Portals

“It will open,” Sam insisted.

Gaseous Girl said nothing. Thirty seconds ticked by. Thirty seconds may not seem like very much time, but when one is anxiously awaiting the opening of a doorway to another universe, and the doorway stubbornly refuses to open, thirty seconds can be lengthy indeed. At thirty-one seconds, Gaseous Girl’s left eyebrow arched.

“It opened before,” Sam said weakly. “Promise. I saw it.”

“And you’re sure it opened here,” Gaseous Girl said. “Right here.”  She gestured at the trash bin, filled with paper bags and bits of molded food. “Right in this trash bin.”

“Right here.”

Gaseous Girl sighed. “Usually these things open up in secret military bases or in old English wardrobes. Not in a trash bin.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam said. “I did the reading. But I swear-“

The trash bin bloomed into light. The light meandered about for a second or two, before finally resolving into a neat circle. Through the circle, Gaseous Girl saw herself, locked in battle with a gigantic sea slug. Her alternate self was wearing a pink and purple mecha-suit and firing crackling energy pulses like they were going out of style. Then the circle snapped shut, and the trash bin was a trash bin again.

“Okay then,” Gaseous Girl said. “So we’ve got a working portal. Swell.”

“Told you,” Sam said.

“You shut up.”

After a short hiatus, mainly because of wedding and honeymoon reasons, I have returned to the Yeah Write grids. Sam and Gaseous Girl have appeared previously in Time Things. Thanks for reading!