Open the Door

The cracks on the floor grew bigger and it was as if the dimension itself was slowly being torn apart. Think of them as being inside a white box and the animal was breaking it open from within. The floor underneath Arthur's feet rocked like an earthquake and the spidery cracks converged to where Arthur was standing.

This was a good time for the young man to start running but he still couldn't find strength in his limbs. He stood there with his heart racing as the cracks underneath his feet started to grow in size. Arthur could see through the cracks and beyond it was an empty blackness, a dark abyss. It looked like the yawning maw of a dangerous beast and Arthur definitely did not fancy the idea of falling into it.

He willed vehemently for his body to move but it was to no avail. His heart was quivering violently from the stress and approaching danger but his body was completely immobile. The only part of Arthur's body that could be moved was his eyes but his power of sight only made things worse.

His eyes followed the cracks as they moved towards his feet and that hollowed out his heart. The despair and anxiety the young man faced intensified.

Just when he thought things could not get more dire, the strange animal stomped once more and the cracks grew bigger.

Unable to stop the inevitable, the ground opened up to swallow Arthur. He tumbled through the crack into the darkness. He felt his body falling and as he descended down into the murky darkness, he could see the cracks in the room earlier slowly recovering. When all the cracks closed, Arthur found himself surrounded by darkness.

With nothing to orient his senses, Arthur lost track of time and space. He believed his eyes were open but since everything was just blackness, he could not tell whether he was looking at blackness or his eyes were closed. Arthur did not think he moved at all but even if he did, the young man would not be able to tell.

After what seemed like eternity, Arthur suddenly found himself in a grey room. He used several seconds to orient himself and realized he was back in reality. He was in the clinic.

Arthur looked around him to make sure this was not yet another dreamscape. It did not seem like it was. Arthur could move his arms and could feel firm ground under his feet. To his surprise, the young woman was standing opposite from him in the dispensary. She was looking straight ahead but interestingly not at Arthur but past him.

Arthur turned over his shoulder to see what had captured the woman's attention so but there was nothing there. It was just the grey wall. Arthur turned back with a frown. He then noticed the lack of focus in the young woman's eyes. Then it hit him.

She must have been still under the effect of his Siren's Song. The effect only lasted for five minutes and the young man no idea how much of that five minutes had been spent in that weird dream-like sequence.

Before the young woman came to, Arthur ordered, "Open the door for me, please."

The young woman nodded and walked away from the dispensary window. Seconds later, Arthur heard the lock in the wooden door wiggle open. Then, the door was pushed open from within.

Arthur walked to the open door and stood across from the young woman. He still had many things that he did not understand. The biggest question on his mind was, 'What the hell happened earlier?'

First and foremost, he still held the opinion he had just been given a tour of the young woman's psyche. All the evidence pointed to that fact.

Second, there seemed to be some sort of animal dominating the young woman's mind. However, Arthur could not tell whether the animal was representative of the woman's self-defense mechanism inherent in her mind or that was a creature that slipped in through some curious means.

Third, he was not sure whether this was how the Siren's Song worked in general or it was unique to this young woman. Arthur would need to use the Siren's Song on his second 'victim' to know for sure and that would not happen that night because there was a limitation to the power and he had already used it once that day. He would need to wait until the next day's midnight before he could use it again.

Arthur looked at the young woman and decided what to do with her. He did not know what would happen later, there might be an altercation and he did not want to get the woman involved if she was innocent. If she was in cahoot with the doctor, having her there would not help Arthur's cause either.

While Arthur considered what to do, he noticed the dark circles that were under the young woman's eyes. Instinctively, the young man believed she had nothing to do with the doctor's illegal operation. The things that Arthur saw in her mind seemed to collaborate that interpretation. In the end, for the sake of her safety, Arthur told the young woman, "Please go home and take a well-deserved rest."

She nodded. Arthur then stepped back to allow the nurse to walk past him. She exited the steel door and walked away.

Arthur hoped that the effect of the Siren's Song would last long enough until she reached home and crawled into her bed.

After dealing with the two potential witnesses, Arthur strode through the wooden door.

His earlier speculation that the door led to the stairs was only half right. There was indeed a set of stairs that led upwards but next to the stairs were two doors.

The one on the left led to the small dispensary where the young woman situated herself before. Arthur did see her use that door when he ordered her to open the wooden door earlier.