Letters Through the Light

“The Portal can swallow anything—bodies, burdens, secrets—but it’s the fragile things, like paper and ink, that weigh the most.”

Wrapping the large towel around my waist, I left the steam-filled bathroom, its mirror still fogged with condensation, obscuring the reflection I wasn't ready to confront. I'd caught glimpses of myself in the clearing patches—eyes too bright, jaw too tight, the hollow look of someone who'd spent the morning watching his life unravel—and deliberately looked away. That face belonged to whoever I was becoming, and I wasn't ready to meet him yet.

The shift in temperature was immediate, the chill of the hallway air clinging to my damp skin and forcing a shiver through me. Goosebumps rose along my arms and across my chest, my body protesting the sudden cold after the warmth of the shower. I moved quickly, almost absentmindedly, pulling open the bedroom drawer and tugging out a fresh pair of jeans and a clean t-shirt. The fabric was cool against my still-damp skin, clinging slightly as I pulled them on, grounding me with its texture.

Fresh clothes. Clean start. The lie was comforting even though I knew it for what it was.

My eyes flicked, unbidden, to the bathroom once more. The blood-soaked clothes lay in a crumpled heap inside the tub, the sight of them enough to make my stomach clench and lurch. The fabric seemed to glisten faintly in the dim light filtering through the frosted window, a grotesque relic of what had unfolded. My jeans, my shirt, my socks—all of them saturated with Joel's blood, stiffening now as the moisture dried, becoming something less like clothing and more like evidence waiting to testify against me.

The coppery tang of dried blood lingered stubbornly in the air, an invisible fog that seeped into my lungs despite my best efforts to breathe through my mouth. Sharp and metallic, it triggered a memory of Joel's throat gaping open, and I turned my head away, forcing myself not to gag, swallowing hard against the bile that threatened to rise.

Those clothes weren't just soiled—they were accusations waiting to happen. I would need to burn them. Or bury them. Or send them through the Portal to join whatever else I was about to dispose of. The thought should have horrified me more than it did. Perhaps the shower had worked too well; perhaps I'd reset myself past the point where normal moral reactions still functioned.

I inhaled deeply, drawing a long breath as though I could pull clarity into myself with the air, steadying the tremor in my chest before I stepped into the living room. I tried to compose my face, smoothing out the tension, forcing an expression that might pass for calm. Neutral. Unreadable. The mask I'd learned to wear during my childhood, when the Mormon son was expected to be pious and pleasant regardless of what turbulence churned beneath the surface.

"Gee, you were quick," Gladys remarked without looking up from her wine glass.

She was sprawled on the sofa like a woman at a garden party, her posture deceptively casual, one leg folded beneath her, the glass cradled delicately in her hand as though it were the most natural thing in the world to drink at midday with a corpse cooling in the driveway. The faint clink as she swirled the liquid echoed absurdly in the silence, refined and incongruous against the grotesque reality that stained the very air of the house.

Her composure unsettled me. That calm, that nonchalance, in the face of blood and death and the irreversible horror we were entangled in—it was unnatural. I studied her profile, the faint arch of her brow, the way her lips pursed faintly before another sip, and for a moment I wondered if she wasn't just coping, but something else entirely. Something broken in ways that didn't show on the surface.

The thought slid through me like ice water: perhaps Gladys wasn't merely detached. Perhaps the discovery of Brody Taylor's body four years ago had cracked something fundamental inside her, and this—this grotesque composure in the face of Joel's murder—was simply what lived in those cracks now. Wine and distance and an inability to feel what normal people felt.

The notion lodged itself deep, sending a ripple of unease crawling up my spine. She was either an invaluable ally or a catastrophic liability, and I couldn't yet tell which.

"Do you want to see this Portal or not?"

The words left my mouth sharper than intended, more a challenge than an invitation. It wasn't generosity that prompted me to ask, but strategy. A redirection. A way to wrest control of the narrative from the horror soaking the truck outside and force their attention onto something I could command. Better they gawk at marvels than fixate on blood. Better they think of me as the keeper of wonders than as a suspect covered in a dead boy's fluids.

