From Heaven's Door

Chapter 3

II

Another creak sounded around me. The entire room before me was covered in black, and I immediately felt insecure and nervous. I took a step forth and tried to call out, but only coughed out silence. Remembering in irritation I couldn't talk, I took out the HF (Have Fun) hairbrush as some sort of impromptu weapon and took a few steps forwards. The floor was cold under me and I gave another quiet auditory signal.

Something shuffled in the dark and I immediately backed up against the wall, HF hairbrush pointed towards the source of the sound and my heart throbbing. A soft groan came out from the sound as the shuffling continued, and I gulped. Finally, a voice came out from the darkness, evidently as taken aback as I was.

"W-Who's there!?" they said. I tried to talk again. No success.

The dark figure got up and groped around the darkness for something, finally taking hold of a string dangling from the ceiling and yanking down. Immediately, more fluorescent light flooded into the room and I briefly covered my eyes as the vague hum of the bulb resumed. I looked forth at the mystery figure.

They were pretty damn short, only about four-ten. The first thing I noticed about them was their albinism. They had pale skin, chin-level white hair, red eyes, an unhealthy-looking complexion, everything. They looked malnourished and frighteningly gaunt, their red eyes wide and terrified. At least they were clothed nicer than me; they had a sort of greenish-bluish, polka-dotted shirt, some blue shorts, a navy-blue sweater with droopy sleeves and white, bright blue-striped shorts, checkered purple thigh-high socks and loafers identical to mine. Around their neck was a sort of gold necklace, marked with a cross. Maybe they were religious?

They stood against the corner, hands up and scared. As I continued to stare at them, I saw their muscles relax a little and their expression soften, and as I paid attention to myself I realized I must have looked the exact goddamned same to them as they did to me. Except with a hairbrush out, for some inexplicable reason.

"U-Uh... Are you one of them?" they asked, in a raspy, androgynous but fairly young-sounding voice.

I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head. "Them?" There were others? I frantically shook my head, and they seemed to relax a little.

"Good..." they sighed. "I'm, uh, sorry if I frightened you or anything. The past three days have been kind of weird. I really haven't seen anyone except the guys who keep coming in here to give me rations." My look of confusion must've betrayed me. "You don't know much yourself, do you? What's your name?" they asked.

I looked up and shrugged. They frowned. "Uh, it's okay to talk," they said. I shook my head, tapped my throat, and sort of coughed again to indicate nothing was coming out. Catching the hint, they seemed to sigh. "Oh. Sorry," they said, in a mopey-sounding voice. "I can't really remember my name – or much else – but I heard one of those weird guys call me "Mint" once, so... I'm guess I'm Mint. Nice to see there's someone aside from me cooped up in this place!"

They sounded surprisingly cheerful given the circumstance, and I gave a quiet, nervous smile in response. I looked around the room. It was a fair bit neater than mine; no hole in the ceiling, no random trash around the ground, no torn-up old mattress, no faded spots in the walls. It was a bland room with nothing much in it, nonetheless; there was a two cushion sofa by the back wall, and a toy staff almost as tall as Mint themselves with a plastic diamond on the end of it. There were a few dirty plates by the sofa and a box television at the end of the room. The television's screen was smashed in and there wasn't any remote, so it didn't serve much purpose. One likely would've gotten more entertainment out of the f*****g Froot Loops boxes. Or the song.

That's the way-

I am actually going to kill you if you keep doing that.

Mint looked at the end of the hallway, evidently noticing the door was ajar. "You, uh... unlocked the door," they said, quietly. I nodded, as if it were no big deal. Mint continued. "It's normally locked, y'know. Only they come in and out, and only, like, once or twice a day."

I mouthed "they?" in confusion. Mint shrugged. "I dunno. They're these weird... people, I think. They wear these strange masks and dress all formal and stuff. They occasionally come in to refill my food with this icky slop and occasionally they mumble between themselves... I haven't caught much, but they've never directly interacted with me. I, like, tried talking to them, but they've never so much as looked at me." They looked at me in deeper consideration. "How, uh, how did you escape?..."

I put away the HF hairbrush and took out the key, displaying it almost proudly. Mint came closer and looked at it, almost entranced.

"Wow... They left you a key? You must be a special guest or something!" They tilted their head. "What's, uh, the rest of this place like?"

