Chapter 1- Appearance
The door arrived on a cold, rainy night. The rain was driving down in sheets. I’ve never seen it rain so hard or for so long or for so long in this area of the country. The rain came five days ago, and now the Columbia River is on the verge of overflowing its banks. The amount of rain that has fallen must be a record for this part of the country. It is more like what I would have seen back east, and even there, there would be torrential flooding. Not that I’m too worried about it. I live in an apartment on the other end of town, uphill the whole way, on the south side of Kennewick in Washington State.
I hate this place. It's ugly. There’s nothing to do here except the river. It’s windy. But this is where the work is, or was. And this is where we could afford to live back when the cost of living wasn’t ridiculous, back when I had a family to support. My name is Orwen Scott, and I am a fifty-year-old divorcee with four kids who won’t speak to me.
I’m an old man starting over after devoting a quarter of a century of my life to loving my wife and working my ass off to provide everything she and my kids could ever want. But who fucking cares about that, right? Now, I’m starting over from scratch except that I’m old. Sure, I have a decent income; however, what lady would want an old has-been like me? I’m tired, I’m overweight, my joints ache, my prostate is shot, and my dick hardly works for any of its purposes anymore. Sure, I can make a woman orgasm multiple times with my mouth or any one of my fingers or thumbs, but as for me? No. Not so much anymore. So what woman would want a dysfunctional man?
Anyway, so here I am, old, alone, drowning my sorrows in whiskey, and gaming. Yeah, I’m an old gamer. An old Gen-X’er that is part of the missing generation that grew up watching Looney Tunes, Transformers, Go-bots, G.I. Joe, Silver Hawks, Galaxy Rangers, and He-man. I played games on the Atari and Entelevision. I played Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on my uncle’s Commodore 286. I also grew up watching Captain Planet, James Bond Junior, Animaniacs, and Beavis and Butthead. I played Mario Brothers and Zelda on my cousins’ or friends’ Nintendos, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat on their Sega Genesis. My dad hated television and gaming consoles, so we never had our own. I grew up reading a lot: science fiction, fantasy, action-adventure, and mysteries.
When I reached my teens, though, in the early 90s, I also had the opportunity to watch The Terminator, Aliens, Predator, and every Jean-Claude Van Damme movie ever made with friends. I also eventually got a job and built my own computer. In 2000, I married my wife and was also introduced to MMORPG’s. My greatest regret is that I paid way more attention to my game avatars than I did to my kids, and now I just wish I had all that time back.
I wish I had spent that time with my wife and children; maybe they would think differently of me now. Unfortunately, whether it was my gaming or the fact that I was the sole disciplinarian, they don’t want anything to do with me now. I’m too old school. I’m too opinionated. I’m a narcissist and sexist and misogynistic because I have old, outdated opinions, morals, and beliefs. So, here I am, alone with my movies and my games.
With a heavy sigh, I looked at the time in the corner of my monitor and realized it was late, nearly midnight. I felt hungry and thirsty. I had been gaming since I got home from work. I hadn’t even showered or changed clothes. So, I sighed as I logged out, and I went and took a shower. Afterward, I put on a fresh set of clothes before looking out the window. It was raining hard, which is unusual for this area, and the wind was blowing in gusts that must have been nearly hurricane speeds. I hate the wind.
Putting on a raincoat, I left my apartment and walked the half mile in the pouring rain to the nearest Walmart. The store was very quiet. There were a few people in the store aside from the employees. However, there were more than I expected. They’re probably taking shelter from the wind and rain. Anyway, as I searched out what I was looking for- El Monterey beef and bean burritos and a two-liter bottle of Mello Yello- I could still hear the rain overhead drumming on the roof of the building, and the wind was gusting so hard it sounded as if it might rip the ceiling off any minute. Shaking my head, I gathered the items I wanted and headed toward the front of the store. I paid at self-checkout and hurried out of the store and straight out into the horrible driving rain and wind.
