Disappearing Act

“There’s a point in every woman’s life where she looks at a glowing wall and wonders if it’s worth the Chardonnay.”

The trip back to Luke’s house was a bumpy, nerve-wracking ordeal.

Perched high in the driver’s seat of the small truck, I felt like a child pretending to be an adult. Every twitch of the steering wheel, every dip in the road, every gust of wind against the wide metal frame seemed exaggerated, like the vehicle was on the verge of rebellion. I gripped the wheel with both hands—white-knuckled, jaw tight.

The heavy load in the back shifted ominously with each corner and turn, groaning like it had opinions of its own. The truck didn’t glide or roll; it lumbered, complaining every inch of the way.

On several occasions, my heart leapt into my throat—most notably at a roundabout where I took the turn too quickly. The truck wobbled to one side with such a violent lean that I let out a scream. A full, unscripted shriek. Not my proudest moment.

And then there was the cyclist.

I winced at the memory. A near miss—closer than I wanted to admit. My side mirror had come far too close to his helmet, and the look he gave me as he veered out of harm’s way would haunt me for weeks. I swallowed against the rising guilt.

That’s one story I’m definitely not sharing with anyone.

Still, there was an odd sort of relief in the chaos of the drive. The sheer concentration required gave me a break from the mental spiral I’d been nursing all day. For a short time, I couldn’t focus on Luke or Jamie or Paul or Cody. Just the road, and surviving it.

But the moment I turned onto Luke’s street, the weight of everything returned.

Jamie still hadn’t replied to my text.

He should be awake by now.

My grip tightened as I bumped the truck up over the lip of the driveway. The jolt rattled through my seat and spine, snapping me back to reality. I manoeuvred the truck into position with what little finesse I had left, the engine growling as I shifted into park.

I drew a deep breath and held it, trying to steady my nerves. My palms were damp again. I rubbed them down my thighs. It was time. Time for answers. No more games.

I opened the truck door—

"You didn’t reverse in," Luke called out from the front doorstep, his voice light, full of amused judgement.

The remark hit me like a slap.

"Shut it, you!" I snapped back, voice sharp, raw with fatigue.
"Where’s Jamie?" I demanded, fixing him with a glare as I strode toward him. "I want to see him, right now!"

But Luke, infuriatingly unfazed, simply grinned.

"How’d you go? You got everything then?" he asked, as though I’d returned from a trip to the local bakery instead of hauling a truckload of construction materials across the city.

His grin—the utter lack of awareness—fanned the flames of my frustration.

In a surge of irritation, I thumped him on the shoulder with the flat of my hand as I pushed past him.

"It was bloody horrific!" I shouted, my voice echoing through the house like a war cry.

Duke skittered out of the way, his little paws scrabbling on the floor as I stormed into the living room. Poor thing. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I didn’t wait for Luke to respond. Didn’t slow down. My march up the hallway was fast and purposeful, each step fuelled by a blend of exhaustion, suspicion, and righteous anger.

Today had tested me.

And I was done waiting.

"Jamie," I called out as I approached the master bedroom, my footsteps fast and deliberate on the hallway floor. My voice was firm—too firm to be mistaken for anything casual.

"Wake up. I want an explanation, right now."

The words rang out with purpose. A declaration of intent. I was done being strung along, done waiting for answers that never came.

But there was no reply.

"Jamie?" I called again, the edge of urgency slipping into my tone. I stepped into the bedroom.

And stopped.

The air inside felt... wrong. Still. Suspended. Like the room had been caught mid-breath and forgotten how to exhale.

"Jamie? You in here?"

This time, my voice was softer. Confused. Laced with something I hadn’t wanted to feel—fear.

The late afternoon sun slanted through the open curtains, its warm glow casting long shadows across the carpet. The light should have felt comforting, but instead it made the emptiness more stark.

My eyes found the bed first.

King-sized. Bare. No doona, no throw pillows, no familiar rumpled comforter. Just a wide, blank space where intimacy once lived. It looked abandoned.

I scanned the rest of the room. One side of the built-in robes was open—half ajar as though someone had meant to close it, but never got around to it. Inside: a row of empty hangers swinging gently, mocking me with their silence.

The sight hit like a slap.

"What the…?" I whispered, the words barely audible. They slipped out unformed, like the start of a sentence I didn’t know how to finish.