I smirked and started to pace out to the hallway, beckoning them. They played with their sweater for a bit and took the toy staff in hand, looking rather nervous. "Uh... You sure that's a good idea? What if they come back?"

I gave them a pfft and took them by the hand, moving them along and closing the door. What other goddamned choice did we have? I was just glad to actually have someone else by my side. I'd wager exploring Paradise on my own with only Sam as my companion would've been completely f*****g unbearable. Some cute, shaky little albino was all the company I could ask for. Coming out into the main hall, I closed the door behind me and Mint and signaled them to look around. The toy staff in their hand, Mint looked around in wonderment.

"Wow... There's so many rooms! What're they all like?" they asked, apparently expecting me to have already checked all of them.

I half-shrugged and pointed to my own room, signaling in the best way I could I'd just come out of my own room. Mint seemed to pick up the message. "So you just got out, huh? Then you must not have seemed them yet... Well, I wanna look around!"

I nodded in agreement with another grin on my face. Mint looked around for all of a half-second before settling on the stairs. They let out a soft "ooh" before starting off towards them like a fly to a light. I started to follow them, then considered things.

I had help, now. I could look around, and I'd have someone to look around with. We could depend on each other, despite the fact neither of us had any idea what the f**k was going on. Then I thought about what Mint said about "them." Weird masks? Suits? Mumbling to themselves and keeping us in shitty rooms for no goddamned reason? The visualization of people like that instantly made me want to just go back in my room and hide. Then my reasoning skills kicked into gear. I realized that if those people saw us out of our little cages, they likely would not be happy. A plethora of unpleasant scenarios flooded through my head as I imagined what the hell they'd do in response to an escape. Kill us. Torture us. Hook me up to a machine where I'd be forced to listen to disco music for the rest of my life. That would be too horrible to bear.

Then something hit me. If I was locked up, why was I given a key?

I shook my head and ran towards Mint, taking them by the back of their collar. They stopped and looked at me in confusion.

"Huh? Something wrong?" they asked.

I pointed at the stairs, shook my head, and waved my working arm around to the rest of the hall. Mint quickly picked up the hint.

"Oh, you want us to explore the other rooms, first? Sure! Where do you wanna go first?" they said enthusiastically.

I looked back, put my hand to my chin, then shrug and pushed open the door closest to me, which happened to be about the third-to-last from the stairs on the right wall. Once again, it wasn't locked, and there was yet another hallway leading to another identical door. I looked back at Mint and gave an encouraging smile, and stepped into the hallway, to the door. Predictably, the door was locked, but the key quickly fixed that dilemma. I twisted the knob and gave the door an easy push.

The light was already on, thank God. The room itself was identical to the other two; in fairly sorry condition, the floor covered in dust and the walls faded and untouched for years. There wasn't anything in this room at first glance aside from a single cardboard box marked with a red arrow lying on its side like a slumped-over corpse. I stepped in, and Mint followed suit, apparently entranced by the complete lack of anything in the room. They obviously weren't that hard to impress.

"Wow," they began. "Wonder if any of the other rooms are this shoddy? Do you think any are in better condition?"

I sort of half-shrugged the question off, not really caring, walking into the center of the room. Unless the cardboard box held some relevance, I was considering leaving the room for all of a second before something caught my eye at the end of the room. Walking over to inspect it, it became clear there was another small keyhole, just right there in the middle of the wall. It wasn't a hidden door; I pushed and dusted off the area around the keyhole and it was most certainly solid as a rock. The keyhole didn't appear like those on the doors, when I thought about it, and trying it with the key yielded nothing. Mint strode over, their attention briefly captured by the box, and they leaned over to try and get a better look at the keyhole.

"Huh. This a door or something?" they asked. Once again, I just shook my head and knelt down, trying to peer into the keyhole.

There was most definitely something on the other side outside of just the inner workings of the wall. It was a separate room just a few feet away from the room we were already in, bathed in a yellow light. I could barely make any of it out, but there was something indistinct in the other room. God knew what it was. I tapped the wall and let out a muffled grunt to try and draw the attention of anyone that might've been in there. No luck.

