even I rushed to my room which was empty except for an old, dusty, wooden chair sitting in the corner. I rubbed the dust off with my hand carelessly and sat down. There were many thoughts going around in my head about that mysterious door I had found in the backyard. At last, after thinking about it for a while, I reached a decision. I was going to sneak out at night and go down the door while everyone was sleeping! I know… I’m brilliant!

As it became nighttime, my plan was about to begin. Around 11pm, I snuck downstairs, out through the back door and finally reached the door. Since I was acting like a professional spy, I made a name for the door and it was ‘The Unusual Door’. As I opened the door, I was getting a strange feeling like I had never got before. It was pitch black and had an evil tone to it as you just looked at it. I picked up a stone and I dropped it through the door to check how deep it was. It took quite a while but at last I heard it clang and right after that I heard a very scary and deep voice scream of anger. I got startled at once but I gathered up my courage and took a dive for it. As I fell, I could hear the air whistling through my ears. It slightly started to become brighter and brighter and brighter until BOOM! I had landed on a huge head which was attached to a humongous body! It was a GIANT! It screamed and it was the same kind of scream when I had dropped the rock just a few moments back. It picked me up with its huge hand and stared at me with its beady eyes but before it could say anything, a tinkling noise came from behind me. The giant had loosened its grip a bit so I was able to breathe again! I slightly turned around and there were three beautiful, young, pretty fairies flying in mid air.

One of the fairies spoke, “George! I can’t believe you’re hurting this little boy!” “Hey! I’m not little!” I argued even though it sounded very stupid. The fairy told the giant to put me down and he did so. The fairy told me that I was in Fai-. The Giant had cut her off when he was scratching his smelly foot. Another one of the fairies snapped her finger and there I was! I was on the sofa sleeping peacefully like nothing had happened! That was the end of my crazy night and I had sworn to myself to never go down there ever again!