But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life,
and only a few find it”
Matthew 7:13-14
First, there was darkness. Then came the house.
Grey – like the sky. With windows open to every wind. No frames, no shutters, no glass. Not a single apartment was sealed. That pale, dim light always streamed into every corner, flooded the walls and the tiniest cracks. As if trying to penetrate the very essence of space.
Strangely, there were no doors. None at all.
At first, I couldn’t believe this creation of a fevered mind. I hesitated, mulled it over. Searched for absurd explanations. Invented theories. For a long time, I didn’t leave the room – it looked like a matchbox. A solitary cell, not my former apartment.
“Where has everything gone?” I kept asking myself.
Now, all I had was a bed, a table, and a single chair. A gaping hole instead of a window – and no doors. Corridors where the wind wandered. Neighboring rooms with their solitary occupants. And a daily ache in my chest that came like a regular visitor.
“Greying,” my neighbor would mutter, like a mantra, every single day.
A man in his sixties, with a silver mane and a short beard of the same shade. Deep-set bluish eyes. A slanted scar running along his right temple. I don’t recall his name.
“Still greying, but no sunset. No darkness, no peace,” he spat. “Damn prison.”
“More like a resort,” my neighbor from the other room said playfully, passing by.
A tousle of wheat-colored hair crowned her childlike face. Two coffee-cup eyes divided by a pert little nose. Her lips – a thin red line, like it had been drawn with a dried-up marker. And always, like a snake, a grey scarf coiled around her neck – worn by time, chewed by moths. As if hiding something.
“Few people, no noise, no daily struggles,” she continued, lighting a cigarette. “Peace. Want one?” she asked me.
“No, thanks,” I shook my head. “Our neighbor seems to think otherwise.” I made a poor conversation partner.
“Hm.” A ring of smoke, like a saint’s halo, brushed against my eyelids.
“Have you ever been married? Raised children?” she asked. “Three little hellions and a drunk husband on top? Your whole life: laundry, cooking, cleaning, washing – on repeat. People feel sorry for Sisyphus, but never for women. You get it?”
The coils of smoke, caught by the wind, drifted through the room.
“But now it’s all gone. I’m finally free. And I’m going to finish”
“Finish what?” I shifted my gaze from the grey sky to her. “What exactly? Answer me!”
“You don’t know? Haven’t figured it out yet?” she smiled faintly, heading toward the exit. “The same thing as you.”
“Fool!” my silver-haired neighbor snapped from behind. “He hasn’t even started. Right?”
“What do you mean? Started what?” I shouted, my head spinning from this absurdity. From this cursed place.
“The same thing we all do,” the old man added and left too.
Once again, I was left alone beside the opening that resembled a window.
I stared at the sky for a long time – the sky that never darkened to the color of a raven’s wing, never streaked black across the unchanging grey canvas, never flared with the bright glow of a new morning.
Grey – that damned constancy.
Time was hard to track here.
You couldn’t count the seconds, minutes, or hours.
Or months.
And so, I can’t recall how many times the hands of the clock might have ticked before I heard:
“I’ve finished!”, the old man’s cry jolted me from my thoughts. It was the first time his voice had broken the calm.
I jumped up from the chair and rushed into the neighboring room.
The old man was clutching his head with one hand and, with the other, like a child, scattering greyish sheets of paper around the room.
They spun and fell like autumn leaves. And for a moment, I thought the pages were turning yellow.
“Finished! Finished!”, he whirled around like a child.
He cried out again, and I saw blood seeping between his fingers. It dripped onto the grey floor like the first raindrops before a storm. Onto the yellowing pages. The slanted scar on his right temple now looked like a torn wound – fresh, as if he had just received it.
“Goodbye,” he said, smiling – and vanished before my eyes, like a ghost at dawn. The scattered pages, like salamanders, caught fire. Small tongues of flame licked at the room. A greyish smoke, like morning fog, rose and pressed against my throat.
And then I nearly went mad from what I saw. The world slipped from under my feet – and spun before my eyes…
And once again, everything turned grey.
When I awoke, my head was still throbbing, and the pain in my chest had grown sharper. A rasping in my throat reminded me of itself – relentlessly, methodically.
And I remembered everything:
The cry.
The old man.
The blood.
The scattered pages devoured by fire.
I sprang up and ran to his room.
Thoughts tangled in my head:
Where is everyone?
Was the fire extinguished?
Who pulled me from the burning room?
But the room was empty. Spotless. Permeated with grey. No trace of anything — as if it had been prepared for the next guest.
“He finished,” I heard a familiar female voice behind me.
I turned sharply.
She stood in the doorway – or rather, in a plain rectangular opening, like the flap of a tent swaying in the wind. In her hands, she held a rolled-up sheet of paper, tightly bound with the same worn scarf. Her gaze was focused, yet distant – as if she were looking right through me.
“What do you mean, ‘finished’?” I asked, feeling a chill creeping through my limbs. “You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?”
“All I know is that we’re all here to finish something,” she replied, stepping closer. Her shadow stretched longer than the grey light should have allowed. “Everyone gets a chance. Some spend years figuring out what they lack. Others, like your neighbor, finish quickly.”
“Finish what exactly?” I nearly shouted, my patience fraying.
She placed the bundle in front of me like a gift, then stepped back and said, “To finish their stories. But not everyone knows how to begin writing them.”
“And me? What does this mean for me?” My fingers trembled slightly as I reached for the page.
“That’s your first line,” she said with a mysterious smile. “Think: What are you most afraid of? What did you leave unfinished in your life?”
I carefully unrolled the paper. It held just one line, written in a trembling hand:
Find the door that was always before you.
“What does that mean?” I murmured.
She paused in the doorway, and for the first time, I noticed something I hadn’t before. Beneath the scarf that had always hidden her neck, there was a scar – a round, deep mark carved into the skin. Its color was strange – somewhere between pale grey and reddish, like a wound that had healed but never forgotten.
“I’m free now too,” she whispered.
And then her figure dissolved into the grey corridor, leaving me with a single line – and countless questions.
Once again, my chest ached – like the memory of something once lived.
„The Grey House” was originally published in the online magazine „Chytay”.