My mind reeled.

Where was Jamie?

Had they split up?

The idea hadn’t occurred to me before now. I’d been too caught up in the absurdity of the shopping list, the credit card, the secrecy. But this—this felt like the kind of quiet that only comes after something is over.

And he hadn’t told me.

Why hadn’t he told me?

A flash of anger bubbled up through the confusion. If Jamie had left Luke… why hadn’t he called me? Why hadn’t he come to stay? We’d been friends for over twenty years. We’d laughed and cried and buried secrets and made midnight confessions over wine. The idea that he would just disappear, would vanish without a word—it stung. Deeply.

My chest ached with it.

Standing in the doorway of what used to be their shared room, I felt the weight of abandonment settle on me. The silence pressed in from every side.

The room—once full of warmth and music and banter—now felt cold. Hollow. And unfamiliar.

Then, behind me, a voice.

"Gladys, I can explain," Luke said softly. His tone was cautious, as though approaching a wild animal he wasn’t sure wouldn’t bite.

I spun around to face him.

"Where the hell is Jamie?" I demanded, every muscle tight, every word sharp with fury.
"And come to think of it, where is Paul?"

The questions flew out of me like shrapnel. I didn’t want to hear excuses. I wanted truth. Clean. Unvarnished. Delivered now.

"Gladys, it’s not…" Luke began.

But I wasn’t done.

"What the fuck have you done, Luke?" I shrieked, my voice ragged. It tore out of me, raw and unfiltered. My hands shot into the air, waving in disbelief, rage, fear—whatever cocktail of emotion was bubbling beneath the surface.

"Please, just calm down. I can explain!" Luke pleaded, his hands flailing in front of my face like he could physically push the words back into my mouth.

"Calm down!" I shouted back at him, voice rising to match his urgency. "Don’t tell me to calm the fuck down."

The sheer absurdity of being told to calm down in this moment was laughable—if I weren’t seconds away from imploding.

"It’s not what you think, Gladys. Trust me."

Trust. That word.

From Luke, it rang hollow.

I yanked my handbag open with force, the zip catching briefly before giving way. My purse clattered out. I grabbed it, fumbling with frustration, then pulled out Paul’s credit card with a snap of the wrist.

"Here. You can have your brother’s credit card back," I spat, pushing it against his chest with far more force than was necessary. "I don’t want any more part of this."

Luke took a half-step back, surprised.

"But you don’t even know what this is," he said, exasperation creeping into his voice.

That was the problem. I didn’t. And the longer I stood there, the more I realised just how much had been hidden from me.

Face-to-face with him now, I felt like I was standing in the centre of a storm. A storm I hadn’t seen coming. One I’d been drawn into without warning, without choice.

Anger. Confusion. Hurt. All of it churned inside me.

His words couldn’t reach me anymore—not while my heart pounded in my ears and my thoughts raced in circles, desperate to find meaning in a situation that made none.

Grabbing my handbag from the floor with a mixture of anger and determination, I pushed past Luke, not bothering to look at him. I needed out of that room—out of the confusion, the silence, the gaping wardrobe and what it might mean.

My strides were sharp and clipped as I stormed back down the hallway, my heels striking the floor in protest. The kitchen. I just needed the kitchen. I needed walls that made sense, appliances that behaved themselves, maybe even the comforting clink of a wine glass—something to anchor me.

But then, without warning, the light above me began to flicker.

Not the gentle, apologetic kind of flicker that hinted at a dying bulb. This was erratic—jagged. As though something unseen was pulsing through the wiring with too much force. The shadows it cast darted across the walls in fractured shapes, dancing around me like something alive.

A chill slithered down my spine, unwelcome and inexplicable. The fine hairs on my arms lifted, as if touched by static.

I froze.

Some part of my brain still tried to be rational—faulty wiring, a loose fitting, the house settling—but instinct said otherwise. It felt… wrong. Like the kind of wrong you didn’t talk yourself out of.

Then Luke’s voice came again, softer this time. Measured. Coaxing.

"Gladys. Come and take a look."

His tone didn’t match mine. It didn’t meet my fury or my suspicion—it floated above them, like a hand reaching through water. Too calm. Too deliberate.

I turned slowly.

