The girl who drew doors

 

Experimental Short Story Series #45
Title: The Girl Who Drew Doors
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

In the ghost-grey halls of an unnamed orphanage, where days dragged like rain and every corridor smelt faintly of bleach and broken promises, lived a girl no one remembered arriving and no one dared to speak to. She had no name—only a number stitched to her coat: 45.

But she had a pencil.

A dull, chewed-up, half-dead stub of a thing she guarded like a secret. It had no eraser, no shine—just a whisper of lead. And every night, while others whispered ghost stories beneath moth-eaten blankets, she’d crouch by the wall behind her iron bed and draw.

Doors.

Big ones. Small ones. Some with keyholes. Some with brass knockers shaped like wolves or owls. She didn’t know why she drew them. Only that when she finished one, the air would shift—crackling like lightning bottled just beneath her skin.

The first time a door opened, she was eight. She remembers that night by the sound—the hiss of wind from a place not here. She stepped through and found a forest made entirely of glass. Deer shimmered in moonlight. Owls blinked with jeweled eyes. The sky rained upside down.

She returned before dawn, barefoot, with pine needles in her hair.

The next night, she drew another. A bakery in Paris with the smell of butter and songs in French. A third took her to a planet with lavender oceans. A fourth—an ancient library where books whispered her name.

She never told anyone.

Until the doors began to appear on their own.

It started subtly—new sketches on her wall, drawn in a style not quite hers. One had a child’s crayon flourish. Another was etched with gold ink she never owned. When she pressed her ear to them, she didn’t hear other worlds. She heard herself. Crying. Laughing. Screaming. Begging.

One night, she stepped through a door she hadn't drawn.

And came face to face with herself.

Older. Bitter. Eyes like smoke. The other girl spoke not with lips but with thought. “We are all your doors,” she said. “Every choice you didn’t make. Every version of you left behind.”

“Why are you drawing them now?” the younger asked.

“Because I want to come back.”

She never returned from that door.

But some say Room 45 still flickers with light no switch controls. That on quiet nights, you can hear pencils scratching. That new doors keep appearing—on ceilings, under beds, behind mirrors. Drawn by someone who now remembers too much and is looking for the version of herself who forgot.

Why We Tell These Stories
This is the 45th entry in our Experimental Short Story Series, and as always, we thank you—dear reader—for daring to open the strange, the surreal, and the sublime with us. Each story isn’t just fiction; it’s a door to another way of seeing the world. And we’re delighted you keep stepping through.

Stay with us as we near our 60th tale, and prepare for the collection that will bring them all—curated, edited, expanded—into both digital and print form.

Our stories are not just written.
They are drawn.
They are dreamed.
And they are yours.

Read, Reflect, Return.
Because tomorrow, another door will appear.
And behind it—who knows? Maybe you.

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