The Portal

by Charles Sterling

  “What’s the limit?”

  “I wouldn’t know, my guess is about a week.”

  “Imagine dying every week.”

  “Or you could stay here and not die? But I wouldn’t take your life away from you, not at all.”

  “What’s your story?” I looked him in the eyes.

  “Ah, I was a Doctor in England, nineteen seventeen. Apparently my movie was a romance drama of some sort because apart from biology books that’s all that happened in my life. I was supposed to die to cancer, but Master Wilmort had other plans for me.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “It’s not, really.”

  “So you wanted to give me a quick tour?”

  “Ah yes!” Regal excitedly got up. “Most of these things were brought back to me by our friends here, I’m afraid I’m not quite athletic enough to risk going to such places. For these, no lives were lost,” he took me towards the wall where there was a display of array of items. “Quite unusual to see such fictional items all in the same place, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” my eyes wandered. There were dozens and dozens and dozens of various little trinkets and bottles and devices, and I ached to know about every single one of them. We skipped over many, but he picked some up and showed them to be one by one.

  “This is what they call a Chroma Crystal,” Regal picked it up, it was blue in his hand, and when I held it, it turned violet with a soft and almost glowing hue to it.

  “What does it do?”

  “It reads the aura of a person and tells us about it through color. Green is calm, pink is in love, dark red is evil, pure purple is mysterious, and so on,” he replied.

  “Should put it next to Wilmort, see what color it turns,” I said.

  “Yes well, he has been promptly avoiding doing that. This is darkness,” he picked up another bottle and showed it to me.

  “What do you mean darkness?”

  “It’s just darkness, in a bottle. Despite it being light out here, in the bottle, it is night. Fascinating, isn’t it?” He picked up another object. “This is what some call, ‘place in a bottle’, don’t shake it too much, and do not open the cork,” he gave me a pure round bottle with a cork on top.

  I looked really close, the one he gave me had a beach on it with rolling waves and a few trees on the edges that moved realistically with a bit of ocean breeze. I looked closer at the other ones – there was a river, a waterfall, a snowy blizzard mountain and a rainy jungle. “Wow,” was all I said. I picked up an apple to smell it. “What’s this?” When I neared it closer, I heard a pleasant bell sound coming from it.

  “It’s a bell apple,” said Dr. Regal. I shook it a little bit more, as its name suggested, it had the sound of a bell coming from it. “But there’s no bell inside, it tastes and smells just like a regular apple.

  “And this?” I reached out and grabbed a pack of gum.

  “The gum lets you breathe underwater when you chew it, nothing too mystical, this belongs in the science fiction category, much like this phone,” he handed me a phone.

  “What does the phone do?”

  “It’s a phone from the year three thousand one hundred twelve,” he said, “if you’ve ever wondered what phone from the future look like.

  My eyes widened. Hell yes I wondered that! The phone beautifully opened and sprouted into life in front of me. It was made of a material that seemed to ignore logic. “What’s it made from?” I stared at its breathtakingly sleek and minimalistic display and internal features that responded even to your eye movement.

  “Nano technology, according to Nero,” he replied.

  “Ahh, of course! That’ll be the future I guess.”

  “Well, the frame of it is made of nano tech, but the internal parts are… well, quite something else. Anyways, take a look at this,” he held a black box in front of me that had sleek mechanical parts to it.

  “What’s this?” said the box, in my voice. “What?!” said the box again. “The box reads thoughts?” I smiled up at Regal, I haven’t said a single word myself.

  “Precisely,” said the box in Regal’s voice.

  I had some fun and played a song on it through my thoughts before Regal pulled it away.

  “Amazing,” I said.

  “Well, that is a phoenix feather, it brings luck, that is a diamond hourglass, it predicts the end of time or something along those lines, and that is a star from space,” he pointed at another bottle with a glowing star in it.

  “An actual star?”

