Between Realities
Ashworth Lane was the home to the old house, a two-storey silent figure amongst its neighbors. Saronika Chatterjee, Saro to those who knew her, felt its quiet hum as she stepped through the front door. It was not a creepy house; that would have been easier to dismiss. Instead, it felt incomplete, a sentence waiting for its final clause.
Her parents, practical people, saw only ‘spacious, affordable, structurally sound’. They moved for work, uprooting their lives from the city’s sprawl to this suburban hush. Her grandmother, having moved in with the family, approached the house not with trepidation but with a kind of reverent caution, as though acknowledging an ancient power that demanded respect rather than terror.
That first night, surrounded by cardboard towers that cast long shadows in the fading light, Saro worked her way through the living room chaos. Her mother’s off-key humming punctuated the rustle of newspaper-wrapped dishes. Her father muttered instructions to the house helps. Saro’s fingertips grazed the wall as she reached for another book, then froze. Something different. Something smooth yet textured beneath her touch.
She looked down.
A metal handle. Small, tarnished, set flush against the baseboard where no handle should be. No decorative flourish. No broken remnant. Just a perfect, purposeful fitting that had no business existing in that spot. The worn brass caught the light but showed no signs of use, no polish from palms, no scratches around its edges.
“Mother,” Saro’s voice, a curious inquiry, cut through the domestic clatter.
Her mother looked up, a ceramic coffee mug clutched in her hand. “Yes, sweetheart?”
Saro pointed. “What’s this?”
Her mother’s eyes followed her finger, then quickly flicked away. “Oh, that.” She turned back to the box of kitchenware. “We don’t know what it does, Saro. The previous owners didn’t either. Better not touch something we don’t understand.”
The words hung in the air, a deliberate incompleteness. They bothered Saro more than they should have.
Over the next few days, a pattern emerged. The handle was always avoided. The large armchair, once destined for that corner, now sat a foot further out, creating an awkward gap. A potted fern, perfectly placed on the mantelpiece above the handle before, found itself exiled to a sunnier spot, leaving the handle exposed. Her grandmother, perched on the sofa, never sat facing it. The house felt normal everywhere else, but that one object created a pocket of uncertainty, a quiet anomaly in their new, settled lives.
Saro, thirteen, was curious. Not reckless, not seeking thrills, but deeply uncomfortable with unanswered questions. Her curiosity wasn’t about danger; it was about knowing. The handle became symbolic: something adults refused to confront, something unexplained but tolerated.
One afternoon, was quiet. Her parents had left for work, their car’s engine fading into the distance. Her grandmother was upstairs, a soft rustle of bedsheets indicating her afternoon rest. Sunlight streamed through the large window, a golden rectangle shifting across the polished floorboards. It fell, precisely, on the wall with the handle, illuminating its dull gleam as if the house itself drew attention to it.
Saro stood before it, her breath catching. She told herself she would only inspect it. She knelt, the floorboards cool beneath her knees. Her fingertips brushed the metal. It was cold, solid. Nothing happened. No sound, no vibration, not even a subtle change. That almost made it worse.
A hesitation bloomed in her chest. Not fear of danger, but an awareness of a line. Once crossed, things could not return to ignorance. The handle represented a choice: to accept the unknown, or to demand understanding.
Her fingers closed around the cool metal. Her grip tightening. Her curiosity winning over her. She pulled.
There was no flash, no spinning tunnel. The living room, with its half-unpacked boxes and the scent of new paint, folded inward, a breath held too long. Saro felt weightless for half a second, a dizzying lurch, and then her feet met solid ground.
She was still in a house. The same house, yet profoundly different. The windows were larger, letting in a softer, almost luminescent light. The walls, in her memory a muted cream, now held a deep, calming sage green. Furniture sat with purpose, not just convenience. A low, wooden table held intricate ceramic bowls, each piece unique. Outside, through the large windows, the neighborhood existed, but it was subtly wrong. Streets curved differently, trees wore ancient, gnarled bark, and the sky held a hue Saro couldn’t quite name, a deeper, richer blue.
