It all started with a simple quirk in our new house. Every doorway wasn’t just a doorway; it was a double doorway. You’d open the first door expecting the kitchen, and there it would be, another door set within the frame. Open that second door, and whoosh! Not the hallway, but the bedroom. Same house, different reality. We never found out where they came from; they were just there, a bizarre house-warming gift from the universe, I suppose.
For the longest time, we just accepted it. Kitchen to bedroom, lounge to bathroom, it made getting around a bit of a lottery. But one day, the adventurous spirit in me took over. I unscrewed a door – solid oak, it was – and carried it to my mate Nigel’s house down the road. His face was a picture. The first door in his hallway led to the living room as expected. My door, however, refused to cooperate. It just sat there, looking stubbornly like a door. So, we took one of his doors off its hinges, plonked mine in its place, and… bingo! I stepped through, not into Nigel’s living room, but back into my own.
That’s when the fun, and the madness, really began. Every inner door in my house was a portal to everywhere. I sent a door to my cousin in Australia. A week later, he called, bewildered. He’d opened his spare room door and ended up in my living room. The possibilities exploded in my head.
Soon, doors were flying around the globe – to friends in France, relatives in Canada, even a slightly bewildered acquaintance in Chile. We’d created this crazy, interconnected network of doorways. Stepping through a door became an adventure, a spin of the globe’s roulette wheel. I might leave my study in Cornwall and find myself in a bustling Sydney kitchen, or a quiet Parisian apartment.
The only snag? Getting home. There was no rhyme or reason to the returns. The Australian door might lead to London, the London door to France, and the French door… well, sometimes back to Cornwall, sometimes somewhere completely new. It was exciting, a bit like a very unpredictable treasure hunt, but occasionally, it took days to find my way back to Anna and the girls. I remember one particularly long trip where I ended up in a remote cabin in Canada for a week! Still, at least I got to see the Northern Lights.
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