He stood at the end of the hallway, not moving, his expression solemn. There was something in his face—an openness, a plea—not for forgiveness, but understanding. He lifted a hand, beckoning me back toward the bedroom.

I didn’t move.

Not right away.

The flickering light stuttered once more above me, and I took a breath. A slow, steadying one that did absolutely nothing to steady me. I felt like a woman in the first act of a thriller, moments before the secret is revealed, moments before everything changes and someone inevitably goes missing.

And yet—I followed.

My feet moved of their own accord, cautiously, each step stretching the hallway longer in front of me. The air thickened with every inch. My breath grew shallow. Questions rose inside me like steam: What did he want to show me? Why now? What happened to Jamie? To Paul?

Am I next?

The thought came unbidden. Cold and cruel. It wrapped itself around me like a snake coiling up my back.

By the time I reached the doorway, my legs felt leaden, my heartbeat ricocheting inside my chest.

Luke stepped inside the room, not hurried, not forceful—just... waiting.

And somehow, that unnerved me more than anything.

I paused at the threshold, unwilling to cross, but unable to walk away. A drink would’ve helped. A sip of wine, even a small one, might’ve offered something—a tether. But I had nothing to hold.

Only fear.

I stepped into the room.

And gasped.

The sound tore out of me before I could swallow it.

My handbag slipped from my hand and hit the floor with a soft, dull thud—the same sound it had made earlier, only this time it didn’t feel like frustration. It felt like surrender.

"What the hell did you… Holy Mary mother!"

The words burst from my mouth in a rush, half-prayer, half-accusation.

My eyes blinked, rapidly, disbelieving.

The wall—it wasn’t a wall anymore.

Beside me, where plaster and paint should have been, was something else entirely. A shimmering mass of movement. Colour. Energy. A vortex of light and motion.

Swirling shades of green, blue, yellow, and purple twisted and collided, spiralling outwards in bursts of vivid colour. Sparks leapt from the centre like fireflies, fizzing into the air and vanishing before they touched anything solid.

It was like standing in front of a living kaleidoscope. Mesmerising. Hypnotic.

Terrifying.

I couldn’t speak. My mouth was open, but no sound came. I was caught between awe and terror, wonder and dread.

And somewhere, far in the back of my mind, a single thought began to form:

What the hell have I stepped into?

Compelled by the sheer beauty and impossibility of it, I raised my hand.

I didn’t even realise I was doing it at first—my fingers extended, trembling slightly, drawn towards the swirling wall of colour as though by gravity. The movement felt dreamlike, involuntary. Every part of me was screaming caution, and yet the hypnotic dance of the colours overruled reason. I needed to touch it. I had to.

"Gladys! Don’t!"

Luke’s voice ripped through the haze like a siren.

Before I could react, his hand struck mine away—forcefully, protectively—and I gasped, stumbling back a step. The contact, his urgency, jolted me from my trance.

"Luke!" I cried out, startled by the suddenness of his intervention, my heart still racing.

But before I could say more, his foot caught—entangled in the strap of my handbag lying on the floor where I'd dropped it. Time seemed to slow.

No—

In one awful, chaotic moment, Luke pitched forward—toward the wall.

And then—

Gone.

The swirling mass absorbed him, handbag and all, without so much as a sound.

He vanished.

"Luke!" My voice cracked into the stillness, ragged with disbelief.

"What the hell have I done? I’ve killed Luke!" The words burst from me, high-pitched and frantic, the shape of panic given form.

I spun around the room, eyes wide, searching for logic where there was none. My brain refused to accept what I'd seen, clawing for another explanation. "Shit. Shit. Shit," I muttered, breathless, barely able to hear myself over the deafening thump of my heart.

This wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be real.

But there was the wall—still humming, still alive, still impossible.

After the third frantic circle of the room, I stopped, my gaze dragged back to the vortex like a magnet to metal.

I stared.

"Luke?" I whispered, voice cracking under the strain. I took a step closer. The swirling colours shifted, responding to my proximity. Or so it seemed. "Are you there?"

There was no answer. Just that pulsing, silent energy.

I inched forward, hesitantly, reaching out again. Despite everything that had just happened, the pull remained.

The closer my hand drew, the more I felt it—a soft, electric buzz up my arm. The kind of vibration you feel when standing near a substation. Not painful, but unnatural. It made the hairs on my neck rise.

