The Closing of the Golden Door
The Golden Debt
The knocking didn’t sound like a hand on wood; it sounded like bone.
I’d spent thirty years building a life out of silence, far from the whispers of the village where we grew up. But as I opened the door, the night air turned frigid. There stood Marcus the Collector, his face a mask of pale indifference. In his right hand, he gripped a rusted iron chain. At the end of it, hunched and shivering, was my sister.
She was a ruin of a woman. A jagged scar ran across her sightless left eye, and her right hand clutched at the air, missing the thumb she had likely traded for a secret she couldn't keep.
"I’ve come... to beg forgiveness," she croaked. Her voice sounded like dry leaves skittering over a grave.
I looked at her, and for the first time in my life, the well of pity was dry. "Forgiveness? Or a co-signer?"
Behind them, a black carriage waited, the horses exhaling plumes of gray mist that smelled of wet earth and old copper.
"I know what you did," I said, stepping onto the porch. "I got told about your dabbling. You thought you were clever, didn't you? Opening the Golden Door, marauding through the sanctum, taking lives like they were fruit to be plucked. But now the door is stuck open, the shadows are leaking out, and you’re looking for someone to pay your rent in the afterlife."
She tried to lunge at me then, a guttural snarl escaping her throat. She looked less like my sister and more like the very entities she’d been summoning. Marcus didn't even look at her; he simply flicked his wrist, and the chain snapped tight, sending her sprawling into the dirt.
"You bargained for gold," I whispered, leaning down so she could see the lack of mercy in my eyes. "But you never questioned the demon. When he showed you those shimmering coins, did you really think they were minted in a forge? Those were my life points. My years. My health. He showed you my very existence and told you it was currency, and you didn't hesitate to spend it."
I looked at Marcus. "She thought she was getting a fresh start through that portal. She had more than I ever did, yet she still wanted to feast on my scraps."
The sister I once knew was gone. There was only a debtor whose interest had compounded. Marcus began to haul her toward the carriage. Her fingernails clawed at the gravel, leaving shallow grooves in the path I had worked so hard to keep clean.
"I can't pay your debt," I called out as the carriage door swung open like a hungry mouth. "I have no interest in you. I haven't for thirty years."
Marcus hoisted her inside. The chains rattled one last time against the floorboards. He climbed onto the driver's seat, took up the reins, and looked back at the tangled heap of a woman in the dark interior.
"Your time is up," he growled.
The whip cracked, the horses surged, and the carriage vanished into the treeline. I stood there until the sound of the wheels died away, then I went back inside and locked the door.
The Aftermath: Sealing the Threshold
The rumble of the black carriage faded until the only sound left was the whistling wind and the heavy, rhythmic thrumming in my own chest. It was a sound I hadn't heard clearly in years, not since the day my sister had first started "spending" my time.
I looked down at my hands. They were steady. The pale, translucent quality of my skin was being replaced by a healthy flush. Every mile Marcus dragged her away was another year of my own life returning to me, reclaimed from the demon's ledger. But the air still tasted of ozone and rot. The debt was being collected, but the Golden Door she had forced open was still unhinged, a jagged tear in the fabric of my home.
I knew then that I couldn't just lock my wooden door and sleep. To leave a portal open is to invite every scavenger in the dark to finish what she started.
I walked toward the back of the house, to the cellar where she had been "dabbling." The door was warm to the touch. When I threw it open, I didn't see stairs I saw a shimmering, horizontal rift of molten light. It was the Golden Door turned into a wound by her greed.
Marcus return returned that night to close the door for he was the Gate Keeper and knew how to close it. Her wrath had finished. "She played for a prize long life and riches, by not paying the her rent she lost and now face the consequences ". he said
The rift showed glimpses of a world that wasn't ours: fields of golden wheat that were actually sharpened blades, and a sun that looked like a lidless eye. This was the "fresh life" she had bargained for, a beautiful lie covering a predatory dimension.
To close the evil portal, Marcus must close for he had the key and prayers.
The molten light flared, blindingly white, and then collapsed inward with the sound of a closing book. The cellar stairs returned. The smell of sulphur vanished, replaced by the scent of old wood and dust.
I sat on the top step, exhausted but whole. For thirty years, she had been a shadow at my side,shadowing my every move to stay fed. Now, the path ahead was truly mine. I was no longer a source of "gold" for her demons.
Post Comments
Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.
Please
Login
to post a comment