He habitually took his afternoon break down at the little café on the street level, where he could decompress and watch the microcosm of the city block pass by to a thousand destinations. After fifteen or twenty minutes, he would return to the drudgery upstairs that kept him solvent; and so forth again down the week and the weeks.

He probably would never even have seen the door if not for the fact that, one afternoon, somebody walked through it into the building opposite where he sat.

He was astounded that he had never seen it before, but then realized why. It looked to be some kind of service entrance: no doorjamb, just a flush panel in the wall, with only its simple outline and an extremely unobtrusive handle. Set as it was between two ornate entryways into two respective apartment complexes, he discovered, after a brief moment of thought, that he wasn't surprised at all that he had never noticed it, despite all of the time he had sat out here looking practically directly at it.

He watched the stream of foot traffic walking determinedly past the door with nary a glance in its direction - it seemed he wasn't alone in his inattentive oversight.

But one person at least knew of it: he'd only gotten a brief glimpse of the figure as it had disappeared into the interior of the building, so he was unsure of exactly who that person was. He began to speculate and invent as his break wore on, and so involved was his daydream that he was almost late in returning to his job.

It was a couple of days before he caught another person using the door.

An elderly woman, this time. He was looking straight at the door when the aged, but almost frighteningly erect and unbowed figure veered directly for the entrance, opened it, and then disappeared in one fluid motion. The action was almost startling in its suddenness, in its seeming ferocity of intent.

He glanced at the other people on the street. Nobody else seemed to have taken any notice.

He spent the rest of his break staring at the door and feeling strangely chill.

Next Monday, a short, hairy man used the door. Wednesday he espied a very thin, waifish teenage girl go through it. Thursday was disturbing: a heavy-set man in glasses turned and looked right at him before turning the door handle and stepping into the darkness beyond the threshold. At that, he stood and started across the street and tried the handle himself. It wouldn't turn in his hands. Thus he retreated to his table at the café.

And so it went. He began to obsess over it, taking his lunches and even his weekends loitering across the street from the door, watching the multitudes who strolled blithely, ignorantly past it, and occasionally catching one of the somewhat sinister minority slip inside.

He tried the door again himself on several occasions, always being met with an unturnung handle - - which made him wonder, as there was no keyhole in the door. How did the door know whom to let in?

And then, one day, something came out of the door instead.

It was on a Sunday, and he was sitting on the curb, since the café wasn't open on weekends. He looked up from tying an errant loose shoelace when he saw the door swing open of its own accord, and a mass of something came out.

The mass was roughly spherical, and it hovered off the ground, allowing loose bits of itself (which may have been tendrils or tufts of hair - - hard to tell in the light) to dangle beneath its bulk. It sagged a little as it slowly inched its way from the interior, as if testing the temperature of a newly drawn bath.

And then, keeping close to the shade of the building, it worked its way down the block and around the corner - - but only after closing the door behind it.

Starting that Monday, he began to take his breaks and lunches in the fifth floor employee's cafeteria.
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