The weather pummeled me like a waterfall or, at least, what I imagined a waterfall must feel like. Except that the wind was blowing the rain in from the side instead of coming straight down. Hundreds, if not thousands, of gallons of water seemed to slam into my side and back, and straight into my face and chest relentlessly. Still, I stood my ground as the wind attempted to blow me off my feet, off the sidewalk, and into the road.
Keeping my head down, I pulled the hood of my raincoat a little further forward, but it was no good. The rain streaked my glasses, it soaked my beard, and crunched my face. It was true misery for a miserable man. A small part of me thought about how much easier it would be to just step out into the road and end it all, but then I rejected the thought. My life sucks right now, but maybe it will get better. Besides, no one would miss me if I did choose to unalive myself. They just blame that on me, too. So, I trudged on into the night.
I wish, though, that things were different. I wish my life were different. I wish I meant as much to the people I loved as they had meant to me. I wish I were their hero. I wish all of my hard work and sacrifice had meant a damn. I wish I had a second chance!
Only, I wish my second chance were not here. Not this life. I wish I were a new man. A better man with new opportunities. New people to meet. I wish I mattered. I wish—I wish I had a second chance at love!
As if the universe were answering my internal desires, lightning struck somewhere nearby, and the entire city went dark. I came to a sudden stop as I was thrown to the ground. Pitch-blackness suddenly fell all around me. The rain was pounding, the wind was gusting, and I was gasping for breath. Several more lightning strikes lit up the sky for several indeterminate seconds, maybe minutes. And through it all, all I could do was turn over onto my back and lie there, staring up at the sky as the rain and wind pounded me and the water on the walk path soaked what little was still dry of my clothes.
The lightning stopped, and the world around me, my world, was left in complete darkness. Then silence fell over the world, silencing even the sound of whipping winds and the drum of the pouring rain. Fear gripped my innards tightly. There was no sound at all. Was I deaf? The darkness around me was complete. Was I blind? Then, within the absolute silence around me, lightning started arcing down in slow motion, striking the mountains miles away in every direction. The lightning crawled and arced slowly as the wind stilled and the raindrops stopped falling. It was as if time had stopped, but not truly. Time hadn’t actually stopped; it was just moving incredibly slowly.
The lightning slowly lit up the clouds as thousands of arching tendrils latticed across the sky, moving toward one central location directly above me. It was as if I were watching the lightning rewind. Offshoots and tendrils joined together, making thicker bars of jagged lightning until they all coalesced into a single massive glow ball of energy directly above me in the clouds.
It was all so unbelievable. I was lying there in the rain looking up, and within the ball of energy I saw nothing. My glasses were spotted and streaked, so I rubbed the rain off them, and that was when I realized that the wind and rain and lightning were all slowed down, but I wasn’t! So, I pushed myself up off the ground and stood. I found my bag of groceries and picked it up, and then looked up into the sky once again at the enormous ball of energy above me. This time, though, I saw a small black dot!
Lightning was still crawling backwards toward the ball of energy from miles away. It had a strange pink and purplish glow. I had never seen something so amazing in my life. The lightning crawled backwards and continued to amass as the energy above me grew brighter and brighter. At some point, I realized that the black dot was getting bigger. It wasn’t a dot either, but rather took on the appearance of a bar. Then, there was a massive flash of light and a boom that hurled me to the ground once more as a thousand bars of lightning struck the bar all at the same time!
All the light went out! The lightning was gone. The darkness was complete. Sound returned with a thunderous roar of a thousand thousand lightning strikes. Then the sound of the drumming rain returned as the wind howled!
I lay there on the ground, stunned for several seconds, just getting pelted with rain. I was completely soaked, and the wind was chilling. Eventually, though, I gave myself a little shake and picked myself up off the ground again. However, when I looked up and took note of my surroundings, there stood in front of me an enormous stone-encased door!
It stood something like twenty-four feet tall and twelve feet wide. The door and the stone casing surrounding it had a supernatural glow, highlighting the fact that it was one solid piece of wood carved with amazingly intricate and detailed engravings. The wooden door must have been at least twelve inches thick, for the carvings were very deep. The whole thing was breathtaking, and all the more so as I wondered how this thing had come to be here in front of me.