"Just one more inch," I murmured, almost to myself. A breathless whisper of encouragement.

I didn’t want to touch it—but I needed to. I needed to know where Luke had gone. Whether he was still alive. Whether I was still sane.

The wall rippled, colours folding in on themselves like living silk.

I was a heartbeat away from contact—

When Luke’s face exploded into view.

"No! Gladys! You mustn't touch it!"

His voice thundered through the room, loud and desperate. His face was distorted slightly by the colours, like looking through thick, swirling glass, but it was undeniably him.

I screamed—loud and shrill, the sound tearing through my throat. My body recoiled instantly, flinging me backward before I even knew I was moving.

I stumbled. My foot caught on the edge of the rug. The world tilted—

—and then I landed, unceremoniously, on the bed with a thud.

"Shit, Luke!" I gasped, one hand clutched at my chest, trying to calm the wild rhythm of my heart. I could barely breathe, the adrenaline flooding every nerve in my body.

Then—slowly, impossibly—Luke stepped back through the wall.

His full body emerged, like someone walking through a waterfall that shimmered and hissed with light.

He was intact.

Whole.

Holding my handbag.

"I’m sorry I scared you," he said, his tone gentle, almost chagrined. He extended the bag toward me with a small gesture, a token of reality in a world that had just stopped making sense.

"But you mustn’t touch it."

I nodded slowly, numbly, my brain still spinning, trying to realign itself.

"Okay," I murmured.

My fingers reached out, shaky but deliberate, and I took the handbag from him. I clutched it tight to my chest, the way a child might hold a soft toy during a thunderstorm. It wasn’t just a handbag anymore—it was something real, something I could grip, something that hadn't defied every known law of physics.

It grounded me.

For now.

Because everything else?

Was unravelling fast.

Luke’s gesture towards the pulsating wall of shifting, iridescent colours was oddly casual, like he was pointing out a new feature in a kitchen renovation.

"That is where Jamie and Paul are," he declared, the words landing with a weight that didn’t match the offhand tone in which he spoke.

I stared at him, blinking slowly, as if my mind had short-circuited and needed a moment to reboot.

I shook my head, a small, helpless motion. I couldn’t begin to process what I was hearing. "I don't understand," I said, the words brittle with disbelief. "Where is… what is that?"

Luke turned to face me fully now, his expression surprisingly calm. "It's a Portal," he said, as if he were telling me the time.

My jaw dropped slightly.

"A what?" I asked, my voice rising with incredulity. I wanted to laugh, to scoff—to do anything but accept what he’d just said.

"A Portal," Luke repeated, slower this time, as though repetition might somehow make it less mad. He pronounced it clearly, deliberately, like a teacher addressing a particularly dense student.

I exhaled, long and heavy, and turned my attention to the wall again. My eyes narrowed, focusing on the swirling kaleidoscope of colour and light. It moved like a living thing—shifting and undulating, always changing, never still.

A portal.

The word alone belonged in science fiction or fantasy novels. It was something one of those blokes from Star Trek might say, not my friend’s boyfriend standing barefoot in a Tasmanian bedroom.

But there it was—vivid and impossible, pulsing on the wall like it had always been there, waiting to be discovered.

I tried to ground myself, to find something familiar to hold on to, but my mind kept slipping.

"But once Jamie and Paul entered, they couldn't get back out," Luke added, his voice lowering slightly.

The words sent a chill straight through me.

I looked at him sharply.

His face was calm, but not detached. There was something underneath—something he was holding back.

I couldn’t make sense of it. None of it. Every sentence he spoke seemed to stack confusion on top of confusion, until the tower in my mind started to sway under the weight of it.

The pounding in my head grew louder, like someone had started playing drums inside my skull. It was the stress, the madness of the moment, the utter impossibility of everything I was seeing and hearing.

And yet… I wasn’t running.

Because despite the madness, there was something real about it. Terrifyingly real. That wall, those colours—they were no trick. No illusion. My own eyes were telling me that much.

I wanted Jamie. I wanted his steady sarcasm, his dry humour, his presence beside me to confirm I wasn’t losing my grip on reality. Instead, I had Luke. And a damn portal.