A woman stood in the doorway, her hands clasped loosely in front of her. She wore simple, flowing clothes, her expression calm, unalarmed. Two children, perhaps a little younger than Saro, peered from behind her. They looked at Saro with open curiosity, not suspicion.
"Did you come through an unassigned threshold?" the woman asked, her voice gentle, resonant.
Saro didn’t understand the words, but she nodded instinctively. Her throat felt dry.
"Ah," the woman said, a small, knowing smile touching her lips. "Welcome. Or, perhaps, welcome back."
Saro spent what felt like two and a half hours in this new, yet familiar, world. The woman, whose name was Elara, explained things with a quiet patience that felt alien to Saro. This wasn’t a future, nor a past. It was a parallel timeline, one where humanity had long ago learned that reality contained junctions, points of potential divergence.
"We discovered them," Elara explained, as they walked through a garden filled with plants Saro had never seen. "Not by accident, but by observation. The universe offers choices, always. We simply learned to see the moments where those choices splintered reality."
Saro tried to grasp it. "So, my world... it's just one choice?"
Elara nodded. "And ours is another. Neither is right or wrong, merely different. We live by a principle here: Do not interfere with what you don’t understand, unless you are willing to take responsibility for the outcome."
The irony landed with a quiet thud. Her mother’s words, a warning, echoed in her mind. *Better not touch something we don’t understand.*
Elara led her to a place called the Archive of Decisions. It wasn’t a grand building, but a series of interconnected, sun-drenched rooms filled with soft murmurs and the rustle of paper. People sat at long, communal tables, writing, reading, discussing. These weren’t scholars poring over ancient texts. They were ordinary people, recording choices they had made without full knowledge, and the consequences that followed.
"These aren't dramatic disasters," Elara explained, gesturing to a shelf filled with leather-bound journals. "Some are small. A word said too quickly, a silence held too long. Others, of course, are life-altering. But all are documented, so we might learn."
Saro saw a young man carefully inscribing details about a decision to plant a certain crop without first testing the soil. The consequence: a season of meagre harvest, but also the discovery of a new, resilient strain of grain. Another woman described how her impatience in a conversation had led to a misunderstanding, but also a deeper, more honest dialogue later.
Time worked differently here. There was no rush. No frantic ticking of clocks. Saro felt herself absorbing, observing. She met children her age, not trained to be obedient, but attentive. They asked questions before acting, not because they feared punishment, but because they valued impact. They understood that every action rippled outwards.
"What if you don't know the impact?" Saro asked one boy, no older than ten, as he meticulously sorted different coloured seeds into separate trays.
He looked up, his eyes bright. "Then you learn, first. You observe. You ask those who have observed longer. You gather information. To act without understanding is to act blindly." He paused, then added, "It is to risk causing something you did not intend, and then being unable to mend it."
What changed Saro wasn’t a single lesson, but a gradual, organic realisation. In her world, people often avoided the unknown by pretending it didn’t matter. In this world, people respected the unknown by learning before touching it.
Elara guided her to a quiet alcove. A shimmering, almost translucent screen filled one wall. "We have something to show you," she said, her voice softer now. "A projection."
The screen flickered, then coalesced into an image of Saro’s own timeline. She saw herself, a mirror image, standing in her living room, a book in her hand. Curious, sensitive, intelligent. But Elara pointed to subtle shifts in her posture, the slight impatience in her gaze as she scanned the page, the way her foot tapped almost imperceptibly.
"You are quick to grasp," Elara observed, her voice calm. "A gift. But your need to know immediately often overrides patience. You don't rush dangerously, Saro. Not in the way that causes immediate harm. But you rush emotionally. You seek the answer, rather than the understanding that builds around it."
Saro watched herself on the screen, a strange, unsettling feeling in her stomach. It wasn’t a scolding. It was recognition. She saw the subtle impulsiveness, the way her mind leapt ahead, seeking resolution, rather than dwelling in the question.
"Curiosity is not the problem," Elara continued. "Unexamined curiosity is. It’s like a powerful river. Guided, it irrigates. Unguided, it floods."
