The House With No Doors

"So Cali, you explore many dark hallways in your time?"

It took Fred a second to realize that him, along with the people around him, were all semi-transparent, like ghosts! He looked at his hand and squeezed it into a fist. It felt normal, but he couldn't seem to feel anything. He looked around to see if this place looked familiar, but it was not familiar at all. Where was he? Was this a dream? It felt very real. Was he dead? This didn't seem like a place for someone to go when they die.

Fred noticed that while he was thinking, everyone had gone to a corridor nearby. He supposed he should catch up with the group and ask if they knew anything.

Once he caught up, he tried to tap someone on the shoulder, but he realized that his finger just went through. "Um, excuse me? Do you know where this is, or how we got here?"

"It look vaguely like we all somehow got her by sleeping? At least going off the few people who shared their tale, but we don't really know where this is."

Petrus let the others chatter behind him. They could handle the ensuing confusion of another arrival, but at present, Petrus was trying to manage the anxiety he felt in his soul that couldn't be felt in his own body.

Normally, his heart would be pounding right now. But he couldn't feel his heartbeat, or his clammy hands, or the shiver down his spine. All he could feel was the suffocating emptiness of nothingness as he floated with little effort down the hall at an agonizing pace. The ohters followed behind, but he couldn't help but feel like, with no tangibility, they were all helpless.

Their souls were at the mercy of whatever spirits they ran into. And it was the not knowing that was killing him, if he wasn't already dead as it was.

Finally, he reached the end of the corridor, and found himself not face to face with an open passage, but a door.

A door with no handle, and no lock, and no key. Nothing. Just... a closed, solid door.

Trying to touch things seemed like a vain notion, but Petrus tried anyway. Reaching forward, he went to push the door open.

And instead, his whole arm went through. He was ashamed that he let out a loud yelp.

"All good there," Sally-Anna called out, startled by the sudden yell.

"Oh, we are so incorporeal! That means we're in deep with this projection. Are you alright? I know it must be unsettling to be so unbound." Sibyl glanced at his arm.

Petrus shook his arm, still staring at in shock. With a yank, he pulled it back into visibility, trying not to look at freaked out as he was.

He glanced back at the others, wide-eyed, but managing to keep his mouth flat.

"It's fine," he said, his voice strained. "Just. Um. Yeah. I'm fine."

Who needs handles when you can't use them anyway? What, was this house made for ghosts, then?

Shaking out his hand even though it served no physical purpose, Petrus hesitantly inched towards the door, this time poking his face through instead of his hand. And good grief, was it the most surreal experience he'd had to date, for his whole head to go through a door, and to see the shift in his vision, no less.

The room he was staring into was a large living room of sorts.

On one end of the room, there was a billiards table, with corresponding sticks hung up on the wall. At the other end of the room, there was an arrangement of couches with a large, glass-topped coffee table as a centerpiece over a circular, red rug. A complete tea-set was set out on top of it, with six cups of tea set out on coasters.

Lining the wall behind the couches were three bookshelves that stretched as high as the ceiling.

Swallowing nervously, Petrus floated through the door into the room. Hanging in the center of the ceiling was a large chandelier, lighting the room brightly.

But no one was inside of it. At least, no one corporeal.

Just him.

"Well..." he said, before realizing the others might not be able to hear through the door.

He wasn't sure how all this worked.

Britney didn't get scared easily, but when Petrus yelped, she couldn't deny that a shiver ran up her spine. Or what was left of it, anyway. What had happened to him when his arm went through the wall?

Sybil and Sally-Anna called after him in concern, but Petrus yanked his arm back, trying, but failing not to look as scared as he actually looked to Britney. This time, he put his whole face through the wall and slowly pulled the rest of his body with him. The group waited to hear something: another yell, a different voice.

Petrus made a sound on the other side of the door, but she couldn't hear what he was saying. At least, he didn't sound scared. It was good enough reason for her to join him wherever he was.

Britney walked forward and slowly pushed her arm through the door. Then she stepped through. There weren't any physical reactions to the experience, but her stomach fluttered all the same.

Blinking away the sudden shift in vision, Britney found herself standing in a recreational room of sorts, fit with couches, bookshelves, and a billiards table. She glanced around the room, but only she and Petrus were in it.

"You'd think someone else would live here," she mused to him. Her eyes fell on the tea set, and she pointed to it. "The way that tea is laid out almost makes you think that it's meant for us."

She said it nonchalantly, but deep inside, it made her feel uneasy.

Cali had been momentarily drifting in the sea of thought (and quite literally drifting in reality) She blinked, getting snapped out of her train of thought when she heard a yelp.
"Is everyone alright?"

Petrus looked over to Brittany, grateful someone had the guts to follow him, and he wasn't left alone.

"Yeah," he said, looking at the tea, set out, still steaming like it'd been recently poured. "It's... unsettling."

"We have to go," Cassidy breathed, "Through the door... wall... thing."

Sally-Anna wasn't entirely sure who to pursue first, but decided to float towards where Petrus had gone. They seemed like they were the most ready to explore at the moment.

Cassidy just stood (hovered?) there awkwardly, not quite sure what to do. That was an unfamiliar feeling.

Carter had stood awkwardly aside and watched as two people walked through the wall to the other side. He felt half ashamed that he was scared to walk through, and the other half was stubbornly telling him to NOT walk straight into solid bricks. He looked at the girl named Cassidy who seemed to be hesitating too.
“Umm… I guess we should go too? I mean-“ he laughed uneasily, knowing he was being insane, “ surely we can’t die once AGAIN, can we?”

While they waited for the others, Britney scoured the room for any signs of disturbance, but other than the tea on the table, there was nothing to note. Her eyes fell on it again.

Well, it couldn't hurt. Probably. She walked forward and reached for one of the cups.