How could this be happening here? In a bedroom?

Nothing in the world could’ve prepared me for this.

"Your skepticism is fair enough, so was I," Luke said, almost gently, like he was reassuring a frightened child. "Here, let me prove it's real.” He turned toward the swirling wall again.

"Just whatever you do, don't follow me!" he added, with a seriousness that cut through the surreal haze like a blade.

That made me flinch.

The sudden change in his tone—so stark, so absolute—stilled my breath.

"Luke, wait—" I managed, but it was too late.

He stepped forward—and vanished.

No resistance. No flash. Just gone.

Swallowed by colour.

A sharp gasp burst from my lips, loud in the quiet room. I half-expected to see him fall out the other side, maybe into the wardrobe or tumble into a pile of laundry. But there was nothing. No trace of him. Only the same humming, pulsating wall—serene, strange, alive.

The air thickened. I could feel it on my skin, pressing in.

My knees weakened slightly.

This wasn’t a trick. Or if it was, it was a trick that broke every law of physics I’d ever trusted.

And Luke had just walked straight into it.

And now I was alone with it.

Again.

Slowly—almost mechanically—I moved to the edge of the bed, my feet heavy, movements stiff, as though I were moving through molasses. My gaze never left the spot where Luke had disappeared, the air still humming faintly with the strange, residual energy of his departure.

My mind was a hurricane—questions colliding, logic failing, reality unraveling. Everything in me wanted to scream, to demand sense, but all I could do was stare and breathe.

Tentatively, I raised my hand toward the swirling mass of light and colour again. It pulsed and shimmered, vibrant and unyielding, its beauty impossible to look away from.

I was drawn in, against all reason.

But just as my fingertips came close enough to feel the electric warmth radiating from its surface, a sudden jolt of self-preservation surged through me. I pulled back sharply, clutching my hand to my chest as if I'd almost burned it.

"Luke?" I called out, my voice thinner than I expected, trembling at the edges. "Are you down there?"

The words bounced off the bedroom walls, then out into the empty hallway. No reply. Just silence—dense, echoing, and indifferent.

"This has to be a trick," I muttered under my breath, trying—begging—for something logical to cling to. Anything. An elaborate illusion, a hidden room, a prank gone too far.

Fuelled by a shaky determination, I turned away from the bedroom and strode down the hallway. If this was a setup, then he had to be somewhere. I’d find the strings. Pull back the curtain. Prove this wasn't as mad as it seemed.

"Luke?" I called again as I entered the kitchen, my voice now straining between hope and desperation.

Everything was exactly as I'd left it. The bench was clear. My handbag—retrieved, blessedly—sat untouched. The faint smell of toast from that morning still lingered in the air.

No Luke.

No clues.

Nothing.

Then—patter, patter, patter.

A sudden burst of sound from the lounge room below made my heart jolt, a rush of panic washing through me as my body turned instinctively toward it.

Footsteps. Clambering up the stairs.

My breath caught in my throat—just for a second.

Then I heard the lighter rhythm. The tapping of claws. The eager, clumsy tumble of four small paws on floorboards.

"Duke! Henri!" I called, the names spilling out in a rush of recognition and relief.

They bounded up the steps like bullets, little tails wagging at full speed, ears flopping, eyes bright with the kind of uncomplicated joy that only dogs seem able to access. Duke reached me first, leaping up against my legs, his whole body wiggling. Henri followed close behind, a step more graceful but no less excited.

I crouched down, letting them throw themselves into my arms.

"Have you two been outside?" I asked softly, ruffling Duke’s silky ears. He licked my chin with enthusiastic fervour, the damp warmth of it grounding me in a moment of simple affection.

For a fleeting second, the strange, terrifying vortex of colour didn’t exist. There was only Duke’s panting breath and Henri’s tail thumping against my shin.

"You're a good boy," I murmured, a faint smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. The emotion surprised me.

Duke licked my cheek again before I could pull away.

"You cheeky boy," I said, a little laugh escaping, too brief to last but enough to remind me I was still myself—still here.

But as the dogs nestled close, my thoughts turned back to the absence that loomed behind the normality.

Luke.

The portal.

Jamie and Paul.

I gently stroked Duke’s head once more, then glanced toward the hallway.

"Now, where’s your father gone?" I asked aloud.

