It's Still Life

A Way In

The door had always been red — not bright, not cherry, but the dull rust of dried blood and arm-folded resolve.

Brigid pressed her palm against it, feeling the wood grain beneath the scabs of paint, crusty layers that reminded her of scraped knees, sun-hot pavement, blood blooming through grit … and she sanded the door the way she’d once peeled a plaster from a wound: slow, deliberate, unforgiving.

When the wood was bare and breathless, she mixed French grey salt and rainwater in the hollow of her palm and drew a sigil into the grain — nothing dramatic, just a curl of lines that shimmered in the light before fading, as if the door had drunk it in and folded it somewhere deep inside.

The crow sat on the wrought iron railing, studying Brigid’s every movement, deciphering wind from whisper, memorising the sigil and admiring the way Jack Black paint swallowed sunlight … “Wormhole,” he croaked.

The final coat went on like ink across parchment, and when it dried to a black mirror, she lifted the brush again and, in the dead centre of the door, traced a spiral: inward, clockwise, pulling all things into the space with purpose.

It was a way in, if you belonged; or a ward, if you didn’t; a signature only the door would understand.

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “fold”.  Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.