  “Yes, albeit it does not do much,” he placed his thumbs in the pockets of his vest akin to an old man. “There’s plenty more things in the other room, these are the more recent things that were brought to me. You can have another look later yourself. But! Please do not do so alone, there’s many…” he paused, “unstable, items lying around as well. Opening the cork of the place in a bottle would literally create that entire place here, that would be a tragedy, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yep,” I pressed my lips together.

  “You’ll probably be quite busy with the more pressing matters in the meanwhile, but when you end up having time, I would always be free to show you more. Wilmort informed me that would like to return shortly?”

  “Yes, how do I get back safely?” I put my hands in my pockets.

  “A busy chap you are, aren’t you? Let’s see…” he walked towards a table further down the wall. He was clearly eyeing the array of weapons. I followed him. “This metal stick would zap you hard enough to kill you.”

  “Uhh…”

  “This wand has a spell to it that kills you, though I am quite inadequate with it.”

  “Uhh…”

  “This is a gun.”

  “Does it shoot lasers?”

  “No, it shoots nine millimeter bullets. I had to have ‘real’ weapons in here too, we need something to compare.”

  “Right. I don’t like that before I die to a gunshot I actually feel something for a few seconds, so is there something instant?”

  “Zapping you it is,” he picked up the fancy metal stick.

  “Woah woah woah, wait,” I motioned my hands. Nero came over.

  “Are you going back now?”

  “Yes,” Regal answered for me. Nero took the stick from him.

  “Here, I’ll do it.”

  “Don’t! Wait, I haven’t prepared for it. You know, usually when I die there is an adrenaline rush, or I’m in danger, or I have no choice but to die, I can’t just die peacefully, right?”

  “Oh you seem to have quite the adrenaline rush, Raymond,” said Dr. Regal. “Your breathing is unstable and your pupils are dilated.”

  “You won’t feel a thing, stop being scared,” said Nero.

  “Raymond,” said Douglas.

  “Doug! Glad you’re here, they’re trying to kill me!”

  “Correction,” said Regal, “we’re trying to help you get back home in a speedy manner.”

  “With that thing?” Doug looked at the stick. “You planning on hitting him on the head?”

  “Well it…” Regal pushed a button on it and sparks came out bright enough to blind you in a second.

  “Jesus Christ!” I got startled. The sound was loud as hell too.

  “Alright, let’s put sparky down and go the old fashion way.”

  “Yeah,” said Raymond. “Gun it is.”

  Regal shrugged his shoulders pensively and placed the stick down.

  “You ready to go now, yes?” Doug confirmed.

  “Yes.”

  Then he shot me in the head without warning.

  Chapter 13

  I felt like I was spinning. When I opened my eyes I saw the world spin by me while I felt tied to something. Beneath me was fire, and around me were savages dancing and singing while I was getting roasted on a stick.

  I started yelling at them to let me go, the fire was burning my skin and I began panicking. I struggled to move, the ropes were too tight.

  But of course, I was
just lying on my floor and hallucinating all that like a lunatic with foam coming out of his mouth.

  It took a good hour of looking like an idiot before the hallucination disappeared and I could at least see where I was. The tied up feeling wasn’t ropes, it was my usual numb muscles after coming back.

  I stopped panicking and let time do its thing until I got to my coffee machine – or more like crawled to it.

  “Ahh, coffee again?” said Wilmort, pulling up a chair on the kitchen counter with me.

  I nodded my head with half closed eyes.

  Abruptly, I opened my eyes wide and looked around. Wilmort was nowhere to be found.

  “Wilmort?” I called out-loud.

  No one.

  I sincerely hoped these hallucinations were temporary.

  I brushed my face with my hand several time and hit my temples awake. I looked behind the corner and tried inventing a bunch of reality checks. This was troublesome – that sound and look of Wilmort was beyond real, and before the TV I’ve never quite had anything like that before.

  After I could hold my mug of coffee adequately, I went over to the TV. The timer was indeed a hundred and two hours.

  I picked up my phone and saw twenty one missed calls from my editor. My mood instantly dropped. I called him.

  “Hello?”

  “Raymond?! What the hell?!” he said with an annoyed voice.

  “What happened?”

  “You missed the meet and greet, there were a hundred fifty people waiting to see you.”

  “No way! Wait,” I checked the date and time real quick. “Frick, I’m sorry. I just woke up, I didn’t think I’d oversleep so hard.”

  “Bloody overslept?” said the Editor. “We’ll talk about it later,” he hung up.

  I let out a frustrated sigh.

  It was as if being in the real world only caused me trouble, and being in those worlds… well, everything felt like I didn’t have a care in the world. I could even die without repercussion – except for the mental trauma of course.

  Back here, I got depressed over Emily, got frustrated with my stories and buttloads of emails that I had to attend to, and now this.

  I’m at the point in my career where I’m supposed to give it a final push. I wasn’t that big yet, no one was making movies out of my stories. A lot of the stuff I had to manage myself, without ten agents helping me out. But if I gave it that last push, in another year or so I’m sure I would have made it.

  This TV was like a new video game console that prevented me from doing my homework and thus I was getting bad grades in real life.

  I guess that’s just how it works. I’d seek advice from someone but I didn’t know anyone better than Doug or Wilmort to give it to me. What a sad life.

  Doug would probably say something stoic and just tell me to endure through it all. Wilmort would probably belittle my situation and say that everything was not as terrible as it seemed. Violet would would just say, ‘so what?’, right?

  I looked out the window. It was a dark day today – usually it’s quite sunny, but today it looked like a storm was brewing.

  There was a knock on my door. It could only be Mrs. White, I thought. Could be Bob too.

  I opened the door sleepily. My eyes widened with shock. Complete, and utter, brutal shock.

  Standing before me, with the reddest lips and the most golden hair, was her. It was her! Her striking blue eyes stared up at me like a lifeless doll.

  I was speechless. I just stared right back at her – this was the first time we even made eye-contact, I assume.

  “Uh…” I couldn’t stop staring, but not because she was beautiful, but because I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had so many questions for her – I saw her in a few different movie worlds and even in the real world when I was with Emily. Was I in the real world? Pretty sure I was! My TV was right behind me.

  I swallowed hard, and meekly said, “come in,” stepping back to let her pass. She calmly walked in and headed into my living room. I closed the door behind us.

  “So um,” I turned to look back, but she was gone.

  “……………….”

  I cussed out loud and banged violently on my door, ultimately dropping my weight to the floor. After such a disgusting phone call that was enough to ruin my entire month, these ridiculous illusions were just mocking me and fueling the negative fires within me. I wallowed in self-hate again, the back of my head banging backwards against the door until it hurt too much to keep doing it. There was too much to take in in the past twenty minutes.

  The day passed, nothing happened. I woke up in the morning feeling low and obnoxious. It was raining. I almost chuckled sarcastically – rain was a cliché in stories for when depressing things happened. Can’t be sad while sunshine and rainbows are outside, ya know? Gotta have that sweet thunder ambience looming around you.

  It was somewhere around noon, and I didn’t even want to look at my phone or interact with anyone. All I wanted to do was… I stared at the blank TV screen.

  Watch a movie. I turned on my movie streaming service and began scrolling through. All the movies were strongly tied to their characters – none were really defined by their worlds. Obviously it would far less budget costly to shoot in Brooklyn or even Hawaii beach than creating a huge CGI landscape.

  That’s why, I bet a lot of worlds were literally just – our world. Like Nero from New York, wouldn’t even know what his movie was about ‘cause he might be the side-character of some boring romance plot that didn’t directly concern him.

  I turned off the TV. I had no mood for it after all. I put the cushion over my face and did nothing.

  Knock knock, on my door.

