The Last Door
Sam found the first one behind the water fountain at school.
He’d dropped his pencil, watched it roll under the fountain’s base, and when he crouched down to fish it out.
There it was.
A door.
Maybe three feet tall, painted blue, the paint chipped and peeling like old nail polish.
It shouldn’t have fit there. The wall was only a few inches deep, barely enough for pipes. But the door sat flush against the brick, brass handle tarnished and real.
Sam touched it.
Cold. Solid.
“You okay down there?”
He looked up. Mrs. Chen, the art teacher, stood over him with a coffee mug, steam curling.
“Yeah, just…dropped something.”
When he looked back, the door was gone. Just brick and shadow.
The second door appeared three days later in the library.
Sam was supposed to be researching the Civil War, but mostly he was staring at his phone under the table. When he finally glanced up, there it was, tucked between two bookcases in the history section, same chipped blue paint, same brass handle.
His heart kicked.
The librarian, Mr. Porter, was at the front desk, humming something off-key. Sam looked around. Nobody else seemed to notice.
He stood up, legs unsteady, and walked toward it.
“Find what you need?” Mr. Porter called out.
Sam froze. “Still looking.”
“Take your time. History’s not going anywhere.”
Sam waited until Mr. Porter went back to stamping books, then reached for the handle. It turned easily, no sound, no resistance.
“Sam Reyes?”
His hand jerked back. A kid from his English class stood there, squinting.
“Hey — do you know where the biographies are? Mrs. Blake said we could grab something for the assignment.”
Sam blinked. “No idea.”
When he turned around, the door was gone again.
He started carrying a notebook, writing down every place he saw it. Water fountain. Library. The alley behind the convenience store where his mom sometimes bought lottery tickets. His friend Maya’s basement during her birthday party.
Always the same door. Always when he was alone. Always gone before he could open it.
“You’ve been weird lately,” Maya said one afternoon. They were walking home from school, kicking through piles of leaves that smelled like rain and smoke.
“I’m not weird.”
“Weirder than usual, I mean.” She grinned. “Which is saying something.”
Sam kicked a pinecone into the street. “You ever feel like there’s something you’re supposed to do, but you don’t know what?”
Maya was quiet for a moment. “Like how I feel about the cello?”
“What?”
“My mom wants me to keep playing cello. Says I’m good. That I should stick with it. But I don’t know… every time I open the case, I just don’t want to.” She shrugged. “Maybe that’s different though.”
“Yeah,” Sam said quietly. “Maybe it is.”
The door appeared in his own house on a Tuesday.
Sam came home to an empty kitchen — his mom working late again, his older sister at debate practice. He made himself a peanut butter sandwich and wandered into the garage to find his bike pump.
And there it was. Next to the boxes of Christmas decorations and his dad’s old golf clubs, the blue door stood against the concrete wall.
Sam set down his sandwich.
His hands were shaking.
He walked up to it slowly, like it might vanish if he moved too fast. But it stayed. Waiting.
He wrapped his fingers around the handle. It was cold, just like before, but this time there was a hum beneath his palm: faint, like a refrigerator running in another room.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”
He opened it.
Inside was a room that shouldn’t exist.
It stretched farther than his garage, farther than his house, maybe farther than his whole street. The walls were lined with shelves, and on those shelves were… things.
A guitar with two broken strings. A half-finished painting of a beach. A stack of letters tied with string. A running shoe, just one. A notebook filled with equations. A wedding ring. A jar of paintbrushes, the bristles stiff and dried.
Sam stepped inside. The air smelled like dust and old paper.
“Hello?” His voice echoed, small and swallowed.
No answer.
He walked down the aisle, reading the tags tied to each object. They were handwritten, all different:
Wanted to learn Spanish. Gave up after three weeks.
Was going to write her back. Never did.
Promised myself I’d finish. Got scared.
Sam’s chest tightened.
What were these? Why were they here? Each tag felt like a confession, like someone had left a piece of themselves behind.
He kept walking. The rows seemed endless.
Then he saw it.
On a shelf at eye level, there was a notebook. Smaller than the others, the cover warped like it had gotten wet once. The tag read:
Started writing stories. Stopped after dad left.
Sam’s throat closed. He knew that handwriting.
