He was going back to a place he’d hoped he would never see again. Necessity – deep, dire, desperate necessity drove him there. It was the only thing that could, anything less would not have been enough.
Stepping out of the car, he inhaled sharply, his subconscious uneasy, his chest tight, his body exuding the knowledge that his mind knew – this place was hell, and he was walking in through the front door. John reached for the doorknob, but his hand froze millimeters from the surface of the cold, dead brass tarnished by time and tears. Fight or flight racked his body, coursing through the channels of his veins. Adrenaline drove his heart hard like a freight train – the rhythm a reminder that this was a track he could never escape, a course he would always be connected to, no matter the miles he covered in his mad dash to be free. Surrendering to the only solution, John grasped the brass, closed his eyes, and pushed open the white wooden door. He stepped inside tentatively and stood in the entrance, staring into the silence. Immediately he understood the false sense of security that doors give. The way we use them to shut out the world, to keep things out – to keep things in. He wondered how doors gained that power; how an inch and a half of wood and metal is a gate – a gap between the universe within and without. How an inch and a half of metal and wood protect privacy and possessions and people’s lives and how, he wondered – how doors are accomplices to the things that happen on their watch, partners in the choices of their wards. Partners in the loves. Partners in the crimes.
