He could see the stars from where he stood; nothing but stars. A pale red planet with dazzling porcelain rings drifted past the doorway, as if it were close enough for him to reach over and touch. Dustin stepped closer to the threshold, completely awed by the overwhelming splendor of the infinite chasm that stood before him. A deeply sapphire world had also floated past at such a distance that it looked like it might have been a marble. Further, still, he noticed specks of what looked like dust, traveling in a stream and knew that it had to be an asteroid belt. He leaned his head in for a closer look and had actually gotten inside the room.
Blinding tangerine light had briefly disoriented him and he realized that the door was located in the side of a sun. The sun’s gasses burned all around the opening, but the intensity of its light was ever present, the sun’s heat was nowhere to be found. The wonder reflected in Dustin’s eyes as brilliantly as the sun’s fire as he gaped at its vast surfaces. Without even thinking, he reached over and touched the surface. It felt like a marshmallow, just having been briefly nuked in a microwave; it was hot, but not scolding, and it was soft and pillowy to the touch. As he ran his hand over it, warm bliss had sprung up inside of him, along with an insatiable urge to go out there and lie on it; it must have been extremely comfortable.
Before he could act on his impulse, however, Dustin had noticed something out of the corner of his eye, to captivate his attention. In a corner of the velvety blackness of space, he had noticed a spot; a pinprick, darker than the space around it. He might not have given it a second glance, except that everything else had abruptly begun to drift toward it and the closer things got, the larger that whole seemed go grow. Soon, it had grown from a pinprick to a dime, and then a nickel; a quarter; a Frisbee; a pizza pan… it just kept growing and growing, while everything around it seemed to be shrinking and disappearing.
The moment Dustin realized that he was staring at the swirling vortex of a growing black whole was the moment that he had been ripped off of his feet and sucked through the door. He had only just managed to reach the door handle and cling to it for dear life, before he too, could be yanked painfully down the cosmic drain. As he tried to claw his way along the door, he heard it buckle and groan under the stress of gravity’s unbearable pull. He knew that he had less than seconds to make it of the door, or else he would be irreparably thinner, so he gave it his all and threw himself out onto the stairwell. Again, the door was slammed shut.
“Hooo-oo-oly shit,” he shuddered, lying on the cold stone.
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