The door of Hephaestus hears the sound of breaking glass from the front door of the gas station. It doesn’t even bother looking through the crack; it just moves.
The doorkeeper peers out from a peephole and finds itself in a walkway of the ranch. It attempts to blend in with the other doors, except now it has taken on the appearance of a door that reads, Warning: Nuclear core beyond this door. Exposure is fatal. “Not subtle,” it sighs and moves.
It finds itself inside a bathroom stall now as a door from a house in Vermont, a good solid American door coated in layers of lead paint covered up by a thin layer of latex paint already chipping at the edges. The door sighs and screams as someone touches his doorknob. It moves.
A half-seated Jack Harrington falls on the ground next to the lifeguard shack. “What the hell was that? I grabbed for toilet paper, and now I am outside?” He looks around for his bodyguards. He spots the door now with the appearance of the door to 221 Baker Street. Then the door is gone.
The door moves into the delivery room. Scarlet is sleeping peacefully, but the baby is wide awake. The doorkeeper watches it in its bassinet as it pulls itself along the wall, coming closer to him. He admires how cute it looks. “Baby,” he mumbles. He watches in horror as the bassinet gets caught on a discarded shoe. The baby pulls harder, tipping it further and further until it begins to fall over; the baby is hurtling toward the door headfirst. The door quickly opens, and the baby slides harmlessly into the space behind the door. “NO NO NO,” the door screams silently. The door moves.
The door reappears in a dark, quiet place far under the ground. The doorkeeper squirms, “Oh no, baby, where baby go?” He grits his teeth and turns around and looks inside. “Baby, time to go,” he shouts.
The door hears a distant snapping noise of the baby’s teeth.
For the first time in 300 years, the doorkeeper lets go of the door and looks inside the space it contains. Inside are many things; foremost is the storage where he places the small things he has gathered over the years but cannot eat.
“Baby?” The midnight-black creature asks. As he looks into the cavernous and small space. It tips its head till the room becomes endless and filled with doors of all kinds. The baby’s snapping noise becomes louder, and he rushes toward the sound.
The child plays with a doorknob on a door covered in insectile feet. The doorkeeper struggles not to tilt his head. He knows that if he does, it could alter reality till the doorknob has razor-sharp teeth. He watches as the child tilts his head and runs his finger across the vicious teeth that try to bite him, but he tilts his head, and the doorknob turns into one made of brass again. He does this over and over again, taunting the carnivorous door.
“Baby is crazy,” the doorkeeper shouts as he rushes over and drags him away. He tilts his head the other way and grabs the baby’s and tilts his with him. The world changes into one of leather chairs and arcade machines. He drags the child and sets him in front of a game called Polywar.
“Baby, stay,” the doorkeeper demands and goes back to look outside to see if it’s safe. The outside is still dark and quiet.
The baby is confused: ‘Why did the strange thing take me away from my snack? I demand Grupples!’ The child thinks in its strange lizard person language. He sits up straight and plays with the non-Euclidean geometry. If he sits just right, he can punch the back of his own head.
The child, bored and with a small goose egg on the back of his head, chirps angrily as it waddles around inside the space, looking for a way out back to the strange, slightly less confusing place it was before with the woman with fiery red hair who fed him the thin white substance from her breast. It has a piece of genetic memory about a snack an inch long and ½ wide shaped like a cylinder often seen in groups of 7. ”Grupples,” it chirps.
The doorkeeper struggles to let go of the comforting door. After less than a minute, he manages to let go again and looks back for the child, who is gone. He searches through several of the dimensions, but there is no sign of him. He turns around to the sound of a door clicking open and panics. He rushes back to the partly open door. And shuts it. He looks through the crack to see the child out of reach.
“Come back, it’s dark; it’s not safe!” the doorkeeper calls out. But the child just keeps going.
The child feels better not being in compressed non-Euclidean space. He stops and looks back at the door’s words, then makes a soft honking noise and continues down the tunnel, smelling something wonderful further on. “Grupples?” the infant asks, making toothy snapping noises thinking about them.
The door sighs and moves. It finds itself in a closet. It’s dark. It touches the clothing, soft with many varieties and styles. Probably a woman’s.
It moves again. Looking for someone to tell about the baby, it sees a tall, muscular figure and starts to panic. “Scary man,” the door cries as it watches Mars smile and hold it in place.
“We meet again. I bet you thought that was funny,” he says as he grows closer. He exerts his devotional power on the door, crushing it in place. “Now let me look inside you.”
The door screams, “No help!” He tries to move, but he is stuck. He tries to lock the door, but this one doesn’t have a lock.
Mars grabs the doorknob when he hears a scream and turns around. While the door is half-forgotten, Mars has dropped his grip on the door down to half, and the door, sensing an opportunity, tries to escape. Mars feels it try to move, and he presses on it harder.
Scarlet, wrapped in a bedsheet, runs down the hallway toward Mars. She watches the door disappear as she gets closer.
“Mars, have you seen the baby?” Scarlet cries as she presses herself into his arms.
“What happened?” He demands holding her like a china doll. The door is forgotten; the only thing that matters in the universe is Scarlet.
“I fell asleep, and when I woke up, the baby was gone and the bassinet was flipped over. The camera showed the baby tipping the bassinet over and falling out of sight of the camera. We couldn’t see where it went, and he’s gone to Mars; he’s gone.” She breaks down into tears.
He comforts her; each sob is like a knife to the gut. “The lizard people are hearty and mature quickly,” he sniffs her hair. He has longed for this kind of intimacy with Scarlet for the last month. Has it really only been a month since they split up? To him it felt like an instant but also an eternity.
She cries into his shirt, “I wasn’t even sure I wanted the child till I gave birth and looked at him. His toothy little face…”
He keeps holding her, his power swelling as she pours her emotions and devotions into him subconsciously. He reaches out for the child, but he cannot see it. He tries harder, putting more of his dwindling reserves into it. He can feel himself losing some of his divinity forever as he cannibalizes parts of himself. But for an instant he can see the child. “He is alive and healthy, walking down a dark corridor, Scarlet; that’s all I can see. He is ok.” She holds him for a long time.
The baby walks along the near-black hallway. The walls and floors are made of concrete; the ceiling is too dark to tell. The lizard person walks toward the delicious smell.
It comes to a fork in the hallway, smells both directions, and goes right. It keeps walking, but now it is starting to have doubts about its decision to leave the door.
It takes a left, a right, a left, a left, a left, a right, a left, a right, and a left. The smell is getting stronger. It sits down and has a quick sleep. It dreams about grupples and about the fiery-haired woman who carried his egg.
He wakes to a rumbly tumbly stomach rumble, and he continues walking. The path ahead is the same as before. The same smell, the same dimness—this place feels like a maze.
He walks into a dimly lit space. There is a room filled with normal-looking apartment objects, except everything is scaled to 150%. He walks to a pile of laundry and climbs in it. The smell is delicious. He digs through the pile looking for grupples. ‘Maybe they hide at the bottom?’ he asks himself, but there are only more towels. He curls up on the pile and starts to snore.
The Minotaur storms into the room covered in sweat and throws the towel onto the pile. He stops and bends down, looking at the child in his gym laundry. He sharply exhales at the intruder.
