The door was
locked.
Meghan let go
the door handle and was instantly drifting up and away in the gentle current.
She knew the door must constitute a significant find, but she couldn’t make out
much detail in the murky darkness.
“It’s locked,”
she reported.
“What’s
locked?” Dr. Revio asked, frustration creeping into his tone. “You need to
narrate your journey more as you go. You won’t remember important details when
you’re back, and I can’t see what you see.”
Meghan rolled
her eyes. “There’s a door. But it’s locked.”
“A door? Oh. That’s probably significant.” He
sounded pleased. “I thought you’d found a cashbox or memory box or something. A
door’s quite good, actually.”
“But it’s locked,” Meghan said again.
“That’s okay.
We’ll deal with that. First things first: which side are you facing?”
“What? What
does that even mean?”
“Sorry. When
you look at the door, how do you feel about it?”
“Feel?” Dr.
Revio was always asking how she felt. Like
I’m wasting my time. Like this whole thing is ridiculous. But Meghan had
committed to the process, so she forced herself to take the question seriously,
to examine what she was feeling in relationship to the door.
“Frustrated
that it’s locked?” Meghan suggested.
Meghan could
hear Dr. Revio’s sigh. “What I meant was, which side of the door do you feel
yourself to be on? Does it feel like you’re locked out of somewhere; or do you feel locked in?
“Oh!” That was
a better question.
Meghan
considered it seriously. She hated being immersed, so she was definitely
feeling the claustrophobia of being locked
in . . . but that didn’t seem related to the door she’d found at all. It
wasn’t a doorway out of here. But. .
.being locked out of somewhere didn’t resonate either.
“I don’t think
it’s a door to anywhere,” she said
aloud. That sounded stupid, so she tried to explain what she was seeing. “The
door is set in this heavy-wood frame, which forms this elaborately carved arch.
Like from an old sailing ship, maybe. The ship has rotted away and all that’s
left is this arch, lying on the side of this little hillock. The doorway is
intact, but it doesn’t open into anywhere. I don’t think there’s a secret room,
some underwater Hobbit’s cave, behind the door. If I could open it, there’ll
just be rock and mud on the other side. Does that make sense?”
“Hmm.”
Meghan could
picture Revio sitting up above, his lips pursed as he considered what he was
hearing.
“Don’t worry
about it making sense,” he said after a moment. “That’s my job. It is what it
is. There are no wrong answers. Perhaps the door is just an artefact.”
“But why is it
bugging me so much that it’s locked, then?” Meghan asked. “It’s like I know I have to go through the door, even
though there’s nothing on the other side.”
“Hmmm. That’s
quite revealing, actually.”
“What?”
“First: let’s
see if you can find the key.”
“I’m not going
to find a key!” Meghan said. God, Revio
could be annoying. “What are the chances the key just happened to sink
right next to the door? It could be anywhere down here.”
“Can’t hurt to
look around. You might be surprised.”
Arrggh! Meghan recognized the Dr.-Revio-knows-best condescension that
leaked out whenever he thought she didn’t want to face something. He clearly
didn’t understand what he was asking.
“It’s dark.
Every time I move, I stir up the stupid mud, so it’s too murky to see more than
a couple of feet. At most. The light doesn’t help because it just reflects off
all the particles floating between me and whatever I’m trying to shine it on. I
can barely detect that there’s a door, let alone find a key.”
Revio snorted.
“Vivid imagery. But listen to what you’re saying. It’s dark and even when you
shine a light on something, it remains murky. There are too many little
particles for you to be able to see the big picture. That’s all great stuff!”
“I’m glad you
find my predicament amusing,” Meghan grumped.
Revio ignored
her. “You forget that I’m here to help guide you. Step one: if you examine your
lantern thingy, there’s a setting to increase the brightness, or tighten the
beam, or whatever, that will allow you to see the door area clearly through the
murk.”
“Is there,
though?” Meghan complained.
“Stop fighting
me. You want this. Forget all the jetsam and focus in on what’s important.
Which at the moment is the locked door.”
Meghan ran her
fingers over the diver’s light, found the switches more by feel than vision,
fiddled with the settings until see found the combination that worked to reveal
the door. The light was almost too bright. She had to squint a bit. But he’d
been right about seeing past all the floating particles.
“What good is a
door that doesn’t open?” Meghan asked, staring at it.
Revio urged her
on. “Use your hands. Feel along the top of the arch until you come to the key.”
“Oh, come on!”
Meghan objected. “It’s not going to be that easy.”
“Could be,”
Revio said with a sigh. “Fine, I concede it’s unlikely to be on top of the
arch. It would likely slide down to one side or the other. But it’s a place to
start, and you can’t stay in there all day. And you never know. Has to be
somewhere. Whenever there’s a locked door, there’s a key, somewhere.”
Meghan rolled
her eyes again, but forced herself forward and down so the light shone directly
on the top of the arch.
“Oh for . . .”
She stopped herself from swearing. The key was
there, balanced at the exact middle of the arch of the doorframe. She hadn’t
seen it at once because it was sitting across rather than along the arch. Damn it! She hated when Revio was right.
“Okay, what I
meant was, what’s the point of a door that isn’t to anywhere?”
Revio chuckled.
“I take you’ve found the key, then?”
Meghan could
picture Revio’s self-satisfied smirk. “Yes.”
