The Green Door

An unknown Traveler knocks at the Green Door, carrying a journal which spells out how the world ends. But how to stop it? That information will cost you.

Welcome to the world of “Montauk.” This serial novella explores this ruined world from a collection of different perspectives ranging from astronauts, to late night comedians — all pieced together by a mysterious radio D.J. on a mission to uncover what really happened to the world.

Emma Price was eating lunch in her overcrowded office when the lock-down alarm sounded. She leapt from her seat, knocking her half-finished ginger ale across the desk in the process. She muttered a curse, shifted a stack of files out of the sticky liquid’s path, and scampered across the linoleum to her floor-to-ceiling window.

Pulsing red caution lights bathed the chamber in an ominous glow. A faded green door stood at the far end of the football field length room, set in a natural-looking rock face. A few paces beside it, there was a man draped in tattered clothes. A worn leather satchel rested against his hip. Emma squinted. She couldn’t tell whether the thing covering his face was a gas mask, or some kind of respirator.

But the position of his arms was unmistakable: an overhead X — the universal symbol of the Travelers for, “Contaminated, stay back.”

At least a dozen people dressed in yellow head-to-toe hazmat suits flooded into the room. They sprayed the man down with blue-tinted liquids. The man covered his face. A member of the decontamination crew pulled his arm back, dousing his nose, eyes, and mouth with the mystery chemical. Even over the wailing sirens, Emma heard him hollering.

When they began stripping off his clothes, Emma turned away and shut the blinds.

***

Emma sat on the sterile side of the interview room, facing the stranger through a thick pane of glass. His skin was pink and raw from the chemical shower, his sunken eyes, red and irritated. Despite it all, he was beaming with a euphoric, ear-to-ear smile. The expression seemed infectious; Emma felt the corners of her mouth curling as well.

She forced them down. “We know every single Traveler that has, or ever will walk through the Green Door. You’re not one of them. Who are you? And how did you get here?”

“Dan sent me. He said it was very important I didn’t say how I got here.” The stranger said.

“Who are you?” Emma repeated the question.

“Jacob.”

“I mean your full name.”

“Dan told me if you figure out who I am, you’ll probably shoot me.” He gestured to a poster tacked up on the wall that read: Kill paradoxes on sight.

Emma furrowed her brow and made a mental note to chew out her colleague the next time she saw him. “Why didn’t Dan come himself? Did something happen?”