For the first time, Saro felt truly seen. Not judged, not praised, but understood deeply. The feeling was profound, a quiet ache of self-awareness.
As the sun began its slow descent outside the large windows, a slight unease began to stir within Saro. She hadn’t thought about home. About her grandmother, still upstairs, perhaps wondering where she’d gone if she’d been gone for more than a few moments. About the consequences of her own impulsive act.
They were walking through a different part of the house, a sun-dappled corridor. Her gaze fell upon the wall. There it was. Another handle. Identical to the one in her own living room. Untouched.
"What does that one do?" Saro asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Elara glanced at it, then at Saro. Her expression held calm awareness. "We don't know," she replied, her voice echoing Saro’s mother’s words. "So we don't use it."
The symmetry hit Saro hard. A quiet, undeniable truth. This was her exit. And also her test. If she pressed it thoughtlessly, she would learn nothing. If she refused out of fear, she would stagnate.
She walked towards it, her heart thrumming a steady rhythm. Her fingers reached out, brushed the cool metal. She paused, remembering the boy with the seeds, remembering Elara’s words about unexamined curiosity. She breathed, a slow, deliberate intake of air. She understood.
She pressed it.
The world dissolved, not with a flash, but with a deep, resonant hum that vibrated through her bones. The bright sage walls, the large windows, Elara’s smiling face, all shimmered, then vanished.
Saro collapsed onto the living room floor of her house, the familiar scent of old wood and new paint filling her nostrils. Her hands scraped against the polished floorboards. She pushed herself up, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
The clock on the mantelpiece ticked, a steady, rhythmic sound. Her eyes darted to it. The large, brass hands pointed to the exact same time as before. Not a minute had passed.
The house was unchanged. The boxes still stood, half-unpacked. The armchair still sat awkwardly. Her grandmother’s soft snores drifted down from upstairs. The handle, small and unassuming, remained embedded in the wall.
Saro sat there, shaken. Not because she doubted the experience, but because she knew it could not be proven. Was it a dream? But dreams don't restructure our thinking so cleanly. Dreams don't leave us with a quiet, profound understanding of ourself.
She did not tell anyone. Not because she feared disbelief; her grandmother would dismiss it as a flight of fancy, her parents would suggest she'd been reading too many fantasy novels. She understood something new: not every truth needed validation to be real. Some truths were internal, deeply woven into the fabric of one’s own being.
Saro began changing, quietly. She asked more precise questions in school, her teachers noting a new depth in her inquiries. She listened longer before speaking, her responses more thoughtful, less impulsive. She noticed when her curiosity edged towards impatience, pulling back, observing more. The handle remained untouched, a silent sentinel in the corner of the living room. It was no longer an unanswered question, but a quiet reminder.
Weeks turned into months. The house felt lived in now, the boxes gone, the furniture settled. The quiet hum had become a comforting presence. One evening, Saro sat on the sofa, a book open on her lap, but her gaze drifted to the mantelpiece. The clock. It ticked. Not faster. Not slower. Just… off. A subtle discord in its rhythm, a barely perceptible hiccup in its steady march.
She frowned, then stood, walking over to examine it more closely. It looked the same. Sounded the same, almost. But something was wrong.
A memory surfaced, a fleeting image from the move-in day. Her mother had taken pictures, documenting their new beginning. Saro retrieved her mother’s old phone from a drawer, scrolling through the gallery. Photos of empty rooms, her father struggling with a box, her grandmother smiling from the doorway.
Then, a picture of the living room, taken from the entrance, before any furniture had been moved in. The wall near the staircase. She zoomed in, her breath catching.
Barely noticeable, a faint patch of plaster, slightly smoother than the rest. The handle was missing.
It had always been missing.
The implication landed quietly, devastatingly. The choice had been made, the junction navigated. Her mother’s voice returned to her, steady and practical: Better not touch what we don’t understand.
Saro exhaled. She had touched it. And now she understood.
But as the clock ticked, steady and strange, she wondered: if the handle had never been there, what had she chosen? And if she had chosen nothing, why did everything feel changed?
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