Neither dog answered.

They just looked at me with wide, trusting eyes—oblivious to how close their world had come to slipping into something utterly unknowable.

The sudden touch of a firm hand on my shoulder made me jolt violently. I let out a sharp gasp, my body twisting instinctively away.

"Gladys," said a voice I knew immediately—despite the shock rattling through my system.

Luke.

The relief came like a rush of cold air. But it was short-lived.

My thighs, already aching from crouching, buckled without warning, and I lost my balance entirely. My shoes slipped across the kitchen tiles, the slick surface offering no traction. I flailed, reaching for anything to stop the fall.

The only thing within reach—unfortunately—was Luke.

"Luke!" I cried out, half surprise, half frantic relief, even as my legs slid out beneath me.

He lunged to steady me, reaching for my arm. But the shift in my weight was too sudden. He leaned forward to catch me and, inevitably, we both went down.

My fingers caught the inside of his thigh—accidentally, entirely accidentally—and I grimaced just as my bum met the cold, unforgiving floor with a flat, painful smack.

"Ouch!" I winced, the impact reverberating through my hips and tailbone. I blinked up at Luke, a grimace carved across my face, the embarrassment only fuelling my irritation.

"Don’t touch me!" I snapped, the words sharper than I intended, driven more by pain and confusion than anger. He was trying to help—I knew that—but my body and mind were not in sync. Everything felt off.

Luke let go instantly, and I fell the short distance back to the tiles again with a thud.

"Sorry," he murmured, genuinely chastened.

Before I could react further, Duke launched himself onto my lap, tail wagging, tongue ready, clearly sensing distress and determined to apply his particular brand of comfort. But I was in no mood for dog therapy.

I gently pushed him off. "Not now, Duke," I muttered, clambering back to my feet with all the dignity I could muster. My body ached, but the greater need—to understand what the hell was happening—pushed me onward.

I strode up the hallway, brushing dust off my jeans. Behind me, Duke and Henri pranced after me, their enthusiasm unshaken, their little claws clicking on the floorboards. Their cheerful energy clashed jarringly with my mood—a stark contrast to the surreal storm I was still trying to make sense of.

I re-entered the bedroom, ready to confront the impossible again—only to find it... gone.

The swirling wall of colour had vanished.

The room looked as it always had, but somehow hollow, like something enormous had just exited and taken the air with it.

"What happened to it?" I asked, warily.

Luke was already waiting for the question. He held out his hand, palm open.

Resting in the centre was a small, rectangular object—plain, unremarkable.

"I can open and close the portal with this. It's a Portal Key," he explained, his tone calm, as though explaining how to switch on a dishwasher.

"Oh?" was all I managed, the sound barely more than breath. I stared at the object, the words portal and key colliding in my brain with no clear landing place. My reality had slipped so far off its axis I couldn’t even orient myself enough to question it.

Then he held out something else—more ordinary, yet somehow stranger for it.

A plastic water bottle.

"Jamie wrote a message on the label for you," he said.

I took it, slowly, reverently. My fingers curled around the bottle’s crinkled plastic, and I turned it until the label faced me. The handwriting stopped me cold. Jamie’s scrawl—recognisable, messy, uniquely his.

My stomach flipped.

The message was short. Ordinary, almost. But the content…

My breath caught in my throat.

My heart thudded like it was trying to break free of my chest.

It contained a piece of information—a detail so personal, so deeply embedded in our shared past—that there was simply no way Luke could know it. It was a secret buried in the complicated folds of my family’s history, known only to me and Jamie. Not even Beatrix knew. The kind of secret you carry silently for years, because saying it aloud would make it too real.

Luke couldn’t have written this.

Only Jamie could have.

The shock hit like a blunt instrument.

My eyes met Luke’s.

"Believe me yet?" he asked, his voice softer now, tinged with something like exhaustion—or desperation.

I didn’t speak.

I shrugged instead, a small, weary gesture. It wasn’t resignation. Not quite acceptance either. It was the closest I could get to saying I don’t know what the hell this is, but I’m here, and I see it, and I can’t deny it anymore.

We stood there, the two of us suspended in a silence that pressed around us like fog.

The portal. The key. The message. Jamie. Paul.

My mind felt splintered—like someone had shuffled the deck of my life and left all the pieces scattered.

