Update: Project Looking Glass

After experimenting with different prospects (and going on vacation), I found an interesting path for the short story that I hope to explore: here lies a preview, which I conceived in light of such an idea. I know the project seems to be taking a long time, but I assure you that other than certain setbacks, the full story shall be released in due time. So, the preview. See what you think.

        Six doors stood, pillars of possibility, in front of me. Three to a side, flanking the muted red of hallway carpet, they guarded the seventh door like hounds to a master. Without hesitation, I moved to open each in turn, slowly, carefully, avoiding the wrathful gaze of hundreds that were unblinking, staring from cold lenses at each ceiling corner.
        I knew I could not face the seventh door, what with my family bearing down on me even through the wires of the wall telephone and my inbox flooding with pleading or reproachful comments, and sometimes comments that were both at the same time. It was clear that the seventh door would involve others in a way that was inevitably to inflict the greatest shame on myself. The psychologists that I knew were watching had always meant for this to happen: the polar fusion, the polar tears. Self-sacrifice to self-service to self-shame. The seventh door.

The First Door
        Turning the cool, brass knob beneath my spidery fingers, I awaited the promised. And yet as the first breath hit me, it was not the heat of a thousand fires, but the frost of a million winters that I found behind the mahogany. Or rather, it found me. Irony at its best, perhaps.

To be continued...