The Ill-mannered Door (humorous sci-fi)

25.2: A Royal Puzzle

No, you can relax, the boom wasn't the explosion we were expecting. It was only the door being slammed shut behind us, quickly followed by the sound of someone turning a key in the lock.

"Wait!" I shouted, banging on the door and pulling furiously on the handle. "We're trapped in here, please open the door!"

Then I heard a woman's voice on the other side of the door say, "Sorry, dear, but I have to be going to prepare the celebration."

The king ran to the door and shouted, "Esmerelda, wait! You can't leave us here! Uh, we'll miss the celebration!"

"Sorry, but the celebration must go on. Goodbye, dear!" Queen Esmerelda said, her voice and footsteps receding into the distance.

The king staggered back as if he'd been struck, blinking profusely with mouth agape. He muttered, "She locked me in."

I yanked hard on the door, not wanting to accept the truth that had so staggered the king, but it didn't so much as budge. Despair closed in on me then. If you had been there and had been listening carefully enough, you might have heard the sound of something dying deep within my soul. At least that's what I think it was, but it could have been my stomach. After all, I hadn't eaten anything in... oh, who gave a rip really?

It was at that very moment that the part of me that cared and had the will to go on decided to go on without me. It briefly explained that it thought it might join the circus. It had always been rather enamored with tightrope walkers and bearded women, which the rest of me honestly found quite strange, and didn't bother to say goodbye as that part of me left.

So, the rest of me, the part that had never liked the circus and therefore had stayed behind, decided to slump to the flagstones and lean back against the closed door, fussing listlessly with the belt of my dressing-gown. That part of me felt that it had taken quite enough already, thank you, and the kingdom would simply have to blow up without it.

I was fairly certain that something had snapped in the king as well. He now wandered the room aimlessly, muttering to himself about his academic accomplishments. From time to time he would throw up his hands and say, "Shopping!" as if that somehow explained everything.

Another part of me, looking upon this with the cold hard gaze of an apex predator, briefly contemplated pouncing on the king in his weakened mental state and making another attempt at retrieving my slippers, but even that couldn't break me out of my despair.

Derek, for his part, wandered the room pushing at walls and the like. At one point he asked if anyone had a metal spoon, but I quickly lost interest and went back to sulking.

Time didn't pass as much as gallop by with reckless abandon, not even bothering to wear a helmet.

Noticing Derek staring at the floor, I said, "What's with you anyway, Derek? Is saving yourself really all you care about?"

"Yeah, that's right," Derek said, glowering at me.

"You know, Derek, if that's true, then why are you still here?" I asked.

Derek seemed to be taken off guard by that, but quickly said, "I'm here because of you! This is your fault, Thomas. I wanted to go and you wouldn't let me. I'm stuck here thanks to you."

"Really? I wouldn't let you? I had no idea I had that much power over you."

"I couldn't leave! You made me forget the combination to the lock on my door, remember?!" Derek shouted.

"Yes, I remember. But why not try to break in somehow, or why didn't you go with Isabella when she left to go back through the door to England? You could've caught a plane from there and been back home in no time, couldn't you? I know I was tempted to go with her, so why weren't you?"

Derek stared at me with cold eyes and said, "The better question, Thomas, is why do you care about this place getting blown up? You've only been here for a few days, so what could these people possibly mean to you? What's it to you if this place gets incinerated?"

"What's it to me?" I said, standing up. "You know, you're right, I don't know these people, but you want to know why I care? It's called basic human decency, Derek! Life is precious."

"Really? That's it, eh? Just a great humanitarian? Please... That sounds good and all, but nobody really risks their own life for basic human decency, pal. Nobody dies for a bunch of strangers. Heck, I wouldn't put my neck out there for most people I do know. So I'm not buying it."

I stared at him for a few long moments considering things carefully before I said, "Do you know what my life is like, Derek?"

He just stared back at me, and after a few more moments had passed, I continued, "It's totally devoid of anything remotely resembling purpose or meaning, let alone adventure. I'm a professor. I teach, or try to teach, young minds full of mush. Do you know what it's like, Derek, to have the look of total apathy stare back at you day after day, year after year? No, you don't. And two years ago, the love of my life was ripped from me by that bloody cancer... She's gone..." I had to stop for a moment to gather myself, wiping away the tears that I had failed to hold back, before I said, "Some days... No, every day of my life really, I don't know why I keep..."

A look I couldn't read crossed Derek's face at that moment, then he went back to looking at the floor.

After a while, when I was ready, I said, "You know, Derek, I stumbled into this whole thing by accident. Just some dumb bloke in his dressing-gown, skipping down a hill toward a beautiful beach in the sunshine of a whole new world." I stared at the opposite wall, seeing the scene again in my mind and feeling the sun on my face. My first moment of happiness in...

I shook off the memory and said, "Do you know, I even foolishly got excited about being taken into slavery and then escaping to be a pirate captain?" I then laughed morosely before continuing, "That's how sad and empty my life really is, Derek. But for the first time in my miserable little existence, I actually have a chance to be a hero, and to save these people from a horrible death. Me, Derek! I can finally do something that truly matters!"

Derek looked up at me and shook his head with a distant look in his eyes.

I raised my fist at him and shouted, "So you can just sod off, but I'm getting out of here and going to stop that bomb from killing all of those innocent people!"

Derek pointed down at the floor and said, "Well, there's a grate in the floor here, hero."

The king continued his march and I just sort of blinked in disbelief as Derek pulled a rusty grate up from the middle of the floor and set it aside. Surely it couldn't be a way out, could it?

He then bent down to look into the hole, but a good, hearty gag reflex caused him to reconsider the wisdom of such a move. "Uck! Okay, I tried. No one can say I didn't try," he said as he hurriedly set the grate back into place.

"What, hole too small?" I asked.

"No, it looks big enough to fit through," Derek said, then glanced at the king. "At least for some of us."

"So, it doesn't go anywhere then?"

"Oh no, it does, and by the look of things, it's probably the only way out of here."

"Right, then I'm going down there," I said with stern resolve.

"Easy there, hero," Derek said. "There's a little problem. It looks like a pretty decent drop, and by the smell of things, not to mention the bitter aftertaste, I'd say there's a good chance that the river of sludge flowing by down there is coming from the dungeon privy."

"Bloody hell," I muttered.