“Have you ever seen any of these doors?”

“Well, not exactly, but I know they’re out there.”

“How do you know they exist if you’ve never seen one?”

“How do you know that wasps have the capability to sting if you’ve never been stung by one yourself?”

Shaking her head, she huffs as a sparrow lands on the end of the branch we’re stood upon. Nonplussed at the sight of us, it pecks at some wiggly creature before swallowing it whole. It makes me feel bad, but such is life.

“You can’t answer a question with another question,” she says, “that’s not how it works.”

“It’s true though,” I reply, “just because you’ve never seen something, or experienced it first-hand, doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

“That’s all very well when it comes to being stung by wasps, but not when it comes to these so-called magical doors of yours.”

“There’s nothing so-called about them. I’ve felt them my entire life. It’s like how you get déjà vu, or when you know you’re being watched but can’t figure out by whom. They’re all around us, just waiting for us to step through.”

“Uh-huh,” she mumbles.

“Sometimes, I can hear them.”

“What do they sound like?”

“Like windchimes,” I say.

Scratching her messy head of hair, she spits out a gobful of phlegm that’s carried away by a gust of wind.

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon UK

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon US