My fingers tremble as I rest them on the cold doorknob. I can feel bile rising in my throat, burning and sour and somehow egging me on. I am too-aware of every sound: the refrigerator humming, the upstairs neighbours walking around, the cars going by outside. I feel sick and jumpy, like I'm about to do something I'll regret.
I twist the doorknob and swing open the door. I am confused, for a moment, as to why everything has gone black, and then I realize that I have shut my eyes. Reprimanding myself for my childish fear, I slowly open my eyes.
Back when I first moved in here, I noticed this door, but something about it seemed... off. It loomed over me, mocking and cold, the doorknob untouched save for by the feather duster. As the years went by and I continued to ignore the door, my initial feeling of distrust developed into more. With every day that went by, the thought of opening it held more weight, and my ideas of what lay behind it grew worse. The blatant nightmarish images that first came to mind, of corpses or monsters or a serial killer, were easily written off as impossible and silly. But with enough time, my fears took on finesse and subtlety, mere whispers that were louder than screams.
What is behind the door, of course, is none of the things that I dreamed up over the years. It's just an empty room. White walls and cream coloured carpet and nothing else. It's small, but the lack of decor makes it feel open, and when I step inside, the carpet is soft and fluffy. I flip the light switch on, shut the door behind me, and sit down in the middle of the room. I can feel the anxiety of opening the door draining away, the noises around me fading into the background, a sheepish smile curving onto my face. This place is okay.
My eyes wander over the walls as I consider how I want to furnish this room. The logical thing to do would be to just leave it unfurnished and use it as a storage room, but this room deserves more than that. This room deserves to be something amazing and beautiful and happy, the opposite of what I always believed it was. I need to forgive this room, to forgive the door behind me for the way it haunted me.
In my mind, I place paintings on the walls and chairs and tables and lamps on the floor. Then I take everything out, and put a desk and single chair in one end of the room, adding shelves of knickknacks, and the occasional photo, to the walls. Then and again, maybe a reading hammock, like the kind I always wanted as a kid, and bookshelves, and a stash of chocolate to eat. Maybe this nightmare room could turn into my childhood dream.
By the time I've decided on how I want to decorate the room, my stomach is growling. I get to my feet, stretching out my arms and legs. It feels like I've been here for hours, and honestly that may well be true. I have a habit of getting lost in thought, which often proves to be impedimentary. Sometimes, however, like today, it can be quite relaxing to just drift away. Then and again, maybe I should chalk up the relaxation to the discovery that the door which had always frightened me led only to an empty room. The discovery that there was never anything to be afraid of.
I turn to open the door and walk back out into the world having conquered all my fears.
But I'm greeted only by a blank white wall.