Beatrix's eager nod came quickly, her curiosity grotesque in its timing, almost childlike in its lack of awareness. For her, the promise of spectacle outweighed the gravity of death. That alone told me all I needed about the kind of ally—or liability—she might prove to be. She saw the world through a lens I couldn't quite focus on, one where horror and wonder existed on the same spectrum, where a murdered body and an inter-dimensional gateway were simply different varieties of interesting.

I retrieved the Portal Key. Small, unassuming, it sat in my palm like nothing more than a trinket, a curiosity that might have been a keyring or a novelty gadget. Yet it bore the power to shift destinies, to erase mistakes, to condemn or liberate entire lives. Now, it was heavier than any weapon. Now, it was the instrument through which I would dispose of a body and bind these women to my secrets.

Aiming it at the living room wall, I pressed the familiar button. Instantly, the stillness fractured. The drab domestic interior was drowned in a sudden flood of colour. A violent bloom of light danced across the wall, spilling outward like ink dropped in water, staining everything it touched with impossible hues.

Waves of iridescence swirled outward, and the flat plaster was replaced by a living tapestry, shifting and breathing as if aware of its own significance. All of them dancing together in patterns that followed no logic I could discern.

The Portal yawned open, vast and alive, its vortex a kaleidoscope of colours that pulsed like the rhythm of some alien heart. It demanded attention, its energy prickling against my skin, lifting the hairs on my arms. The sound was subtle yet insistent, a low hum that seemed to vibrate inside the bones of the house itself, promising both wonder and danger in equal measure.

For the briefest instant, I almost surrendered to its beauty. Even now, even after everything, the sheer brilliance of what I was looking at could still steal my breath. I remembered the first time I'd seen it open—the shock, the terror, the dawning realisation that everything I'd believed about the world was incomplete. That there were doors where I'd thought there were only walls. That the voice that had whispered through my dreams since childhood was real, and it had been waiting for me all along.

It was intoxicating, this reminder that I was custodian of something beyond comprehension, something both miraculous and monstrous.

But reality snapped back with brutal force. This wasn't a parlour trick for curious eyes. This was a solution. A disposal site. An eraser of inconvenient truths. Joel's body, Jamie's heartbreak, the threat of exposure—every thought twisted itself around the Portal like vines, pulling the marvel down into the mud of my predicament.

As the shimmering threshold stabilised, I felt the weight of choice press on me. The Portal wasn't simply an opening into another place. It was a line between salvation and damnation. Every step taken through it, every secret pushed into its depths, bound me tighter to its consequences.

And yet—I was already standing too close to turn away. I'd crossed too many thresholds already, literal and otherwise. One more wouldn't change what I'd become.

"It's so pretty," muttered Beatrix, her voice hushed, as though she were gazing at a cathedral dome rather than a tear in the fabric of reality.

Her eyes, wide and glassy, reflected the kaleidoscope of shifting colour, each swirl painting her features with unnatural hues. For a moment she looked almost innocent, almost young—the troublesome sister Gladys had spent decades cleaning up after, the woman who'd lost her partner to violence and learned to cope by studying death rather than fearing it. I wondered what she saw when she looked at the Portal. Wonder? Escape? A place to dispose of things that no longer served her?

"Take this for me," she called out suddenly, breaking her reverie.

A cushion flew through the air towards me. For a heartbeat I marvelled at her casualness—the sheer frivolity of tossing something household and ordinary into a gateway that could consume worlds. My hand darted out, brushing the fabric just as it slipped from my grasp and vanished into the vortex.

The cushion was gone. No thud of impact, no rustle of cloth. Just absence. One moment it existed in this reality; the next, it was on its way to landing in the dust of another world.

"Shit. That's incredible." Beatrix's whisper came with a childlike awe that felt almost offensive given everything else that had happened today.

Her fascination with spectacle gnawed at me, a reminder of how detached she was from the gravity of what we faced. She didn't see the Portal as I did—an executioner's pit, a silent accomplice, a last resort for the guilty. To her, it was a magic trick. Entertainment. Something to photograph and tell stories about if circumstances ever allowed.

Perhaps that was useful. Perhaps her inability to feel appropriate horror meant she'd be easier to manage, easier to direct. Or perhaps it meant she'd make decisions without understanding their weight, and we'd all pay for her carelessness.