“Then, let’s
open the door and see what’s under it.”
Key in one
hand, the other grabbing for the door handle to pull herself down through the
water, she struggled to position herself to reach the lock. Okay. There likely won’t be a room or a tunnel or anything behind the door.
No portal to another realm or time or some great treasure. But maybe the door
fell on top of something. Captain’s hat, a plate from the ship’s dining room,
or . . .? A compass would be good. She wrestled the key into the lock,
managed to turn it in spite of the water resistance around and even within the
ancient mechanism. She felt, rather than heard, the click.
Pulling on the
loop of the wrought-iron handle with both hands as best she could, the heavy
wooden door moved with the weird slow-motion of the underwater environment.
Then it reached the point where it was falling under its own weight into the
open position, stirring up a cloud of mud as it banged against the ornate
frame. Meghan tried to fan away the new swirl of mud as she peered at the open
doorway. How about an old manila
envelope, or one torn corner of a treasure map? Just something to make the
afternoon’s dive worthwhile.
There was
nothing, of course. She ran her hand along the patch of stony hillock framed by
the doorway, in case there was something buried in the inch-deep mud, but there
was nothing. Just bits of fossilized coral, crushed years ago by the falling
door.
“Tell me what
you’re seeing,” Dr. Revio reminded her.
“There’s
nothing,” Meghan told him. “I mean, I’ve got the door open, and I’m feeling
around on the ground underneath, but there’s nothing there. There was nothing
to find. Sorry.”
“Oh, don’t say
‘sorry’,” Revio told her. “That’s not a problem. In fact, that’s really good!
Good to know.”
“I don’t know anything,” Meghan protested.
Revio chuckled
again. “I think that’s enough for today. Come on out.”
“Damn it,”
Meghan said. “I was really hoping for something good.” She visualized herself
heading back up to the surface. “Something worth all this.”
“And we got
that,” Revio assured her. He offered her his hand as the tech locked the hatch
into the open position. “I admit it’s not what I expected, but it’s a
breakthrough none the less.”
As she climbed
out of the deprivation tank and undid her face mask, Meghan tried to work out
how finding nothing could be construed as a breakthrough. She was not in the
mood for Revio to patronize her.
Dr. Revio took
one look at her expression and stepped back, raising his hands to fend off the
accusation.
“You think that
was a waste of time?” he asked. “It was great.”
“How’d you
figure?”
He dropped his
hands, shook his head. “You never listen to what you say.”
“What I said
was, I went through a door and didn’t find anything.”
“Exactly! You went through and there was
nothing. Couldn’t be clearer!”
Meghan stopped
toweling and stood still, facing him. “I’m going to punch you in a second.”
Revio actually
laughed at that. “The door was a great metaphor. That and the impenetrable
murk. Your subconscious is telling you it’s about the journey, not the
destination. You have to work through the process, but there’s nothing big
hidden behind the door.”
“What?” Meghan
stared at Revio. “You’re saying I’ve been wasting my time?” And money she didn’t say aloud.
“Nope. I confess I thought there must be some
big trauma I could dig out. We had to check for that, because, well, you can’t
not check. But turns out, for you, it’s not about repressed memories or PTDS or
whatever.”
“You’re saying
I have no problems?”
Revio gave her
a look. “Oh, I think there are a few things we could work on.” His tone said, a lot of things. “But there’s no one
thing, nothing big at the root of it all. It’s all just . . . little stuff.”
Meghan tilted
her head, drew back her shoulders, drew in a breath, ready to blow up at the
smug asshole.
He held up his
hands again in that slow-down, warding gesture he had. “The murk,” he
clarified. “That was the other major image.”
She stared at
him blankly. “The murk?”
“All the little
annoying particles floating between you and what you were trying to see.
Obscuring your vision. That was an image too. A powerful one, for you.”
“I thought . .
. that was just static while I tried to think of something to visualize.”
“Nope. First
image that comes to mind matters. And for you, that was an impenetrable ocean.
Which resolved itself when you shone your diver’s light on it as tiny droplets
of mud.”
“Which
symbolizes . . .?”
“The little
annoyances that are too trivial to complain about, to call people on, but
cumulatively are wearing you down. Your bosses’ micro aggressions. Your
subordinates mansplaining to you all the time. That your brother isn’t doing
any of your dad’s elder care. Your son’s freeloading. All the irritations you
vent about each session. Those really are the biggest problems you have. But
there’s so many of them, so much distraction, you’re losing sight of your own
goals. Losing yourself.”
“Like I’m drowning,”
Meghan conceded.
“Precisely.”
She handed him
the towel. “See you next Thursday?”
“Back at my
regular office, though. I don’t think we’ll be needing the tank again.”
Robert Runté
Robert Runté is Senior Editor at EssentialEdits.ca where
he is currently finishing the unfinished manuscripts of the late fantasy author
Dave Duncan. Robert has published in a variety of journals and anthologoies,
including Active Voice, Drabble, Exile Quarterly, Imaginarium, Lamplit
Underground, Meat for Tea, On Spec, Prairie Starport, Page &
Spine, Playground of Lost Toys, Polar Borealis, Pulp Literature, Ripples in
Space, Strangers Among Us, They Have to Take You In, Tesseracts, The Firstline,
and forthcoming in NeoOpsis and Abyss and Apex.
Tags:
Short Fiction