How was I supposed to return to normal life now?

How was I supposed to go home, feed the cats, have a glass of wine, and pretend the world hadn’t just cracked open?

Jamie was trapped in that... place. That thing. And the message he’d sent—written across the label of a water bottle—had unearthed a secret I thought I’d buried forever.

A portal in a bedroom.

A friend lost to another world.

And now… a truth about my sister that shifted everything I thought I knew.

I felt untethered. Like someone had cut the ropes tying me to the ground.

And there was no telling where I’d land.

The tension in the room, thick and humming with the weight of impossible revelations, shattered abruptly.

A solid knock echoed from the front door.

It was such an ordinary sound—mundane, almost cheerful in its rhythm—that for a moment, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d heard it correctly. After everything, after that, the notion that someone was standing politely on the porch waiting to be let in felt almost offensive.

"Oh, I forgot I ordered pizza," Luke said, as casually as if we’d just been watching telly.

I turned to him, my face a strange blend of disbelief and exhaustion. "Pizza?" I repeated, the word dry in my mouth. The absurdity of it hung between us. Pizza. As if portals and lost friends and water bottle secrets weren’t enough—now we were having dinner?

Duke began to stir beside me, ears perked and tail already thudding with excitement. The sound of the doorbell usually meant two things to him: barking, and potentially snacks.

Luke swiftly scooped him up before the barking part could begin. "Hold him, please," he said, unceremoniously thrusting Duke into my arms.

I adjusted the squirming bundle of fluff, muttering something under my breath about being everyone’s emotional support animal today. Henri trotted at my feet as I followed Luke back down the hallway, my arms full of dog and my head full of static.

Luke returned a moment later, arms piled with three large pizza boxes. He placed them on the kitchen bench with the sort of flourish that implied triumph.

I stared at the stack.

"You're going to eat three of them?" I asked, the words slipping out before I could soften them. My tone landed somewhere between incredulity and disdain.

Luke chuckled—actually chuckled—as he opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Chardonnay.

"Don't be silly," he said, placing the bottle beside the pizzas and reaching for the wine glasses in the top cupboard. "Jamie and Paul are having some too."

I blinked at him, then muttered under my breath, "Of course they are."

My hands, almost involuntarily, reached for one of the wine glasses. The ritual was familiar—comforting, even. Something to do, something to hold. And wasn’t that just the theme of the day?

Luke, completely unfazed by the fact that he was preparing dinner for two people currently residing inside a portal, pulled the strange device—the Portal Key—from his pocket. As casually as one might switch on the kettle, he pointed it toward the far wall of the lounge.

The wall erupted.

The same vibrant display I had seen earlier returned in full force—pulsing, humming, the colours swirling in that now-familiar electric dance.

I tensed despite myself. No matter how many times I saw it, my body didn’t know how to not react. It was beautiful, yes—but the beauty of wild animals or deep water. Dangerous. Unnatural.

"Remember, don’t follow me," Luke said over his shoulder, his voice steady. He gathered the pizzas into his arms. "I’ll be right back."

And then, just like that, he stepped through and disappeared.

I stared at the empty air where he’d been, my wine glass held just shy of my lips. I waited a beat, as if something else might happen—an explosion, a voice, a punchline.

Nothing.

I reached across the bench, unscrewed the bottle of Chardonnay, and poured a glass. My hands were steady. Muscle memory, I suppose.

I held it up to my nose. The scent was crisp—stone fruit and something faintly buttery. I let it sit there, breathing it in. Then, finally, I took a sip.

It was cold, clean, familiar.

Then I took a larger one—less a sip, more of a gulp.

Necessity.

"Gladys!" Luke’s voice rang out so suddenly from the portal I jumped, nearly sloshing wine down my front.

"That wine was supposed to be for Jamie and Paul."

I narrowed my eyes at the swirling mass. "There’s still plenty left," I said flatly, setting the bottle down with a satisfying thunk and screwing the lid back on. I shoved it toward the bench’s edge with a bit more force than necessary.

Luke approached briefly, snatched up the wine glasses, and stepped back through the vortex like someone popping out to deliver post. The wall shimmered for a moment longer—then went dark.

Again.

This time, I didn’t flinch.

