Doors

Hello all!
The following is something I wrote for a competition last year and, having read over it again, is a very good example of my inability to write anything 'normal' or that can really be described as a 'story' per se.
Anywho - have a read and tell me what you think... I'm still trying to figure out what on earth it's really about so any help would be fantastic!

Cheers,
C.

Doors

I am terrified of doors. Closed doors. The place where wooden frame touches wooden frame. Even here, at work (where I am getting along so well now), the very sight of a closed door means that I won’t be able to concentrate for the remainder of the day.

I think it is what is beyond them that scares me. Or that I do not know, or particularly want to know, what lies on the other side. Their heavy wooden bodies, their frosted panes, hide things from me. Important things.

I don’t know why I am scared of doors.
Perhaps something happened to me once.

Maybe it was that one time in my childhood when I opened the door on my Father and his new secretary that left me with my fear of closed doors (although I don’t like to call it my childhood because I don’t remember ever being one of those children you see in the ads).
Or perhaps in my later life when I refused to open the door that led into my mother’s sickbed. Perhaps it was then when, after my mother died and left me feeling guilty and ashamed inside, that I started to watch the doors.

None of the doors were numbered back then.
Every one of them was still naked dead-wood.
Now the naked doors have dead-locks.

I am terrified of doors and wary of opening them.

-----------------------

I think my hair is thinning. You cannot see it yet but I know it is leaving me. My hair is thinning and I am standing in front of a door.
This is not just any door. It is a closed door.
This is not just any closed door; this door leads to Ben’s office.
Once this door was a tree - a giant of the forest. Now it is a door; a door with a tarnished brass knob and two pale opaque windows.
I move my head (complete with thinning hair) to look through one of the frosted panes. A dark shape moves within.

-----------------------

I am inside. Mr Benjamin Wellington is sitting at his desk.
(I like Ben’s name – Ben-ja-min Well-ing-ton – it rolls off the tongue, it has a special rhythm and rhyme all of its own.
Ben-ja-min Well-ing-ton
Ben-ja-min Well-ing-ton)
He is looking at me. I have not knocked, I do not need to knock – Ben always knows when I am at his door.
I do not say anything. He too does not say anything but only looks at me.

Finally:
“You” he says.
“Yes.” I reply.
“You have an appointment?”
“You called me, Ben”
He eyes darken as I make my first mistake. I am not to use his nick-name. That is not how it is today.
“Sorry.” I lower my eyes and sit in the chair opposite the desk. The chair is old and padding shows through the join where seat meets base. Benjamin – as I must call him now - shuffles through the files on his desk and finally selects one of the plain manila envelopes. He manages to make this threatening, although I know he does not mean it to be. Not yet.
He looks at me.
“I called you here to talk about your progress.”
I nod.
“You know we’re under inspection this quarter, don’t you.”
This is not a question but I nod anyway.
“It is important that we do well this year. We cannot afford any weak links in the chain of command.”
“I know.” And I do. I understand this. Weak links break the chain.
Benjamin continues,
“You know, then, that it will be necessary for me to make a few, select staff cuts.”
I sit very still and hope he will move on but he is still looking directly at me.
“I’ve been reading through your file and have found something that worries me.”
I try not to blink too much.
“It seems to me that your expenditures are exceeding your profits by a sizable margin. In fact, this has been the case for quite a number of months now. Is there anything you think you ought to be telling us? Any reasons you can give the company at all?”
There are no reasons. But it is not my fault.
I tell him this.
“It is not my fault.” I say.
He looks at me for a moment, closing the folder carefully.
“Everything indicates that I should let you go.”
“It is not my fault.” I say again, louder this time.
“I don’t have the right resources or the right staff at my disposal.”
(which I don’t, and haven’t for a long time now)
“Ben, you know the company is trying to faze me out. They think I’m obsolete – they don’t want me around any more. Please Ben, I will try harder. I will…”
Mr. Wellington sighs and rocks back slightly on his chair.
“Listen…”

This is not how it goes. This is not even necessarily what is on the other side of the door.

I think this is how I hope it might go.

I wish I could be more forceful. I wish I could stand up for myself.

I wish I could open the door.

-----------------------

“It is interconnected with your fear of change. You are projecting your fear into solid form – it is not the door itself that scares you, but the thought that by opening it you are somehow, somewhere changing something.”
I cannot count the number of times my doctor has told me this. I will be sitting on the glossy leather couch in her office as she reclines in her chair opposite me, looking intent and pretending to take notes.
She is often eating – a sandwich, cold pasta or something from a clear Tupperware container. I come here once a week to tell this woman my feelings and she is here once a week to pretend to listen to them.
“You are not afraid of the doors themselves, but the commitment of opening them.”
This belief on her behalf is neither original nor new.

“Commitment! You just can’t bring yourself to do it, can you!?”
This is my wife. She is packing a suitcase.
“You never could…” Her voice becomes choked as she pushes the lid closed with a jerk. The latches click into place and she places her hands on the hard casing.
“I should have listened to my mother - she told me you were a bad idea.”
I don’t know whether or not I should cross my arms.
“I’m leaving you. I am finally leaving you. What do you have to say about that?”
She is not leaving me.
Every year, around promotion time, my wife decides to leave me. She packs her bags, collects our son’s jacket and then… nothing.
“You are afraid of commitment, do you know that?! Whenever you see the slightest possibility that a concrete decision needs to be made you take off in the other direction!”
I cross my arms as she walks towards the door.
“You don’t understand,”
She pauses, hand on doorknob and her voice changes.
“I understand enough to know that this can’t go on. I can’t do it any more. I can’t…”
The door closes.

and I am on the wrong side of a closed door.
“I…”

Am terrified of closed doors.

-----------------------

I don’t like my jacket. It is sickly brown with patches on the elbows and a single breast pocket. The woman who sold it to me told me it suited me, but I think she was lying. Perhaps she was working on commission. Like me. And like her I must lie and cajole and flatter and lie to make a profit and keep my job. And my lunch.

The sandwich girl has not come in today. I can’t help thinking that something bad has happened to her. Perhaps, as she was crossing the road outside… and the truck barely swerved on impact...
Every day, at 12.05 the sandwich girl enters the building, through the revolving doors and climbs the stairs to floor seven where she delivers my ham and cheese sandwich. I do not know her name – she has never told me (and I can’t help thinking it’s because of something I did to her once – but what??) And every day, without fail, I have a ham and cheese sandwich on the worn writing-board of my desk to pick at, look at and ultimately place in the waste-paper basket beside my chair.

Maybe she is stuck in the revolving door that leads into the foyer –

flying around and around and around and around and around and around, alone but for my ham and cheese…

That is why I use the fire escape at the back of the building – it is less likely to catch me.
-----------------------

The dark shape is starting to get to me. I can see it. Hovering around
Ben-ja-min Well-ing-ton’s desk. I wish he would open the door for me.
I know that if I stand here long enough, or if I knock loud enough, I will not have to open the door myself. The shape approaches. Slowly at first, unsure, then as he recognises the shape of my thinning hair, quickly and with determination Ben-ja-min Well-ing-ton throws open the door.
“Hello! How long have you been standing there? Didn’t you hear me call you in?” I mumble something in reply.
“Next time just open the door – it’s not like its going to bite!”
Ben spins and walks into his office, laughing.
I follow – but it isn’t getting bitten that I worry about.
No.

That is not it at all.