The Door's Fragmented Dream

The Hospital Shorts, By Michael Gray Griffith

The white-painted wardrobe door was having the dream again. In its dream, it was daytime, and all he could see was a long tree limb full of smaller branches and leaves. Past that, there were other trees, ferns, and a small path through the forest. Whenever it dreamed, this was all it could see. Sometimes, in the dream, it was night.

“You're dreaming again,” said the bedside lamp.
“I know,” said the door. “I can’t stop. And all I can see is this bit of a tree. Not all of it. I don’t understand.”
“I used to dream of being a chandelier," said the lamp. "Big enough to light an entire dining room.”
“Yes, and that’s a good dream for a lamp," replied the door. "But I just wish, if only for a little while, I could see the whole of the tree.”
“Why?” asked the bedside lamp. “It’s not like you’ll ever be a tree again. Those days are gone. You should be happy you were turned into a door and not chopped up and burnt as firewood.”
“I know,” said the door. “You're right. I know.”

But the door couldn't stop himself dreaming, and that night, as it dreamt of the view, it noticed that in the corner of the dream he could see the edge of a bird’s nest. But only the edge.
The door struggled to see more—to see the bird and the little chicks chirping inside—but his dream’s sight could not see that far. Beyond this fragment of a view, the door was blind.
When he woke, the bedroom was dark and all the furniture but him was asleep. His owners were also asleep in the bed.
Not wanting to dream again, the door looked out of the bedroom's windows and watched the sidewalk’s trees as they swayed and rustled to a wind he couldn’t feel.
The bed was right. He never would be a tree again. So what was the point of dreaming?
But how do I stop dreaming? he whispered to himself.

“If you really want to stop,” whispered the wardrobe’s other door, “then you have to remember the beginning of the end. You have to think back to when they came and chopped your tree down. That’s what I did, and it worked for me. Now I never dream at all.”

The other door was right. There was no point in dreaming such a silly dream. No point in trying to see things he knew he would never see.
In fact, it was time to give up his dreams and just accept that he was, and forever would be, nothing more than a door.
So that night, he began thinking back to the beginning of the end.

It was morning in his memories, and all around him he could hear chainsaws whirring, and the great thuds of trees falling to the ground. Finally, he saw two men approach his tree. Both were carrying chainsaws.

A few moments later, he heard their chainsaws screaming into life. A few moments after that, he remembered how his tree had begun to sway and shudder. Then, as a man yelled, “Timber!” he heard an almighty crack and felt his tree fall.

After this, his memories were sketchy. He could see a factory full of carpenters and finished pieces of furniture waiting all around him. Finally, as the dawn rose in the real world, he realized he’d remembered his way back to the door he had become.
A wardrobe door that this morning had developed a crack. While remembering, his wood grain had split around the keyhole. It was only a small crack; a thin line of wood breaking through the white paint.

His female owner noticed it. She stood bent in her dressing gown, hair wet from her shower, and pulled at the lifted paint until a slight portion of wood could be seen.
She called her partner in, and he too bent and studied it, then left and returned with a kitchen knife. For half an hour, they scraped away what paint they could.
None of the furniture in the bedroom had any idea what the couple were up to.

An hour later, the man removed the door from the wardrobe, then carried it out of the bedroom, down the hall, and out into the sun.

Once outside, the man tied the door down to the roof rack on the car.

It was incredible for the door to feel the sun again. Wonderful to feel the breezes, which became a strong wind as the car left the driveway and headed off down the road. For all his constant dreaming, the door had completely forgotten the touch of these two things.

Eventually, the door was untied and carried into a run-down factory full of heavily painted doors and window frames, cupboards, and bed-heads.
There was a moment of people talking, then another man took the door from his owner, and the door was leant up against a row of other doors.
For the rest of the day, without any idea what he’d done wrong, this is where the door remained.

Darkness came, and in the darkness he could hear sobbing. Other doors and bits of furniture, scared of what was going to happen tomorrow, were crying softly in the dark.
In the silence, the door accepted that, since there was nothing he could do, he may as well try dreaming again. And as though it had never been away, his fragmented dream returned.
Again he could see the limb. Again he could see the edge of the bird’s nest and the trees and the path beyond it.

“Are you dreaming?” the door he was leaning on asked.
This door was a front door, with a hole in its top where some stained glass had been removed.
“Yes,” the door replied, then after a moment of silence, he asked: “Do you think, that come tomorrow, they’re going to chop us up for firewood?”
“I’d say so,” said the Front Door, and behind it, the other doors and window frames agreed.

More silence followed. A heavy silence filled with sadness and fear.
Finally, the Front Door asked: “So, what were you dreaming of?”
“Me? Oh, nothing,” said the Door. “Just a view.”
“A view?” the Front Door replied.
“Yes,” said the Door. “In my dreams I can see a view from my tree. But only a piece of a view; a fragment.”
“What fragment?” the Front Door asked.
And so the Door told him about the limb and the branches, about the edge of the bird’s nest and the trees and path that lay beyond all that.

“Ha,” the Front Door laughed. “You won’t believe this, but years ago, when I was first attached to my house, I used to dream of my section of the tree. I was a part of the trunk, and I used to be able to see a field in my dreams, and in the field there were cows... Silly, aren’t they, dreams?”

“In my dreams I could see leaves,” a window frame said. “They’d move in the wind, and in amongst them, I’d watch birds land and make their nests.”
“I used to be able to see leaves too,” said an architrave, “but from the top of the tree. And from there too, I used to be able to see a farmhouse and a road.”

On they talked, each new piece of furniture adding their own fragment of a view to the one dream, until all their fragments began constructing a brand new tree—a brand new dream tree.

A dream tree that spread its limbs and branches and gathered birds and insects as it grew above the doors, windows, and all the other disassembled furniture.
It was an unusual tree; a beautiful, fragmented tree that by dawn had reached the factory’s ceiling—a tree that remained inside them, despite morning finally waking them all up.

With morning too, they all discovered, to their great relief, that they were not to be chopped up for firewood. Instead, they were to be dipped into a special chemical bath that would remove all their layers of paint. They were being restored.

Eventually, the entire wardrobe would be stripped back to its natural wood. But long after this, and for years to come, the Door would dream whenever it liked.
For in its dream, it was a whole tree—
The factory’s mismatched tree of dreams, that could see where it liked.
Though its favourite view was the little bird’s nest, which was always full of defenceless chicks, begging to be fed.

Michael Gray Griffith

"This story was inspired by an Arabic poem that suggests the Truth was a mirror dropped by God, and each of us holds a sliver of it—but no one possesses the whole. Since we all have our own ideas of what a better Australia could look like, imagine if we combined these visions into a shared dream we could all strive for, together."