[MD] Glass door

[ADRIE KINTZIGER]

There it is at the end of the corridor: a glass door. And behind it are
Chris and on one side of him his younger brother and on the other side his
mother.Chris has his hand against the glass. He recognizes me and waves. I
wave back and approach the door.
How silent everything is. Like watching a motion picture when the sound has
failed.
Chris looks up at his mother and smiles. She smiles down at him but I see
she is only covering her grief. She’s very distressed about something but
she doesn’t want them to see.
And now I see what the glass door is.It is the door of a coffin...mine.
Not a coffin, a sarcophagus. I am in an enormous vault , dead, and they are
paying their last respects.
It’s kind of them to come and do this. They didn’t have to do this.I feel
grateful.Now Chris motions for me to open the glass door of the vault.I see
he wants to talk to me. He wants me to tell him, perhaps,what death is
like.I feel a desire to do this,to tell him. It was so good of him to come
and wave I will tell him it’s not so bad. It’s just lonely.
I reach to push the door open but a dark figure in a shadow beside the door
motions for me not to touch it. A single finger is raised to lips I cannot
see. The dead aren’t permitted to speak.
But they want me to talk.I’m still needed! Doesn’t he see this? There must
he some kind of mistake.Doesn’t he see that they need me? I plead with the
figure that I have to speak to them.It’s not finished yet. I have to tell
them things.But the figure in the shadows makes no sign he has even heard.
"CHRIS! " I shout through the door."I’LL SEE YOU!!"
The dark figure moves toward me threateningly,but I hear Chris’s
voice,"Where? " faint and distant. He heard me! And the dark figure,
enraged, draws a curtain over the door.
Not the mountain,I think.The mountain is gone."AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN!!
" I shout.
And now I am standing in the deserted ruins of a city all alone.The ruins
are all around me endlessly in every direction and I must walk them alone.

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