"I have a better idea," I said, forcing steel into my voice. My tone was calm, measured, but beneath it ran a current of turmoil—of calculation. This wasn't about entertaining Beatrix's curiosity; it was about control. If I could frame the Portal's purpose, dictate what passed through, then I could shape their perception of it. Better they see it as a practical tool than as an abyss waiting to swallow whatever—whoever—I fed it.

I moved deliberately, gathering Duke and Henri's belongings from where they still sat in the corner of the living room—beds still carrying their familiar musk, toys ragged and well-loved from countless hours of play. Each item was a reminder of innocence, of loyalty, of the uncomplicated love of animals who didn't ask questions and didn't pass judgement. My chest tightened as I held them, the act of preparing them for the Portal feeling like a small ritual of displacement, a gesture both protective and pragmatic.

The dogs were in Clivilius because of my carelessness. The least I could do was send their comforts after them.

"Good idea," Beatrix remarked, her voice firmer now, steadier, as though watching something mundane and familiar disappear into the impossible had tethered her.

Perhaps, for her, the sight of dog beds and chewed toys crossing worlds was easier to stomach than blood and bodies. Something domestic, something gentle, something that didn't require her to confront the horror still cooling in the truck outside. For a fleeting moment, the grotesque and the miraculous sat side by side, and she—astonishingly—looked comforted by it.

I let her have that illusion. Better she cling to dog toys than to the truth of what might come next.

Gladys, meanwhile, seemed to be grappling with her own turmoil. The mask of nonchalance she had worn since the driveway was beginning to crack, fine lines appearing in the composure she'd maintained through wine and distance. Her fingers fidgeted against the stem of her wine glass before she set it down on the coffee table, as though the act of drinking could no longer numb what pressed on her heart.

There was a flicker of hesitation in her eyes, the kind that precedes confession. I watched her struggle with something, watched her gather herself, watched whatever words she needed to say fight their way up from wherever she'd buried them.

"Oh yeah," she said at last, her voice tinged with resignation, as she handed me a small envelope.

The gesture was so ordinary, so painfully human, that for a moment it jarred against the extraordinary backdrop of the Portal's glow. White paper, slightly wrinkled from being carried in a pocket or purse, the flap sealed with what looked like a lick rather than glue. Something handwritten, something personal, something that had nothing to do with murder or inter-dimensional travel or any of the impossible circumstances that had brought us to this moment.

"Can you give this to Jamie for me?" she asked.

"What's this?" I asked, taking the envelope. It was light in my hands, yet it pressed down on me with the heft of responsibility I hadn't asked for.

Gladys hesitated, her gaze locking with mine. In her eyes I saw a flicker of something raw, stripped bare—a plea for understanding, or at least for silence.

"It's a letter for Jamie," she admitted, her voice subdued, almost fragile.

Beatrix leaned in with a smirk that curled at the edges of disbelief. "You wrote him a letter?" Her tone wavered between sarcasm and genuine curiosity, as if she couldn't decide whether to mock or marvel at her sister's sentimentality.

"Yeah, well, I figured I can't exactly talk to him," Gladys replied. The bluntness of her words only emphasised the truth they carried—that her contact with Jamie was no longer simple, no longer natural. There were walls between them now, walls of distance, of circumstance, of the secrets we were all accumulating by the hour. The Portal—strange miracle that it was—could carry paper, but it couldn't carry conversation. It couldn't carry reconciliation. It could only deliver words and hope they were enough.

"Oh yeah. I see your point," Beatrix conceded at last, surprising me with the flicker of understanding that crossed her face.

I slipped the letter into the box of dog toys, its presence a new anchor dragging at me as I turned to the wall. Another burden to carry. Another responsibility I hadn't asked for. Another thread connecting me to Jamie in ways that felt increasingly complicated, increasingly fraught with the potential for disaster.

The Portal's shimmering surface rippled like liquid glass, waiting, demanding. It didn't care about letters or feelings or the tangled web of relationships that surrounded it. It simply existed, a doorway between worlds, indifferent to the uses we made of it.

Without further word, I gathered the dog supplies in my arms and stepped toward the light, leaving behind the surreal tableau of the sisters—wine abandoned on the coffee table, grief thinly veiled behind curiosity, both of them trying to cling to normality as though it could save them. As though anything could save any of us now.