For all of three seconds. When I quieted down and put one eye to the keyhole, Mint gazing over my shoulder anxiously, straining to see what was on the other side, there was a sudden rustling and another bulging eye opened to stare at me from the keyhole.

I jumped back. I wasn't f*****g expecting that. My heart jumped a few beats and Mint let out a small yelp, either from seeing the eye themselves or from my sudden reaction. Before I could make even the briefest effort to calm down and try and communicate with the whatever on the other side, I startled again when a furious banging began from the other room. Mint screamed, this time, and I lost my breath for a few seconds and felt a cold chill rush down my spine with each new bash. Whatever was on the other side was trying hard to try and smash through the wall – or was really, really pissed. I silently decided I didn't want to acquaint with the eye. I took a final peer into the keyhole.

The room on the other side, from what little I could see of it past the bulging eye on the other side, was beginning to morph. It was starting to flash and twist, and I could feel something trying to form within the room. It strained my eyes to continue looking at it. I almost felt mad trying to stare into that room.

Not a few seconds passed before Mint grabbed my non-working arm and hurriedly tugged me out of the room. Everything was chaos for a few seconds, the banging slowly getting fainter, and before I could register anything, I was out in the hallway again with the door slammed shut and Mint, out-of-breath, pressed against the door. My heart was racing. Maybe the eye just wanted to give us a good scare. Or maybe they were trapped here, like me and Mint – and they wanted out. I looked at Mint, my face obviously concerned. They were struggling for breath before they managed to gasp out a few words.

"That didn't just happen..." they stammered. "Let's... Let's not do that again."

I quietly nodded in agreement. As my heart-rate took its sweet ass time returning to normal, I realized it'd probably be best if we just went along without checking any other rooms. If we found another prisoner, chances were they might not have been as stable as Mint was. It was a gamble I really wasn't willing to make. The banging was still apparent on the other room, and I held up the key. Why the hell did I even wake up with this? Why did I have it? Questions, questions. Hopefully they'd be answered. Hopefully. My gaze went briefly to the stairs, I wondered a bit about what the rest of Paradise would be like, and then I looked back at Mint, hoping to see an eager face ready to explore the rest of this shitty place.

Mint was standing stock-still in fright, their trembling gaze locked on something behind us both at the opposite end of the hallway. I looked back.

There they were. Two of the Suits, as we'd come to call them, at the end of the hallway. They wore these obnoxiously formal-looking tuxedos, comprised of white lining and featureless black fabric that gave the impression of looking into some black, lifeless corner of space. They wore sleek, silver masks that covered every inch of their heads. They were skin-tight and looked to be of the same material as goddamned leather gimp masks, but I saw no impression of anything human underneath. Crudely painted onto each of the masks were these fragmented, multicolored, hideously crude impressions of human faces. They were like something out of Picasso's works, with exaggeratedly-detailed, feminine eyes and a zigzagging, distorted mouth. There was no emotion whatsoever depicted through these fevered drawings – they looked like messily stitched-together pieces of a clown's dismembered face. They carried tweezers and rubber ducks with uncomfortably detailed, bulging eyes – maybe a toy that'd comfort a schizophrenic, but something surreal and uncanny to anyone with a functioning grasp on reality.

The first two Suits we ever saw had just materialized from absolutely f*****g nowhere at the very end of the hallway, looking right at us. They just kept fiddling with the tweezers and squeezing the ducks, idling around with erratic, unnatural movements better suited to a pantomime performance. The banging continued, maddeningly, and me and Mint froze up in terror the instant we saw them, but the Suits didn't seem to notice us for a while. I looked at them twitch and idle for what seemed a full five minutes before Mint quietly nudged me and whispered to me in a hushed, horrified voice.

"That's... That's them. Those are the guys who kept me locked up..." they uttered. I gazed at Mint, briefly peering away from the Suits with an "are you kidding me" expression plastered onto my face.

Mint took in a deep breath. "We need to run. We need to go. Now. Now." They didn't raise their voice, but I could tell from their tone they meant every word they said. I could feel the terror and urgency in their words and I silently prepped myself to bolt to the stairs.

The Suits finally stopped idling and glared right at us. I couldn't bring myself to look into those badly-drawn eyes. There was just something so utterly off about the masks that it rattled me to my core. One took an exaggerated step forwards, and that was all the incentive me and Mint needed to turn and run as fast as our legs could carry us. Not once did we turn back to see if they were following us; the feeling that they were was enough to prompt us to keep going regardless. We took to the stairs and dashed straight up with no hesitation.

