🚀 go-pugleaf

>        "By that locked door that never opens, you know, the one with the 
>three letters DRH on it."
>        "Oh.  Yes, the quarters of Serious Writer (tm).  He claims to have
>nothing to do with us!  He's a serious writer!"  RosterwReam said getting 
>up and heading for the closet of where the disks were held.  "Drat!  I
>forgot to put him on the roster as well!"  He cursed.  I wonder what DRH 
>stands for?  RosterwReam thought back to an explanation that List Lad had
>told him once.  I think the R stands for Rogue-lover, if I recall correctly.


	It was a quiet night. Too quiet.
	All good hardboiled detective stories start that way.

	RosterwReam was walking down the corridor, mindlessly running his
thumb along the molding. There sure was a lot of dust, he decided, looking
at his thumb.
	He felt bored. He felt... trapped. He felt...
	No. He didn't feel like singing.
	RosterwReam moved on, silent in the dusty night.

	There was a door. Not just any door, but A door. A special door.
A magical, wonderful, one-way, beautiful cosmic door of wonder and power.
Not to get too much of the wrong idea about it:  it wasn't hardly a
dangerous, monstrous, dungeon-dwelling, iron-bound-brass portal. It didn't
glower down on innocent people, and it didn't rampage across whole solar
systems, leaving flaming wreckage behind it.
	It was just a really neat door. Almost too cute. If Mr. Rogers'
Trolley could be made into a door, just as it's tooting, without losing any
of its metaphysical cuteness, you'd have a pretty good start about what
the door could look like.
	And what it led to! Oh, the possibilities! All you could imagine,
if your brain was soaked in thorazine and your eyes trained to a blacklight
kalidoscope, would be nothing compared to what was beyond that door.
	Not that it mattered, because it was locked, anyway.

	RosterwReam walked on, in the still, hot night. A tune started
bubbling in his mind.
	"Da daaa da..." he hummed.
	"...is such a frightful bore..."

	Something moved. A piece of time woke up, decided it wasn't being
spent, and moved someplace else. This would be fine, except that the time
currently happening at that place wasn't too thrilled with having to squeeze
in yet more time. A clock whirred faster, hurling a few mice off its hands
into the kitchen.

	"...cause all we do is eat and eat
	 and then we eat some more!"

	RosterwReam suddenly stopped. A thought, caroming happily across
the cosmos, found to its horror RosterwReam's head looming right before it.
	RosterwReam blinked.
	RosterwReam shuddered.
	RosterwReam stopped, and reversed himself. He pounded around the
corner, swinging on a spare bannister, and ended up, breathless, before the
door.
	Locked, for so long. Locked, and no one knew why. Locked, and the
finest minds of the LNH had been unable to figure out a way to open it.
Locked, for all intents and purposes, forever.
	RosterwReam reached up above the jamb, and took down the spare key.
He inserted it into the door, and turned.
	Click.
	"Hey, is that..."
	Slam.

	It is a magical, wondrous door. It is a portal between what should
be, and what almost would. It is a figment of its own imagination, a
pressure point on the almost-was. It's also painted green.
	The DRH above the doorknob grew red and pale.

-- 
David R. Henry - Rogue Fan Club - "I have a pullchain in my head." -- RIII
My mind is a jackal.--Richard Darwin // What was the question? --Kate Bush
"All you of Earth are IDIOTS!"-P9fOS // Thanks... for the memories.--Rogue
dhenry@plains.nodak.edu * ud137927@ndsuvm1.bitnet * ud137927@vm1.nodak.edu