Congratulations are in order for Pablo Mendez of Roseville, California! He is the winner of the 2024 Writerwerx University Short Story Contest.
The winning story is called "The Blue Door."
Read on to learn more about him and read the full piece.
ABOUT PABLO MENDEZ
I am originally from Venezuela and came to the U.S. to pursue a graduate degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. I like writing fantasy, particularly stories that fall under the wide umbrella of Magical Realism. I have received honorable mention and second place awards for my writing from Writers’s Digest and the League of Utah Writers respectively, and I’m currently working on the manuscript for my first novel, a YA fantasy story.
"The Blue Door" by Pablo Mendez
The door was a mercurial blue. At times, a deep and vibrant shade. Others, a steely, colder hue. But as days went by, Gregor came to the realization that it was neither—the color of the door appeared to change with the mood and time of day, whether morning turned up dressed in over-bright yellow or dull gray, whether dawn’s nascent or dusk’s dying rays came through the
windowpane. In the end, he supposed it didn’t matter. Maybe the way the door looked did change. Maybe there was no reason why it should stay the same.
Nestled in the hollow of his chest, it was roughly the size of a PEZ dispenser, the likes of which Gregor had religiously collected as a kid. Top shaped into a perfect semicircle, its carved patterns of twisting vines were simple. The wood grain smooth to the touch. The clear crystal knob shaped into an octagon. Gregor had, of course, tried to open it, but the door had remained resolutely locked.
In the days following its appearance, initial bewilderment gave way to quiet reflection, which at fifteen years of age didn’t always come that naturally. Until now, Gregor had been of the opinion that even strange phenomena such as this rarely came along unless a perfectly good
explanation was at hand. His reasoning went something like this: if behind closed doors people’s lives carried on unseen, their secrets kept from those outside … surely secrets were kept behind this door too.
Other times, though, he wondered whether he was attempting to find meaning where there was none to be found; after all, life itself often felt strangely devoid of purpose, so often looked to be lacking a set course, as though one were perpetually adrift at high sea, were mere tumbleweed at the mercy of a strong desert wind.
Perhaps even stranger was the fact that these days, Gregor found it easier to sit and have dinner with his mother, a formerly rare occurrence that she now—for her own inscrutable reasons—stubbornly insisted on at least four times a week. Coincidental or not, their shared meals had become somewhat more tolerable ever since he first noticed the door, whose mere presence, for whatever reason, took Gregor’s mind off the palpable voids that sucked the surrounding air every time he and his mother inhabited the same room, dulled the edge of the sharp silences that had, until so recently, filled the space between them.
“You’ve hardly touched your dinner,” she pointed out one lukewarm evening while they both attempted to make progress, with quite opposite degrees of success, on a pair of microwave TV dinners.
“Not really hungry,” Gregor muttered, not taking his eyes off his phone while picking unenthusiastically at the poor imitation of meatloaf sitting on his plate. Joining them at the kitchen table, an awkward truce now sat between them at the seat previously occupied by years of things unsaid.
“It’s been the same for the last few nights.” “Uh-huh,” he mumbled absentmindedly.
But even as he said it, there came a most uncharacteristic pang of guilt, presumably from having ignored his mother thus far.
So, Gregor finally put the phone down, staring down the meal in front of him. He doubted he could muster the will needed to finish the unsavory concoction. Indeed, after nibbling at bits of meat, the consistency of which brought rubber to mind, what little was left of his appetite quickly evaporated. With a sip of soda, he washed out the cardboard taste clinging to his taste buds and sprang up.
“Leaving?” “Yeah.”
“Don’t stay out late,” she said, although without much conviction. Sunk in deep hollows, her winter-gray eyes remained trained on him. “You have school tomorrow.”
Gregor’s eyebrow rose, taking account once again of the prematurely lined face, the cheekbones protruding underneath sallow skin, the remnants of a once fair complexion.
For years, he’d been accustomed to the type of freedom typically afforded to kids much older than him. It was one unintended advantage of having been raised by a single, often absent mother, one always too busy, too tired, too wrapped up in her own demons—bottle and otherwise—to pay him any real attention. Having learned to take care of himself long ago, Gregor found it amusing that she still, on occasion, attempted to play her maternal role.
“Later,” he said, then turned around and left her sitting alone at the table.
#
Gregor lay on his bed, shirtless, head pleasantly buzzing after having five beers at his friend’s party. Or maybe it had been six; keeping tally of the booze wasn’t always easy, especially when it was free and flowing at a steady rate. Despite the alcohol-induced haze fogging his brain, the blue embedded in his chest naturally came into focus, sharp against pale skin that appeared even paler by contrast. It was an illusion Gregor knew had nothing to do with the colors themselves and everything with the way one’s brain perceived them when placed side by side.