The room above seemed to continue the tradition of Paradise's hotel theme. From the split-second we saw before me and Mint vaulted over the main counter and hid for our very lives, it seemed like a normal hotel lobby. Not terribly big, but enough to accommodate a decent number of people. Another hall extended at the end wall both directions, and directly behind the counter was another door. The decoration of the interior was the same as the hallway; carpeted floor, plain-looking brown ceiling, lights at the sides and an aesthetic and color scheme overall bland and unremarkable. Of course, the decoration of Paradise was about the least of our concerns and certainly not the thought I wanted to think about out of the hundreds of panicked things I was thinking about in the deluge going through my mind.

Me and Mint just huddled against the counter, not daring to make the slightest peep of noise lest we alert an unwanted guest. After a vacant twenty-two seconds, we heard the two Suits reach the top of the stairs and come into the main lobby. I silently cursed and wished there had been a more opportune hiding spot, but to my relief, the Suits didn't seemed terribly concerned. They weren't running and the footsteps never came close to the front desk. Eventually, they simply just continued off down the hall at the end of the lobby and left us in total silence, all except for our throbbing heartbeats and exasperated breath we were trying to desperately to hold back.

Three minutes of quietude and dread passed us by. I eventually brought myself to open my eyes, which had been tightly closed and were a little teary now, and look beside me at Mint. Somehow, they seemed even paler than they were, and they exchanged the glance in silent fear. They finally brought themselves to talk in a terrified voice.

"Th-They've seen us. Oh, God, I never should've left my room..." they moaned. They seemed to be holding back tears, and I quietly placed my working arm on their shoulder.

What other choice did we have? What the hell would those things do that would be to our benefit? Shove us in a pair of filthy rooms after we lost all memory of whoever the hell we were?

What the f**k were those people? Were they human? Otherwise? What did they want?

I quietly huddled my legs together and just kept quiet for a few more minutes. Mint seemed to do the same, allowing ourselves time to just calm down and piece ourselves together. Finally, with confidence the Suits were, for now, gone, I got up and peered over the desk. Aside from the Suits' faint, dirty footprints in the otherwise spotless carpet, nothing else was there. I tapped Mint, and stood up. The two of us shared another glance, and for a brief second, I wished above anything else to speak so I could actually communicate properly with Mint.

"That was too close..." they said, still obviously nervous. "I don't want to run into those people again."

The two of us looked at each other with awkward, fear-driven smiles on our faces. We agreed on something.

"Let's get out of this place. No matter what," Mint said. "I'm not staying in some shoddy side room while those masked weirdos keep vital answers from us."

I nodded. We both looked back. The closest way out was the door behind the counter, a paler shade of brown than the doors in the first floor's hallway. There was no way in hell we were going down the main hall with the possibility of bumping into the Suits again. It was clear we were going through the back door. As I started to it, Mint cleared their throat and interrupted me.

"Um... I know this might be a weird thing to bring up at this point in time, but I don't really know your name. Or anything about you, aside from the fact you can't talk." I grasped my throat as they gave a light chuckle in response, considering their point as they continued. "Is there, like, anything I could know you by? Just signal something to me and I'll come up with something."

I drew a blank. Key? Hairbrush? Some sort of weird non-verbal signal? After pondering a bit, I reached into my pocket and just pulled out the first thing I grasped. Surprise, surprise, it was Sam, who was as cheery as ever despite the recent events. The simple sight of him seemed to cheer Mint up.

"Aww... You got a friend! They look like a toucan!..." They seemed to mull on that. "Toucan. Toucan..." They seemed to play around with the word for a bit before turning to me with a new word. "Tango! Can I just call you Tango?" they asked.

Tango. I guessed it was no weirder than "Mint." I shrug and nodded my head, prompting Mint to clap and beam. "Tango. I'll call you Tango, then! I hope you can talk soon so we can get to know each other! Or, you know, just, like, find a good way to communicate!"

Tango. I guessed that was my name now. Some part of it pleased me.

Sam in hand and Mint by my side, I walked up to the back door and opened it.