TrottingThroughTheDark

  A week after my wife and son entered the City they found me. The Gentlemen of the Dark. They dressed like businessmen and handed me a business card that said they were from the lawfirm of Ashland & Thorn. They represented someone who was interested in my story.

  I am not stupid. When the police questioned me, I said nothing about the Door or the City. What would I have said? No. Sometimes a lie is easier.

  But they found me anyway. I must have told someone. I could have muttered it in my sleep.

  They said if they could find another Door, they could help bring my wife and son back. (Sometimes a lie is easier.) "Those who see a Door and don't go through sometimes can find more Doors," they told me. I made a mistake. I helped them.

IfYouWakeAtMidnight

  I'm going to break the rule. I'm going to talk about the Gentlemen of the Dark.

  They will try to find me. They will try to break me. I do not care.

  They track the Doors. They have people everywhere looking for them. Wondering alleyways, the symbols of the Door tattooed to their arms for quick reference, so they know if they've found one. Why look? Why the search? Why the secrecy? They answer all questions the same:

  Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.

TheLastWave

   There are those who claim that the City is by a sea or body of water. "Water changes," they say. "Water is change. It never takes the same form twice, just like the City."

  They are right and wrong. The City is like the sea. Constantly shifting. But it is not controlled by the moon, it has no tides, no ways to predict where it will land. There is no shore for the City.

  But we have fed the City and the sea for a thousand years and she calls us still, unfed.

OurProudAndAngryDust

   Sometimes I imagine them. Imagine what they are doing right now. Chasing each other through the winding streets, the twisting lanes that change as soon as you walk past them. They are running, laughing, never growing old. There is no time there.

  Sometimes there are traces. Fragments of a life consumed by the City. I still have their pictures in my breast pocket, close to my heart. And I've found others. A boy in Washington who was sent to his room by his parents and never came out. An group of illegal immigrants, lured by the promise of America, packed into the cramped cargo hold of a boat, all of them suddenly vanishing.

  I can see it now. They are sleepless, whispering to each other, wondering about when they will arrive, when they see a Door. A Door to the ultimate freedom, the endless labyrinth of the City.

TheGardenOfStatues

  A few years ago, I met a man who claimed to have seen through one of the Doors to within the City. He said he saw a beautiful garden filled with tall statues reaching to the heavens. He said that he believed these statues were of the builders of the City.

  When I asked if he had seen these statues' faces, he grew quiet, then said, "They had no faces. Their faces had been carved off, leaving only jagged forms." I said that perhaps these statues were not of the builders, but rather of those who tried to claim the City for themselves and that the statues were reminders to any who wished to do as they did.

  I later learned that this man was a consummate liar.

ANetworkOfLinesThatIntersect

  It's time to talk about networks.

  The Doors form a network. You can walk through one Door and emerge out of another. How do I know this?

  I am driving through the rain when I see it. There's a metal staircase beside a building that leads to a door...and another Door. I remember the markings. I can see it, practically taste the other side. I hurriedly park the car, slam the door shut, not even bothering to lock it, and rush up their steps. I take the door handle, fervently wishing that it won't be locked, and am surprised and relieved when it isn't.

  I turn the handle and walk through. On the other end is a sandy beach, the night sky overhead. The Door shuts behind me before I can stop it.

  It's three hours before I find out that I'm on the Ivory Coast.

WhereWouldYouGo?

                                           Where would you go? Where would you go within its empty streets, its silent alleyways, its quiet corridors, where would you walk, your footsteps echoing where there were no footsteps before you? Answer these before you walk through the door. There is no map to the City, the City of Emptiness, the City Without Shadows, the Constantly Shifting City, where the buildings are never in the same place twice.

      You think you know what it is. You've seen the SuddenlY Appearing Door. The Door has always been there The Doors only Appear when you are not looking. There are several types of Doors:

             1. Doors to the City
             2. Doors to Someplace else
             3. Doors to Sometime else
             4. Doors to the Outside

      All Doors are dangerous. When a Door reveals itself Appears, all Shadows move away from it.