The waiting room

Reaching out, I turned the knob to the right and pulled the door open. There was another room inside, a significantly sized room that to my bewilderment, was already lit. I pulled the key from the lock and pocketed both it and the book, then shimmied into the room and stood up.

Dumbfounded, I stared around the room which was lit by a peachy pink light coming from several frosted lamps on low, ornately carved wooden tables. The room had a low ceiling, which like the walls was painted in a warm salmon pinkish color. Rich, burgundy red carpet stretched across the floor that was littered with more strange board games, bizarre toys, and books. Several low cushioned seats that looked like ottomans were placed here and there by the tables. On the left facing wall was a recess with a carpeted seat that was bordered by deep burgundy red curtains. On the right wall was a very large full length mirror which was also framed with curtains.

The room was utterly inviting and contained a palpable air of welcome and....well, joy is the best way to describe it. Nonetheless, I couldn't quite get past the shock of how this room even existed- in my closet- and who the bloody hell had left the lights on all this time!

I stepped further into the center of the room and turned around slack jawed in amazement. In my revolution, however, I noticed something very disquieting. The door that I had just previously passed through was gone.

I strode quickly to the wall in the direction I had entered and felt along it where the door SHOULD have had the sense to be. Not a seam, not a trace that it had ever been there. I knocked against the wall in hopes that perhaps I could detect the apparently "secret" passage I had come through, but to no avail. I stepped back, and noted that the wall was covered with painted murals of colorful mermaids. Mermaids were certainly lovely, but where was the blasted door?

Lots of things go through one's head when one is seemingly locked in a room that technically didn't exist before and likely shouldn't be at all. Such as "What bloody architect forgot to install necessities such as windows? Or a bathroom? Or a DOOR OUT?!!" And then, other things like "Oh hell, I'm stuck in here in my pajamas. How brilliant." Or "Alright. I'm dreaming. I got so tired that I have just fallen asleep on my bed and the whole closet incident is a dream. Right!"

I must say, it's quite difficult to wake up from something that isn't really a dream, even if it feels like one.

Feeling conflicted by the abject comfort of the room and the desire to leave it, I did the only thing one can do whilst wearing flowered pajamas and sat on one of the low cushioned seats surrounded by a pile of toys and games. My doubt was severe, but perhaps somewhere in this room there was a passage elsewhere and it might just be laying about amidst all the colorful distractions.

Distractions, they certainly were. All manner of boxes in flaming colors, decks of playing cards, bizarre games that I had never seen before with oddly shaped pieces. Hand-held electronic games that beeped and spewed numbers and words and shapes onto their screens. Impossibly colored baubles, jewels, necklaces, old coins. The more I looked through the piles, the more things seemed to appear, each as fascinating as the last. I nearly forgot my predicament until I decided to shuffle through a deck of cards I had found in a lacquered wooden box. I remembered that I had left the strange deck of cards that had come with the book and keys back in the top of my closet. I muttered a few curse words, and then started to worry. What if those cards were important somehow. What if I had left the only way to get out of this room OUTSIDE of the room?!

I got up and walked about, trying to calm myself. Deciding that the recessed seat looked inviting enough I sat down on it amongst the plushy tasseled pillows and removed from my pockets the items I did bring along- the book and keys. Funny, how the keys were all separate in my pocket now. I flipped through the book again, half expecting to find that some sort of instructions had magically appeared. It was still blank, but there was a card marking a page about halfway through. I pulled it out- it looked like the same style as the cards I had left behind.

"The Royal City?" The lettering was a deep purple. The card looked old but the colors printed on it were still bright. A picture of a fancy crown and an even fancier coat of arms was displayed above the title. The back of the card was blank and brownish, except for an ornate printer's ornament in the center.

Unsure what to make of all this, I stared ahead, flipping the card over in my hand and staring into the mirror opposite me.