  I decided it was another illusion and ignored the highly realistic knocking sound.

  Knock knock knock, it demanded.

  With a sigh, I threw the cushion off my face, got up and opened the door.

  “Hello!” there were two little girls in front of me. “We’re girl scouts trying to sell our homemade cookies for the Save The Animals charity, would you be interested in buying a box?”

  “Are you real?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she replied with a smile.

  “Um, okay, I’ll buy a box, why not. Save the animals huh?” I dug my hand into my wallet.

  “Yes!” she took out a clean white box with a ‘Girl Scout’ stamp on it. “All the money goes directly into finding poor animals and finding homes for them.”

  The other girl said, “it’ll be ten dollars for a box.”

  “You guys are really going around the neighborhood with a trolley of cookies when the rain is about to start, huh?” I gave them whatever my wallet had inside, which was around four hundred. “Keep the change.” I took the box and went back inside, closing the door.

  Knock knock.

  I sighed and opened it again.

  “Yes?”

  “Um, sir, this is a lot, are you sure?” said the little girl.

  “Yeah,” I said it like it was nothing. “I love animals, so.” I nodded to them in confirmation.

  “Thank you so much!”

  I left the cookies on the kitchen counter and went back into my living room. I made sure the curtains were closed, then picked up the cushion from the floor and placed it back over my face, kicking my feet up on the arm rest.

  With a deep sigh, I let darkness and depression consume my existence.

  Several minutes later…

  Knock knock.

  “God!” I got up again. Upon opening the door, it was a woman.

  “Hello, sir. Those two girls brought back near four hundred dollars from you, that’s more than we’ve collected from the entire neighborhood!” she smiled formally, and she was formally dressed on top of that, almost like a news reporter.

  “Well I guess no one loves animals as much as I do,” I faked a smile.

  She laughed enthusiastically. She had a clear and loud voice. “Would you terribly mind doing an interview with us? We’d be happy to have
selfless people on our show.”

  “You’re doing a show?” I narrowed my eyebrows.

  “We need to spread awareness about it somehow, so of course!”

  “Uhh…” I scratched the back of my head. “I’ll do an interview, why not?”

  The interview only took thirty minutes of my time. I introduced myself, answered their questions, told them which animals I’ve had in my life and told them how I loved saving cats from tall trees the most. Everything was on video, and everything was simple and down to earth.

  They told me the whole interview would be cut down to two minutes of the most interesting parts. There were two cameramen and this one woman interviewing me right in my luckily tidy living room. They shook my hand and left right after it was done.

  Hmm. It was strange, I felt quite better after all that. My mind wasn’t on anything I didn’t want to think about anymore – it was rather positive. I actually decided to work a little on that day and let the rest of the day pass fruitfully.

  The next morning, I dialed seven seven eight five.

  Chapter 14

  I walked into the lab.

  “Ah, Raymond, good to see you,” said Dr. Regal.

  “Hey,” I nodded solemnly.

  “Took care of business back home I assume?”

  “Yeah… sort of. I’m ready to go do whatever I need to,” I said as if I was sleepy.

  “You’re definitely not ready, but since your deaths have no consequence, then sure, why not? Like a modern day video game, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, Game Over, Retry Now?”

  “Certainly. Violet is here, Nero is on his way. You three will be heading out in a moment.”

  “To where?”

  “Come now, let me show you everything,” he guided us towards a different set of computers and floating screens. “Are you familiar with the deity, Amun Ra?”

  “Something Egyptian?”

  “Yes, well, Amun was the Egyptian god who created the universe, and Ra was the god of the sun and light who would travel the sky in a burning boat. The two gods were combined into one to create Amun-Ra – which is completely irrelevant to what you are going to do, but a little bit of history isn’t always bad, is it?” He typed some things and brought out some pictures of the real interpretation of Amun Ra, and then a few more pictures of our target Amun Ra. “You are to steal his scepter.”