Doorway

Most people think of their childhood as a golden time of their life filled with funny cartoons, playing with friends, and living life as carefree as possible. And for the most part, I can safely agree with this, as I remember my childhood fondly. I did all of these things and enjoyed every second of it as I was aware even as a little kid, that life wasn't always gonna be this good.
But there were some aspects of my early years that were a little different than others. For example, I had horrific night terrors for as long as I could remember. Dreams that twisted their way into my conscious mind and left me wide awake for hours after. Even though I would forget what they were about. I would sit there hiding under my covers taking peeks from under them every once in a while to look at my door.
I would wait for him. The man that would always stick his head in through the crack in my sliding door and talk to me about the dreams that I had. He would tell me the meanings of my dreams and why I had them. I never really saw him because it was too dark to make out anything except for his eyes. I would see his silhouette and black pupils standing in my open doorway practically every night. They were always locked directly on me and never seemed to do as much as even blink. He was very tall too, his head touching the top of my door frame which was at least 7 feet tall.
Anyways, his presence would always bring a very nice atmosphere along with him. My fear would just vanish, and we would just be there together for the remainder of the night. When the sun would come up, he would leave without a trace. I would then go on with my day and wait until the next night where if I did not sleep the whole night through, I would inevitably see him once again.
But one night, I did something that would change the relationship between the man in the doorway and me, for the rest of my childhood.
It was like any other night, I had a terrible nightmare like most others, but this one was a lot more vivid and terrifying than most others. So much to the point that I can still recall nearly every detail of it to this day.
I was walking along a sidewalk in my town. Really nothing unordinary until I came upon a zipper embedded in the ground. There was something a little off about it though. I crouched down and took a long hard look at the zipper before I came to a horrible conclusion: the zipper was made out of teeth. But not just any old teeth, there were hundreds, possibly thousands of these winding teeth. A woven tapestry of madness that was utterly insane. They looked like they were from a creature of unspeakable malice and even to this day I still cannot bear to imagine the being that those teeth came from. Really the only way I was able to distinguish that the pile of teeth in front of me was a zipper was the fact that there was that little metal thing that all zippers have on the top of them.
I took a step closer and then the zipper unzipped parting the teeth into some sort of mouth. It let out the shriek of a banshee as the jaws of the zipper opened up. I took a look into the mouth and saw a room full of fire with a tall silhouette standing in the center. It was white and unnaturally lanky and then in one quick motion it spun around to reveal two empty hollow sockets. It grabbed me and brought me up to its face, it appeared to be looking at me despite the fact that it had nothing but two hollow holes on its face and then began to scream in my face even though it had no mouth.
I jolted awake feeling as if I was on fire and I could smell the faint smell of ashes and burning wood coming from outside of my room.
I stared into the doorway at the man, who was in his same spot as always. I tried to talk to him. I kept trying and trying, saying anything I could possibly think of to get a response out of him. Talking turned to screaming and shouting as loud as I could until I noticed something on his face that shut me up real fast.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of winding dirty stained teeth stretched into a wicked smile. He looked me dead in the eyes and said only one thing, “Don’t you believe it.” Next thing I knew, flames engulfed him as he withered away and I began to hear the shouting and screaming of my parents. 
The sudden realization that our house was on fire had hit me. I quickly found a hammer in one of my drawers and smashed my window open and got the hell out of there. I saw firefighters and both of my parents waiting for me out front. Thankfully, everyone was ok and no major injuries were sustained.
That was the last time I ever saw that man, as even when we moved into our new house, I would never wake up in the middle of the night ever again. I have always slept every night all the way through ever since.
I visited my mom in her retirement home today and I really wanted to ask her a question about the man in the doorway as it had been bothering me for 35 years.
I asked her, “Do you remember the man in the doorway mom?” 
She replied with, “Oh I haven’t heard about that in years. It was always so cute when you would come out for breakfast in the morning and tell me about how your imaginary friend and you would talk about your dreams to make you feel better. I would hear you very late at night talking to yourself about all your fun little fantasies, and all I could ever think was, oh how imaginative my little boy is.”
Category:Dreams/Sleep
Category:Beings