The Fallen Door Part 1: Impact

The meteor landed in the town soccer field at 3:42 in the afternoon, during a game no one would later remember winning.

There was no explosion. Just a dull, final sound, like the earth setting something down after carrying it for too long. The ground shivered and then stilled, as if embarrassed by the reaction.

When the dust cleared, the object in the crater was not a rock.

It was a door.

It stood upright, unburned, unconcerned with physics. Tall and dark and smooth enough to look manufactured but not enough to feel friendly. The surface reflected nothing. Not the sky. Not the crowd. Not even the sun that kept trying.

At its center was a keyhole.

People did what people always do when faced with the impossible. Someone laughed, too fast and too loud. Someone recorded it, already thinking of captions. Someone tried to push it over and failed. Another person knocked, because even in the presence of cosmic nonsense, manners persist.

By evening, the field was wrapped in police tape and theories. Scientists arrived with equipment that beeped and said nothing useful. The mayor gave a speech padded with careful words that meant wait and please and not my fault.

I watched from the edge of the crowd, hands in my pockets, staring at the keyhole. It had the unsettling presence of something that knew it was being observed and found the attention boring.

They tried to open it. Tools bent. Heat failed. Force made a spectacle of itself. The door remained unchanged, patient in the way only objects can be when time means nothing to them.

After dark, when the field emptied and the air cooled, the door made a sound.

Not a knock. Not a creak.

A sigh.

Low and tired. The sound a person makes when they finally sit down after pretending all day that everything is fine.

That was when I felt the key.

It was already in my pocket, warm against my fingers, heavy with intention. I had no memory of owning it. No memory of finding it. Yet I knew with the quiet certainty reserved for things you do not argue with that it belonged to the door.

And worse, somehow, that the door was waiting for me.