I just stood there, glass still in hand, watching the blank wall like it might wink back to life at any second.

I let out a sigh. Maybe closer to a groan, really.

Then I opened the fridge.

And there, tucked behind a tub of leftover carbonara and an open jar of capers, was salvation.

A second bottle of Chardonnay.

"Thank Christ," I muttered, retrieving it carefully. I topped up my glass, despite it being still mostly full. Just seeing the level rise again was oddly reassuring. Like refuelling a car before a long trip into the unknown.

It never hurts.

"So much for being right back," I mumbled sarcastically to my empty glass, lifting it to eye level like I expected an explanation.

One solitary drop of Chardonnay clung stubbornly to the inside rim. I tilted the glass, hopeful. It slipped loose and I caught it directly on my tongue, like some desperate creature in the desert, savouring the memory of hydration.

I didn’t even pretend to hesitate.

I reached for the bottle and poured another.

The sound of the wine glugging into the glass had become oddly soothing, grounding me in the moment. In this house of portals and vanishing men, Chardonnay was something I could understand.

The first sip was crisp and cold, the acidity sharp enough to cut through the fog still clinging to my mind. I held the glass in both hands like a cup of tea, nursing it, letting the silence settle around me again.

Then—

The familiar hum of energy pulsed through the room.

The lounge wall lit up in a blaze of vivid, electric colour, and I stiffened, gripping the glass a little tighter. The swirling light returned in all its mesmerising glory. The portal had reopened.

And there was Luke, stepping through it as casually as if he’d been to fetch the mail.

"Well, it's lights out in Clivilius," he announced, completely unfazed.

I blinked at him.

"Clivilius?" I repeated, the name rolling awkwardly off my tongue. It sounded made up. Foreign. Ancient and futuristic all at once. Like something you'd find on a map drawn in crayon by a very imaginative child—or scrawled in a fantasy novel written after too much absinthe.

Luke gestured toward the shimmering wall behind him, still glowing faintly.

"That's the name of the place where Paul and Jamie are," he explained, like he was talking about a suburb just outside Launceston.

And then, as quickly as it had flared to life, the portal vanished.

Gone.

The wall returned to its usual dull charcoal colour, perfectly still. No trace of the magic—or madness—that had been there only seconds earlier.

I took another sip of wine, trying to wrap my mind around the name.

Clivilius.

As if the situation hadn’t already drifted far beyond the borders of the imaginable, now we were giving names to other worlds.

I shifted slightly on the stool at the island bench, the cold edge of the seat biting into the back of my thighs. The glass dangled from my fingers as I stared at the place where the portal had been, half-waiting for it to flicker back to life like a dodgy light fitting.

Luke moved past me, not missing a beat.

"And what about the truck?" I asked, gesturing with my glass toward the driveway, where the rented vehicle sat like a silent witness to my increasingly surreal day.

It felt almost symbolic now. That truck had carried me straight into this madness.

Luke sighed and shook his head.

"Nah, not tonight. It's getting far too dark to take the goods through the Portal. There's very little light on the other side. I've never seen nighttime like it," he added, a faint edge of fatigue creeping into his voice. "I'll order you an Uber."

"Sure," I replied, doing my best to sound blasé. A small knot of relief loosened in my chest. No more hauling timber and cement mixers through dimensional rifts tonight.

I could go home. I could pretend—for a moment—that none of this had happened.

Luke paused, and his tone shifted.

"Oh, and Gladys," he said, suddenly serious. "You mustn't tell a soul about any of this. No one, okay?"

I raised an eyebrow at him, slowly.

"Okay," I said, letting the word hang in the air. What else was there to say? The notion of telling someone about any of this felt ludicrous. What would I even say?

He stepped closer.

"Gladys, I mean it. Promise me, you won’t tell anyone." His eyes locked onto mine—searching, maybe pleading. He wanted a real answer, not just another sarcastic quip.

I studied him a moment, then gave a small shrug of resignation.

"Not a soul," I said, rolling my eyes slightly as I took another sip of wine.

Honestly, it felt like the safest promise I’d ever made.

Not because I was feeling loyal.

But because if I did try to tell anyone, they’d have me committed before I could finish the sentence.

Portals. Clivilius. Bottled messages. Portal Keys.

No. This wasn’t a story to tell. It was a story to survive.