At first, he had hardly noticed a thing. But one late evening after arriving home from a particularly well-stocked party, color had finally caught his eye, bringing his attention to the patch of periwinkle surreptitiously creeping under his chest. Pretty much a blur, the indiscernible shape resembled something buried in ice, lurking beneath the skin much like the greenish-blue veins running down his forearms. Through compounded muscle, dermis, and epidermis, over the next few days the door had emerged. And although it did so without apparent haste, Gregor sensed an eagerness to see the light of day.
During all of it, Gregor hadn’t felt a thing. Not a single stab of pain as the door slowly pushed through layers of skin, or an itch as skin first parted, then closed and healed around it. There was only one feeling: the ever-mounting curiosity as to the nature of the thing so resolutely wanting out of his body.
But now that the initial excitement had somewhat dwindled, the certainty that something would happen had given way to a quieter, expectant vigil. As on every evening for the past fortnight, Gregor placed a hopeful hand atop the cool slab of maple, a habit by now turned ritual.
The act held a certain comfort, a promise of something he couldn’t yet fathom. As usual, there was no sound but for the soft swish of leaves next to the open window and the creaking of old pipes within hollow drywall. Eyes closed, Gregor continued to lie in bed. What a surprise, then, when a moment later the door first rattled. Then hummed. Eyes flying open, Gregor sat bolt upright.
Unsure of what it might mean—or if it even meant anything—Gregor pressed his hand against the door, waiting with bated breath. One. Two. Three minutes passed and still nothing. Then … there! Once again.
How long he sat in bed clutching his chest, Gregor wasn’t sure. Anyone else might have been terrified at the prospect of what lay behind the door. He, on the other hand, couldn’t help but smile.
#
“How come ya didn’t show up for drinks last night?” Gregor shrugged. “Just busy.”
“Jacking off, more likely,” Terrence quipped, and on cue the gang laughed.
Gregor smirked but otherwise ignored the comment. These days, he preferred to spend less time racking up beers with his pals and more in the company of his room, wondering about the door and what could be behind it. Sometimes, when the house around him was silent, he could hear it if he strained his ears and concentrated. The fits of distant laughter echoing from within. The chirping of crickets courting at night. The soft drumming of rain against the other side of the door.
How ironic that a stronger sense of belonging could be had with this world of sorts buried within his chest than with the real one outside. A bond not shared with anyone—not friends or teachers or even alcohol. Certainly not with his mother. Or so he had thought.
And that, in a way, was the most surprising part of all. The turn the relationship with his mother had taken. Over the last few weeks, the once frozen silences had, if not fully thawed, at least partially melted. They had now been replaced with cordial—if still awkward and tentative—exchanges that touched on everything from how things were at Gregor’s school to what his hobbies were; there was even the brief inquiry about subjects of a more personal nature that Gregor casually, if unsuccessfully, tried to deflect.
“I’m just saying. You’re a handsome boy. I’m sure there must at least be someone,” his mother had probed him. Perhaps sensing she was pushing the issue, though, she had promptly abandoned that particular line of questioning.
Many wouldn’t make much of this development, would’ve called it too little, too late.
But Gregor, who knew perfectly well that even people who shared the same roof could turn into outright strangers, took solace in the sudden, fragile bond with his mother.
How or why the door’s appearance had brought about this unexpected change remained a mystery to him. And yet, something had indeed changed, beginning with the realization of how the two of them always orbited around each other, always far apart, as if gravity itself exerted its powerful pull over them. So, he started to exchange a few words over dinners. To patiently listen to his mother talk about the minutiae of her day. Gregor had virtually no knowledge of his father except for the fact that, given the choice to take part in Gregor’s upbringing, the man had decided to pass. For better or worse, she was all he knew.
Of course, that alone wasn’t enough to expunge their past or create a new one. His life had been, after all, mostly shaped by his mother’s absences. Countless meals by himself at the kitchen table. Promises of bedtime stories broken for an evening in the company of a bottle.
By the time she started insisting they hold meals together, things had long been broken.
But the door had somehow changed that and now, to Gregor’s incredulity, he even dared entertain one hope: that there was still something, anything, that could be resurrected from the graveyard of what had become their relationship.
#
Gregor sat on his bed, shirtless as per usual, twiddling his thumbs and lost in thought. It had been a while since he last came home without his head buzzing, a record of sorts. It struck him at that moment that up until now, he had really forgotten how to be alone, without the company of his buddies or the sweet stupor of drinking. Determined to change that for good, he readied himself for something he hadn’t done in a long time. Reading a book.
Shifting around to make himself more comfortable, he reached for the nightstand. That’s when the click came.
His body knew before his brain, before conscious thought had taken charge. A crack of electricity sent a shiver down his spine. His back muscles stiffened, suddenly taut as hard wire.
At last. It was open.
