W. You flee from the Uranian nurse but slip on a puddle of slimy green mucus excreted by another patient, probably that idiot slug-monkey that slimed the clipboard. You crash into the wall, and before you can get back up, the Uranian nurse amputates the areas affected by the rash by eating them, neatly cauterizing the wound with the acid in its saliva. You are now a head with approximately half a torso. If you consider yourself cured, go to X. Otherwise go to Z.
X. You are not cured. You are a head with half a torso, and missing several internal organs. Go to Z.
Y. Congratulations, you have survived your trip to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station! All you have to do now is fill out your discharge papers. You start filling out the forms with your one remaining hand, but you accidentally drop the pen onto the oozing foot of the Saturnian slug-monkey waiting in line behind you. This is undoubtedly the idiot that slimed the sign-in clipboard. You cuss the slug-monkey out with some choice words in French. Choice words because it was rude to leave slime all over the clipboard. French because you know better than to make a slug-monkey angry. You’ve watched enough education vids to know that slug-monkeys are always hungry, which makes them temperamental.
Unfortunately for you, Saturnian slug-monkeys are far better educated than arrogant humans give them credit for. This one is fluent in several languages, including French. It eats you. Go to Z.
Z. You die a horrible, painful death. But at least you won’t have to deal with your insurance company!
THIS IS NOT A WARDROBE DOOR
A. MERC RUSTAD
A. Merc Rustad is a queer non-binary writer who likes dinosaurs, robots, monsters, and cookies. Their fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Cicada, Uncanny, Escape Pod, Fireside, IGMS, Flash Fiction Online, Apex, Shimmer, and others. “How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps” was included in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Joe Hill and John Joseph Adams. “This Is Not a Wardrobe Door” has been reproduced on PodCastle (audio), and reprinted in Cicada (2018) and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017, edited by Charles Wu and John Joseph Adams, and has been translated into Chinese and Portuguese.
Merc is mostly found on Twitter @Merc_Rustad, and sometimes playing in cardboard boxes.
Dear Gatekeeper,
Hi my name is Ellie and I’m six years old and my closet door is broken. My best friend Zera lives in your world and I visited her all the time, and sometimes I got older but turned six again when I came back, but that’s okay. Can you please fix the door so I can play with Zera?
Love,
Ellie
Zera packs lightly for her journey: rose-petal rope and dewdrop boots, a jacket spun from bee song and buttoned with industrial-strength cricket clicks. She secures her belt (spun from the cloud memories, of course) and picks up her satchel. It has food for her and oil for Misu.
Her best friend is missing and she must find out why.
Misu, the palm-sized mechanical microraptor, perches on her seaweed braids, its glossy raindrop-colored feathers ruffled in concern.
Misu says, But what if the door is locked?
Zera smiles. “I’ll find a key.”
But secretly, she’s worried. What if there isn’t one?
Dear Gatekeeper,
I hope you got my last couple letters. I haven’t heard back from you yet, and the closet door still doesn’t work. Mommy says I’m wasting paper when I use too much crayon, so I’m using markers this time. Is Zera okay? Tell her I miss playing with the sea monsters and flying to the moon on the dragons most of all.
Please open the door again.
—Ellie, age 7
Zera leaves the treehouse and climbs up the one-thousand-five-hundred-three rungs of the polka-dot ladder, each step a perfect note in a symphony. When she reaches the falcon aerie above, she bows to the Falcon Queen and asks if she may have a ride to the Land of Doors.
The Falcon Queen tilts her magnificent head. “Have you not heard?” the queen asks in a voice like spring lightning and winter calm. “All the doors have gone quiet. There is a disease rotting wood and rusting hinges, and no one can find a cure.”
Misu shivers on Zera’s shoulder. It is like the dreams, Misu says. When everything is silent.
Zera frowns. “Hasn’t the empress sent scientists to investigate?”
The Falcon Queen nods. “They haven’t returned. I dare not send my people into the cursed air until we know what is happening.”
Zera squares her shoulders. She needs answers, and quickly. Time passes differently (faster) on Ellie’s home planet, because their worlds are so far apart, and a lag develops in the space-time continuum.
“Then I will speak to the Forgotten Book,” Zera says, hiding the tremor in her voice.
The falcons ruffle their feathers in anxiety. Not even the empress sends envoys without the Forgotten Book’s approval.
“You are always brave,” says the Falcon Queen. “Very well then, I will take you as far as the Island of Stars.”
Hi Gatekeeper,
Are you even there? It’s been almost a year for me and still nothing. Did the ice elves get you? I hope not. Zera and I trapped them in the core of the passing comet so they’d go away, but you never know.
Why can’t I get through anymore? I’m not too old, I promise. That was those Narnia books that had that rule (and they were stupid, we read them in class).
Please say something,
—Ellie, age 8
Zera hops off the Falcon Queen’s back and looks at the Island of Stars. It glows from the dim silver bubbles that thick in the air like tapioca pudding.
She sets off through the jungle of broken wire bedframes and abandoned armchairs; she steps around rusting toys and rotting books. There are memories curled everywhere—sad and lonely things, falling to pieces at the seams.
She looks around in horror. “What happened?”
Misu points with a tiny claw. Look.
In the middle of the island stands the Forgotten Book, its glass case shattered and anger radiating off its pages.
LEAVE, says the book. BEFORE MY CURSE DEVOURS YOU.
Gatekeeper,
I tried to tell Mom we can’t move, but she won’t listen. So now I’m three hundred miles away and I don’t know anybody and all I want to do is scream and punch things, but I don’t want Mom to get upset. This isn’t the same closet door. Zera explained that the physical location wasn’t as fixed like normal doors in our world, but I’m still freaking out.
I found my other letters. Stacks of notebook paper scribbled in crayon and marker and finger-paint—all stacked in a box in Mom’s bedroom.
“What are you doing with this?” I screamed at Mom, and she had tears in her eyes. “Why did you take the letters? They were supposed to get to Zera!”