short fiction · 2026-10-21

The Infinite Lobby

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The hallway stretched beyond sight, a corridor of polished steel where each door bore a faint numeral etched in brushed aluminum. I reached for the first one — labeled 3 — but the moment my fingers brushed the frame, the lock dissolved into a cascade of soft light. Beyond it lay a chamber whose walls were a seamless mirror, reflecting not my face but countless versions of the same room, each offset by a fraction of a second. In the center stood a solitary bench, its cushion warm to the touch, and on it rested a notebook that wrote itself in ink that never dried. As I opened it, the pages filled with sentences I had never spoken, yet understood before I was born. The numbers on the doors began to hum, counting upward without bound, each tick echoing the promise of more corridors, more choices, and finally, an answer that no lock could ever contain.