Gregor jumped to his feet and crossed the length of his room in a few long strides, coming to a stop directly in front of the closet’s full-length mirror. As he’d done dozens of times before, he stared at his bare chest. Seconds passed and still he didn’t move. There was just the contemplation. The anticipation. Nothing else. A minute or an hour later—he couldn’t tell—he drew a sharp breath and with unsure, sweaty fingers, reached for the octagonal knob. Hinges moaned softly as he gently turned and pulled. Next moment, the door swung wide open.
“Hello?”
The whisper echoed and faded, but no answer came forth.
In the waning light that pooled inside the room, Gregor cocked his head forward, allowing his eyes to adjust and focus on the mirror’s reflection, peering beyond the door’s threshold. The sight that met his gaze was a postcard of April in full bloom: a front yard draped in verdant spring. A lawn flecked with day’s end glow. A pussy willow budding with catkins.
Judging by what he could glimpse from the surroundings, Gregor was looking into this greenest of scenes from behind the front door of a house located on a typical middle-class neighborhood. At one side, a man pushed a shiny red tricycle on the sidewalk. The small boy riding on top laughed with reckless abandon, demanding in increasingly louder shrieks to go faster. Faster. FASTER. A sense of déjà vu creeping on him, with narrowing eyes Gregor studied them both.
Why was this so familiar? The reason teetered at the fringe of his memory. Tantalizing close. Yet frustratingly out of grasp.
The willow in the front yard.
As if pulled up by invisible hooks, Gregor’s eyebrows slowly lifted in understanding. He had lived in this place at one point.
The tricycle, the boy … the man.
And despite having never seen a picture of him, it all made sense now. Gregor spared barely a glance at the boy, who appeared scarcely older than three or four and wore an oversized bike helmet that all but concealed his features. His full attention was for the man, taking in all the details of his face: the two-day stubble dotting his jawline; the rolling dark waves of his hair; the effortless smile, bright and forthcoming. Gregor could’ve kept watching him for hours, and he couldn’t help it when his lips betrayed a sad smile at the sound of the little boy laughing.
Dusk was fast approaching on both sides of the door. Gregor wondered how long after this scene his father had walked out of his life; how long he’d been gone before Gregor was even old enough to remember. He had never asked his mother. It was all part of a past no longer connected with him. And yet, strange and painful as it was, he took some small comfort in the knowledge they had at least shared—as glimpsed a moment before—a smidgen of true happiness together. Had it been the only one or had they taken part in a few more like it?
Sighing deeply, Gregor told himself it was time to close the door, at least for today. Then, someone in the background caught his eye, past the front yard and the pussy willow, all the way across the street, in a two-story townhouse silhouetted in the setting sun. Someone at the window.
Gregor leaned closer to the mirror. The townhouse gazer appeared fixated on his father and his four-year self. Gregor leaned even closer, squinting, zooming in on the window like a camera zooming in for a close-up. When the peering face finally came into focus, the gasp that escaped Gregor’s windpipe did so with him barely noticing. It all then started coming back to him.
The pussy willow at the center of the front yard, its clusters of furry flowers bursting with pollen, welcoming spring.
The fading afternoon light glinting off chrome red as the tricycle rattled and raced along worn, gray concrete.
The familiar expression on the thin face mirrored in the windowpane, that of someone whose heart threatened to burst with envy.
Gregor closed his eyes. Remembering.
About the many times he had stood by the window wishing he could be the one riding the tricycle. That for one day, he could be the boy from the house across the street. The house with the blue door.
And how ironic that after years and years of gathering dust in a dark corner of his mind— or perhaps it was his heart—all of it could be just as easily dug up and dragged into the light. A light under which everything now shone back, almost blindingly so, as bright as a fresh dusting of snow on a crisp January morning.
Understanding came unbidden. A reminder, perhaps, that no matter how many years passed, deep down, he could never forget. That it was about time he accepted, once and for all, there was something else to the grudge he held against his mother. That to direct his ire at her, so often disguised as steely indifference and however deserved, was easier than to acknowledge the gaping hole in his chest now occupied by the door: the one left in the wake of abandonment, of not being wanted.
In front of the mirror Gregor stood, glancing out of his room’s window at a western sky muddled with a plethora of pinks. And it was then that it all became clear. Then that he finally knew what to do. He must learn to let go, learn to give it all up for good: the icy rages; the drinking binges; the cold-shouldering of his mom.
From the vantage point of his window, Gregor had watched man and boy, had hoped and dreamed. But this dream wasn’t one meant for him. And though he couldn’t help but feel abandoned all over again, Gregor realized, as he stared through the mirror at the blue door, that it wasn’t too late. That he still had a chance at a life unshackled from the burden of his past. That the journey in front of him, though uncertain, was hopefully worth taking. That the one thing he could do was to at least try. And who knew? Perhaps one day he would finally grow past the yearning for what should’ve been but was not. One day, he would hopefully move on.