It was his mom’s.
He pulled the notebook off the shelf, hands trembling. The pages were filled with half-finished stories, some only a few lines long. A girl who could talk to trees. A dog who solved mysteries. A boy who traveled through paintings.
They were good. Really good.
Sam had never known his mom wrote. She never mentioned it. Not once.
He flipped to the last page. The story cut off mid-sentence, the rest blank.
“You can take one.”
Sam spun around. An old man stood at the end of the aisle. He was short, stooped, wearing a cardigan with frayed cuffs. His eyes were kind.
“Who are you?”
“I keep the place tidy.” The man gestured at the shelves. “Make sure everything’s where it belongs.”
“What is this?”
“Exactly what it looks like.” The man walked closer, hands in his pockets. “Every time someone gives up on something that mattered, it ends up here.”
Sam looked at the notebook in his hands. “Why?”
“Because giving up leaves a hole. And holes have to go somewhere.” The man smiled faintly. “You can take one thing. Return it. Give someone another chance.”
“Just one?”
“Just one.”
Sam looked down the endless rows. Thousands of shelves. Millions of things. “Why only one?”
The man’s smile faded. “Because if people got all their chances back, they wouldn’t learn to hold on to the ones they have.”
Sam’s chest ached. He thought about Maya and her cello. His mom and her stories. All the things people let slip away.
“What if I choose wrong?”
“There’s no wrong choice,” the man said gently. “Only yours.”
Sam stood there for a long time.
He thought about taking the notebook. Leaving it on the kitchen counter where his mom would find it. Maybe she’d start writing again. Maybe she’d remember the person she was before life got hard.
But then he thought about Maya. The way her face looked when she talked about the cello. Not excited. Just tired. Obligated.
And he thought about all the other things on these shelves. The letters never sent. The dreams half-dreamed.
Slowly, he put the notebook back.
“I can’t choose for them,” he said.
The man nodded. “No. You can’t.”
“But what if — “ Sam’s voice cracked. “What if I could just tell them? My mom. Maya. Everyone. What if they knew this place existed?”
“They already do,” the man said quietly. “Everyone knows. They just forget.”
Sam looked at the shelves again. At the weight of all that giving up.
“So what am I supposed to do?”
The man put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. It was warm, solid, real. “Same thing everyone does. Hold on to what matters. Let go of what doesn’t. And forgive yourself when you can’t tell the difference.”
When Sam walked back through the door, he was in his garage again. The blue door swung shut behind him and vanished.
His sandwich was still on the workbench, peanut butter drying at the edges.
He picked it up, took a bite, and went back inside.
His mom came home an hour later, hauling grocery bags and looking exhausted. Sam helped her unpack.
“How was your day?” she asked.
“Okay.” He put the milk in the fridge. “Hey, Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you ever want to be something else? Like, before me and Emma?”
She paused, holding a can of tomatoes. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Just… did you have other dreams?”
His mom was quiet. Then she smiled, small and sad. “Everyone does, baby.”
“Do you miss them?”
She looked at him for a long moment. Then she set down the can and pulled him into a hug. She smelled like the hospital where she worked and the lavender lotion she always used.
“Sometimes,” she said. “But I wouldn’t trade you two for anything.”
Sam hugged her back, tight.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s not too late. If you wanted to try again.”
She pulled back, searching his face. “Try what?”
“Anything.”
Something flickered in her eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or hope.
She kissed his forehead. “You’re a good kid, you know that?”
Sam never saw the blue door again.
But a few weeks later, he found a notebook on the kitchen table. Not the one from the room but a new one, fresh pages, his mom’s handwriting on the first line.
He ran into Maya at the library one Saturday. She was carrying a microphone case instead of her cello.
“Podcast club?” he asked.
She lit up in a way he’d never seen when she talked about orchestra. “Yeah. We’re doing one about unsolved mysteries in town. It’s stupid, but — “
“It’s not stupid.”
“No,” she said, grinning. “It’s really not.”
They walked out together.
Sam started paying attention. To the things people held onto. The things they let go.
He couldn’t return anyone’s dreams.
But he could remind them they still had them.
Thanks for reading. I write short fiction about the moments that change us. Grief. Hope. The absurdities of everyday life. Follow for more stories.
