I drop my keys on the counter the same way I always do.
The apartment is quiet. The kind of quiet that settles into the walls after months of living alone. I kick off my shoes, open the fridge out of habit, stare at the same half-empty shelves, and close it again without taking anything. Dinner is whatever I can reheat without thinking. The glow of the laptop screen is the closest thing I have to company most nights.
I am twenty-seven and my name is Ethan. Estranged from my family for years now, too many sharp words, too many silences that never healed. Friends are sparse. A couple of people from my Graphic Design job I nod to in the hallway. No one who would notice if I didn’t show up tomorrow. No one who would text to ask if I’m okay.
I tell myself that’s fine. Most nights I almost believe it.
But late, when the city feels far away and the dark presses against the windows, the thoughts come anyway.
I do my usual routine after work, prepare dinner, do the dishes, a watch a random streamer, then as my eyes start feeling heavy I decide to go to bed.
As I’m laying, same as every night before.
I wonder what it would feel like to be looked at the way I look at women. Not just with lust, though that is part of it, but with the soft, unguarded attention men give the girls they want to impress. I wonder what it would be like to have a body that invites that attention instead of staying invisible in the background.
Sometimes the curiosity goes further. I catch myself staring too long at the curve of a stranger’s waist, the way fabric moves over hips, the easy confidence of a girl laughing with her friends, and something in my chest tightens with a feeling I refuse to name.
Not wanting to be with them, but wondering what life is like for them.
Tonight is no different.
I close my eyes and wait for sleep.
As usual, the dream comes.
I stand in a long, dim hallway that stretches farther than any building should allow. Doors line both walls, identical and endless. I have walked this hallway many times before. Every door is locked. I have tried them all, night after night, turning cold metal knobs that never give. The hallway never changes. The locks never open. It has become a quiet, familiar frustration.
Tonight, though, one door is different.
Halfway down the corridor, a single door glows with a soft pinkish light that pulses gently against the wood. The color is warm, almost inviting, and completely out of place in the gray sameness of the dream. I stop. I stare at it for a long time, heart beating faster for no reason I can explain. I have never seen light behind any of these doors.
I approach slowly.
The closer I come, the stronger the glow becomes, washing over my hands and the front of my shirt. I reach out, the way I always do, and close my fingers around the knob. I expect the familiar resistance, the solid refusal I have felt a hundred times before.
This time the knob turns.
It turns smoothly, easily, as if it has been waiting for me. The door swings inward on silent hinges and a sudden, powerful pull seizes me, like a strong current or a hand closing around my chest. The pink light flares. The darkness beyond the threshold rushes forward.
I have no time to cry out or step back.
The door swallows me whole, and the hallway, the glow, and the last ordinary night of my life disappear.