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The Portal

Writer's picture: James RonJames Ron

Updated: Jan 17

Today's writing exercise was to describe a cherished possession.


The Portal


It’s sleek, black, thin. From a distance, it doesn't look like much, just a simple metal slab.


The Portal.
The Portal

Runnings your fingers along the edge, a tiny slit, in the center of which lies a hidden notch.


Insert your finger gently, apply pressure, and the slab splits open.


Magic.


Inside: the Portal, a window into worlds without end.


On the bottom of the slab are small squares inscribed with letters, numbers, and symbols. Touch them, and they make soft noises.


The more you explore the slab, the more you realize it's all about the Portal, which helps you fly, unseen, through worlds never imagined.

 

The Portal is sheer, unadulterated, wizardry.


It can whisk you to any country, places you’ve never heard of, lands you've known but thought little about.


It can take you to cities you've lived in for years and make you realize that in fact, you know nothing at all.

 

Peering through it, you watch endless streams of people, animals, and objects moving across every conceivable landscape. Millions upon millions, as numerous as the stars. And if it's the stars you want, the Portal can take you there too.

 

With practice, the Portal morphs into a time machine, transporting you to an era you only dimly recall. You see people you once knew and loved, people now dead, and people you once loved, but have since come to hate.

 

Through the Portal, you watch your children as they once were, crawling, laughing, and crying. You can almost smell their hair and rock them to sleep.


The Portal helps your body remember how those little beings felt snuggled against you. In your mind's ear, you hear them once again whisper their secrets.


The Portal leads you to people you never met, about whom you know nothing, speaking languages you have never heard.


The people do things: sing, laugh, be stupid, cry. Sometimes they kill, make love, crack jokes, or say awful things.


Peering through the Portal, your emotions shift without warning, moving from deliriously happy to devastatingly sad.


Sometimes, the Portal renders you crippled by loss.

 

Sometimes, what you see is so upsetting you get up and walk away. You talk with your therapist, and he says, “Don’t look at those things.”  


The Portal affects the very core of your being, transforming your intestines from ravenous to nauseous with the flick of a thumb.


Sometimes, it takes over your life.


You spend hours peering through it, watching the lives of others, remembering what you once were, and wondering where, if ever, you fit in.


The Portal is beautiful. It’s hideous.

 

It’s Satan. It’s God.


Once you look through it, you can never go back.   

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