Removed from nosleep - The door at the end of my hallway has never done THAT before..

Sitting alone in my apartment I heard a noise. A loud bang from the back room, I thought. I went to investigate and didn’t see anything.

Then I heard it again.

WHAP!

It was coming from the closet, I realized. It sounded as if someone was throwing something at the door from the inside.

I opened it and two spherical rocks fell out. Weird, I thought.

Another rock suddenly came through, out of nowhere, and hit me in the balls.

“Aargh!” I screamed.

“Hello?” My closet said.

I was in so much pain my stomach hurt but I managed to gurgle back something.

“Ggrhrelluh?

“Is there someone in my closet?” the voice asked. I realized it sounded like a recorded version of myself but it was saying what I was about to say instead of what I had just said.

“What do you mean your closet? My closet is the one throwing rocks at me.” I must be losing it, I thought to myself. But again, the closet answered back.

“I thought I was going crazy..” it said.

“Nope. This is definitely fucked up, that is one hundred percent for sure,” a thought occurred to me.

“What does it look like where you are?“

“It's beautiful. Warm. Sandy beaches and palm trees. Cold beers and lounge chairs. The sun is on my back and I'm living the good life over here. This is insane I can't believe I'm talking to a door.”

I was thinking the same thing. Except it sucked balls where I was currently. It was raining and had been for days. My vacation was ruined and I was back to work the next day after having sat inside my entire week off with nothing to do.

“It's pretty nice here too,” I lied.

“What's it like?” he pressed.

“Not too hot lately. A little chilly I guess. We've been getting a lot of rain but it's bound to clear up today. Let me ask you something,” I tried to change the topic.

“What do you look like?” I asked the voice inside my closet.

“Tall, tanned, brown hair, brown eyes, medium build. I dunno, what do you look like?” he asked.

“The same. I wonder… are you me? and I’m you? Just in different worlds? That feels right, doesn't it?” It felt right to me, anyways.

“I think that might be right,” he said. “You sure sound like me.”

“I have a crazy idea,” I said. “Why don't we switch for a day? Two even?” Can you tell I really didn't want to go back to work?

“I don't know.. it's really nice over here,” he thought about it for a minute.

“Okay, reach your hand through and I’ll tell you if I can see it,” the voice from the closet said.

I did and I felt something grab me. I should be honest here. I grabbed him and pulled him through. The poor bastard had no idea what he was in for.

I jumped through at the same time and our bodies changed positions. I entered his rainy world and he went through to my sunny one, leaving his phone here, this story half-typed. A log of his impossible experience.

I might as well finish it. It's the least I can do. Now that we've switched places he's surely realized that he actually had it pretty good.

My world was warm, alright – too warm. The sun blazed in the sky, too hot to stand in its direct heat. Turning the grass to dust and the crops to cinders.

Lots of sandy beaches, but the water is toxic waste made of black sludge now. The palm trees are long gone. The beers and lounge chairs used to exist, before the economic crash left us with nothing but the bare essentials, and many of those could no longer be found either.

I heard him screaming when he came through that portal, when he saw what was there, on the other side. The hungry faces all around, my family. He shouldn't have been so trusting, though. It's his own fault.

I heard him screaming from over there as he was stabbed and stabbed by their long knives, torn apart by their long teeth. He was devoured by them.

It's not their fault, they're not monsters. They're just so hungry. It's been a while now, and I can sense their silent impatience from the other side while I sit here typing.

I ordered a pizza. That's for me. The delivery driver they can keep. I’ll just show him the doorway. There's plenty of us waiting to come through on the other side – we just need someone else, another to take our place – to balance the scales. We learned that the hard way. And people from this world are so eager, so willing, to give up what's theirs.

Ah, there's the knock at the door. Should I answer? You never can tell who’s waiting on the other side.