There are three doors in front of me.

I open The Present, and see a sunny, quiet apartment before me. There is a little white dog sleeping on her side like a mini-horse, nestled in a blue blanket on the couch. Her legs are twitching. The white forehead diamond and pink nose of a calico cat peeks around the corner, her green eyes staring right at me. I blow her a kiss, and close the door. Be right back…

Behind the door to the Future there is chaos. Everything is suspended in space, swirling around a vortex with myself at the center. Things nearby slow down momentarily before being sucked back into the fray. I reach out for the shape of a man who is currently paused in front of me, and he dissolves at my touch. Another similar shape floats into view, reaching for me. I back away…It’s not real. I don’t know him. He isn’t real… Other phantoms float by and through me and I wonder how anyone could look into they eye of a storm like this and see anything concrete. Before I turn to leave, a small book with my name on the cover floats by. A someday author, I close the door to the future.

The past for last, I open the dusty front door to an old, white farmhouse. To my left there are stairs down and around to a terrifying basement with a pool table in it. It may or may not be flooded. I walk forward, past the craft closet and stairs to the upper level on the right, laundry room on the left. Into the kitchen on the right, dining room on the left. There is a crab apple tree outside the kitchen window above the sink, and two large trees outside the dining room window. Ahead is a sort of living room with a pie safe and piano in it, darkened by lace curtains. My parent’s bedroom is to the left. I can see a small plastic apple just outside their closet. A prize from the Happy Meal I had on the night we moved in. Ahead of me is a favorite room. It is sunny, to my left is the couch and a set of windows with roses just below them outside. On the opposite wall there is a TV and a stereo in a huge, wooden entertainment center. The front of the room seems like one big bay window, shrouded on the outside by pink, flowering bushes. Hollyhock’s, maybe? I never knew what they were. There is a love seat with a golden velvet cushion by the window.

Nothing in this room is swirling. Nothing in the house seems out of place. I know exactly where I am in my mind when I walk through it, and things materialize along the way that I had forgotten. I could do this all day. I could do this for the rest of my life…walk back through time and just keep remembering.

I hear a faint, frantic barking in the distance, but we never had a dog back then…
Bep! Bep Bep!
A raspy little bark behind a different door. Everything around me turns to ash. First it’s just the house, but the trees and flowers follow as the little world inside of me goes dark. In front of me, once more, are the three doors. I open the door to the Present, and the small white dog that had been sleeping previously races out to greet me.  I find this odd, because technically I was there the entire time. I am always in the present, but not nearly all of me.

Luciana, 30