Curious

Chapter 12: The Ambiguous Return

CHAPTER TWELVE: The Ambiguous Return

Simon opened his eyes. He didn't remember when he had closed them but he opened his eyes. He felt wet, numb, and cold. A winter breeze flew by; the gust of wind felt like it was freezing Simon. He became aware that he was lying on the ground. And that the ground he was lying on was wet.

He felt disconcerted. He was lying, stomach up, on cold, hard, wet ground looking up into a cloudy night sky. At the end of his vision, there was a blur of light that he associated with a lamplight.

He was indeed very disconcerted. His mind felt blank, but blank in the confused kind of way, like when there's a hole in his memory and he was dying to itch at it. What happened? He closed his eyes, as his senses were overwhelming him to the point where he couldn't think, and tried to recall the last thing he could. He remembered talking to me, and coming to the discovery that I gave him, though he still wasn't too sure if he believed it, the idea had been planted into his head. He didn't remember what happened afterwards. He just woke up in the middle of the street again. He looked around him. The Booktique's large sign loomed over him and he turned to look behind him to see if the door was still there. It wasn't. The palace door had disappeared—vanished. Simon wondered what that meant. Could it be possible that all of it was just a weird crazy dream?

He became aware of two warm blobs on his chest, lightly touching him, as if he was glass they were afraid to break—hands. He raised his head. It was the high school girl—the one I had called Ella—looking down at him with her perpetual worried gaze. She pursued her lips and frowned. "I told you not to open the door," she said in a disapproving voice. She was obviously annoyed that he had not heeded your advice. "I told you that you didn't want to go through it, I told you that it was bad for you, that it was dangerous, and what do you do? You open the goddamn door!"

She was nearing irreprehensible anger. Simon felt he should intervene before she did herself bodily arm—she seemed like the self-berating type—kind of like Dobby the house elf in the Harry Potter series.

"Um...what happened?" Simon finally said.

She stared at him with those glaring eyes. Then she stood up and started pacing, muttering to herself. Then she finally collected herself—though it took her a while, Simon thought that she really needed to work on her temper. She came back at Simon and had a patient—yet strangely patronizing—smile pasted on her face. Simon didn't find it the least bit comforting.

"I'm going to blame your ignorance on the fact that you must be so horribly, tragically confused," she announced. Then she took a deep breath. "Here's what happened: you opened the door, which I told you not to do. You went through the door, which I told you not to do. You stayed inside the door, which I told you not do. And now you're back."

Simon thought that this was a pretty pathetic explanation but he was in no mood to get into an argument over it. He thought about this change in him. Before he would have been willing to spend a good fifteen minutes arguing over the irrationality and validity of the girl's weak and flimsy explanation but right now he didn't feel like it. He was tired. So tired. He just wanted peace at this point. How was he ever to be himself again? He felt lost. He hadn't felt like himself in seven years and the appearance of the door only served to enhance this sad fact.

A thought occurred to Simon (a thought always occurs to Simon but I think I'll work on fixing this later). "Wait, how did you know about the door? You never, you never really explained."

"Didn't the Writer tell you?"

"The Writer did, but I'm not sure that I believe it."

"Why not?"