Flash Fiction: The Door

It appeared on a Tuesday.

Thomas Burke had lived in Apartment 3B for nearly seven years. Same creaky floors. Same leaky faucet. Same doorless wall between the coat closet and the kitchen. Until Tuesday.

He spotted it while making coffee—his bleary eyes caught something unusual in the corner of his vision. A white wooden door, plain as drywall, framed neatly into the wall where there had only ever been wallpaper and discolored paint. It even had a brass handle, old-fashioned, ornate.

Thomas set down his mug, cautiously approached. No hinges on the outside. No visible gap around the frame. And yet, when he pressed his ear to the surface, he heard… humming. Like soft music drifting through, distorted, as though underwater.

He turned the knob.

Inside was not a room. Not a closet. It was… his apartment. But not his apartment.

The smell hit first—fresh bread, rosemary, something warm and home-cooked. The lighting was golden, cozy. There were framed pictures on the walls: him and Emily, smiling wide, her hand in his, no divorce papers in sight. His books were neatly shelved, not strewn across the floor. His record player spun something smooth and jazzy. And on the kitchen counter lay a manuscript—his manuscript. Finished. Signed. A check paper-clipped to the cover.

“What the hell…” he murmured.

A voice from the bedroom called, “Tom? You home early?”

Emily.

He staggered back through the door, slammed it shut. When he turned, the apartment returned to its shabby self—dim, cluttered, painfully real.

He didn’t sleep that night. Or the next.

Every time he opened the door, it welcomed him into that impossible world. He started calling it The Better. In The Better, he was loved. Respected. Whole.

At first, he only visited. An hour here. A dinner there. A few days in, he stayed the night.

In The Better, Emily wrapped her arms around him like she used to. The food had flavor. His laughter came easy. He felt younger, sharper, awake.

But each time he returned to his real apartment, something was wrong.

A leak in the ceiling that hadn’t been there. The food in his fridge had rotted. His reflection in the mirror seemed… thinner. Paler. Tired.

The door began humming louder.

By the third week, Thomas stopped going to work. He stopped checking his phone. Who cared about bills, or emails, or empty voicemail boxes when he had The Better?

But then—he woke up, for the first time in The Better, to silence.

Emily wasn’t in the kitchen. The manuscript was gone. The jazz had stopped.

He wandered the apartment, calling her name. The walls seemed thinner. The golden light flickered. The photographs on the walls now had blurred faces—his own smile a smeared smudge.

In the bedroom, he found her. Sitting on the edge of the bed, still as stone, eyes empty.

“Emily?” he whispered.

She turned slowly. Her voice, hollow. “You’re not supposed to stay.”

“What?”

“This place isn’t real, Tom. It’s built from you. Your wishes. Your regrets. Your weaknesses.”

He staggered back. “No. No, this is what life should’ve been. I deserve this.”

“You’re feeding it,” she said, standing now, her form flickering. “It grows because you shrink. Your real self—your body, your mind—it’s decaying. You’re a battery.”

The walls pulsed.

And then he heard something else—from the door. The one he had entered through.

A scream.

His own.

He burst back into 3B, gasping. The apartment was dark, heavy with mildew. Dust coated everything. His plants had withered. The air tasted of copper.

In the bathroom mirror, he barely recognized himself. Cheeks hollow. Eyes sunken. Skin sagging, like it had aged a decade.

He collapsed on the floor, sobbing.

The door hummed louder. Beckoning.

That night, it spoke to him.

Not in words, but in feelings. Memories. Temptations.

His father, proud of him. Emily, laughing again. A book tour. Applause. Joy.

You can have this, it whispered. You can be this. Just walk through.

He stood. Staring.

His hand hovered over the knob.

In the end, Thomas made a choice.

He took a crowbar from his closet and, with shaking hands, began to smash the doorframe.

The humming turned to screaming. The golden light inside flickered, then roared—scenes from The Better flashing like a dying film reel.

Emily begging him to stay.

Himself, smiling.

Then darkness.

Splinters.

Silence.

When the dust settled, all that remained was a blank wall.

It took time.

The manuscript never got finished. Emily never came back. The apartment never got cleaner.

But Thomas—he began to live again.

And every now and then, when he passed that stretch of wall between the coat closet and the kitchen, he’d feel a flicker in the air. A phantom warmth.

And he’d whisper to it, tired but firm:

“No.”

The End.

Thank-you for reading.

Remember there are many paths back to God.

Follow your own path,

Brenda Marie