Regression To Norm

20260507

Written for Bradley Ramsey’s “Halls Of Pandemonium”, Day 7.

Norman Smith had been voted the most boring person at every school he’d attended, which was particularly impressive given none of them had ever put “most boring” on the list of categories to vote for.
Any space he had control over ended up perfectly tidy. Any process he followed would go exactly as expected. His opinions were always reasoned. His behaviour always reasonable.
Nobody ever consciously noticed, their minds flinching away from the eldritch orderliness and cloaking it in nice, safe, mundane reasons not to think about Norm. He was just so very boring. Such a dull child. And then man.
Having excelled at all subjects which didn’t require randomness or deviation in your thinking, he became the head of IT at the local hospital, where the fact that no systems he supervised ever went awry was highly valued and never scrutinised.
That was why he ended up in this flat. Close enough to work that he could pop in if anything started acting up. And get back home again swiftly once the problem inevitably resolved itself as soon as he was present. It was a small place, but he didn’t mind. Easier to keep things tidy.
And immediately obvious whenever something changed. Though, the fact he woke certain Something Was Amiss meant he likely would’ve found the door easily even if he’d had to search the entire building.
The door itself was unremarkable, except for the fact it shouldn’t exist. A perfect match for the other three interior doors in the apartment. It was only if you knew that behind that wall was the bedroom, and that door to the left led to the bedroom, which certainly hadn’t sprouted an extra door in it, that things got troubling.
Norm dithered for a moment, then, ever a creature of consummate habit, set about his morning routine. But… things weren’t going quite right. Toothpaste left the tube in a less-than-perfect stream. Soap scum drifted aimlessly, not forming a precise spiral.
Randomness had infected the apartment.
On seeing that his toast had uneven, blotchy browning rather than the uniform crunch he’d achieved ever since he was deemed old enough to operate a toaster, Norm snapped. He set down his plate and - disregarding his minutely detailed inner schedule - stormed over to the errant door, which he felt certain was responsible for these jarring breaches of order.
He really shouldn’t have opened it. The most ancient, most universal kind of invitation.
At first glance, it was like stumbling into a kaleidoscope, if the mirrors somehow overlapped. Then, as he mind fought to make sense of the senseless unspace now leeching into his apartment, he felt increasingly as if he were submerged in turbulent water while a disco happened just above the surface.
Any spot he managed to focus on was… comprehensible. Albeit wildly abstract. But it resolved into a recognisable colour, in an understandable level of light or dark, and seemed to have a, a depth to it which mapped onto sensibly three-dimensional space.
However, everything which he wasn’t focusing on didn’t feel any need to commit to physical laws. It was far away and up close, light and dark, every colour somehow not melding together yet overlapping perfectly.
Norm slammed the door shut, dashed across the room, and thanks to the apartment’s small layout managed to make it to the toilet in time to throw up.
Thank goodness he hadn’t eaten the toast yet. Though, he now doubted he was going to.
What time was it? A question Norm had never needed to ask himself before, the passing of time being inherently orderly. He woke certain exactly how much time had elapsed, and never needed an alarm. But that horrible, indeterminate experience left him utterly adrift.
He. Was. Going. To. Be. Late!
The world was sliding into chaos and Norm had no idea how to cope. He shoved his lone armchair against the terrible door, hastily washed his face and used another round of mouthwash, and set about getting to work.
Nobody noticed that Norm was a whole eight-nine seconds late, nor that he’d clearly been walking briskly. Noticing that he was slightly late today would require subconsciously acknowledging he’d been perfectly on time every other day. So they didn’t. Only Norm was aware of how Wrong everything was.
Work, at least, went as it should. Clearly the door’s influence hadn’t spread.
But what if it did? What if the systems he monitored stopped working, as he heard of happening at other hospitals? If that happened, he had no idea what to do. He’d never had to do anything to have systems behave before.
What if he couldn’t fix it? What if people died?
Despite how merely thinking about what lay behind that door left him dizzy and nauseous, he had to do something. Had to figure out how to make it go away. Before things got worse.
Norm clocked out precisely on time. As he had every other day, for the last sixteen years, eight months, and seven days. Outwardly, everything was as it should be. Yet it felt entirely different to every evening prior.
The walk home took one hundred and fourteen seconds longer than usual. Norm’s usually precise, uniform strides gradually shortening as he approached his apartment.
Had to do something. But what?
As soon as he walked in he knew things were escalating. There was dust in the air. The carpet wasn’t all lying in the same direction. But the chair was still against the door. And given that nothing was visibly leaking out, he doubted mundane tape or such would hold it back.
Norm dithered. Then, drawn by a primal, almost magnetic attraction, he pushed aside the chair, opened the door, and stepped into Pandemonium.
At once the apartment had the correct number of doors. Like it logically must always have had. There was no sign of another ever having existed.
And chaos claimed another avatar of order.

Prompt was “You’ve discovered a new door in your house that wasn’t there before. It leads to the realm of Pandemonium. What you saw scared you so badly that you sealed it shut, but now, you find yourself wanting to reopen it…”