text: [Themes: Surreal, female protagonist, house setting, time travel, family, dysfunctional families]
  
  The white door in the hallway is new. You can't remember having seen it before. After the children left home, you had expected the house to be quieter. You hadn't expected it to grow. Now, with Brady gone, Samantha living with her boyfriend one town over, and everything being packed for the move, unexpected doorways and passages are the norm. Just yesterday morning, you had been vacuuming the bedroom and noticed a small archway behind the wardrobe leading to goodness knows where.
  
  Sometimes, on the nights when Derek doesn't come home, you imagine you can hear the creaks and groans of rending wood and stone as the house tortuously shifts itself into new configurations.
  
  When Derek arrived home from work last night, you tried to tell him about it, as you do most nights.
  
  "You should be glad of the extra space, Elaine," he said, "you've always wanted a workroom." Most of the time he just sighs and turns the TV on, only half listening to you.
  
  A Deconstructural Fiction by Ade McT
  
  The week starts like it always does. Slowly. It was an effort to get out of bed this morning. Derek had left before the morning light spilled half-heartedly into the room and from the coolness of the sheets on his bed, you judge he had left early. His coffee cup was still warm, though. You imagine he had taken his coffee out into the garden.
  
  Some mornings, especially in summer when the weight of light on your eyelids wakes you early, you come across him in the garden staring across the expanse of lawn. At these times especially you try not to intrude but occasionally you will watch him through the kitchen window, wondering what he is thinking about.
  
  But today all that's left of Derek's morning routine is a half-empty coffee cup and a few toast crumbs on the sideboard. A week can go past when these remains are all you see of him, and this morning, like every morning, you begin your day by wiping away this evidence that Derek was ever here. Most of the rest of the morning is spent doing those little things that are done on auto-pilot, and, once done, forgotten until they need to be done again.
  
  It's not until you are on the upstairs hallway, dusting the leaves of the rubber plant, that you see the white door you noticed yesterday stands open, light spilling from it into the darkened hall.
  
  typing "help" will get you started with some special commands.)
  
  The hallway has no windows. It's always been a dingy place when the doors to the bedrooms are closed. Pictures line the walls, barely illuminated. To the south of you is the spare room, opposite it, Brady's room and the hallway stretches toward the east side of the house. A flight of stairs leads down into the entrance hall, and the new white door hangs open next to the staircase to the west.
  
  The rubber plant you brought home from the garden centre a year after you moved in sits on a small plinth in the corner.
  
  [Author's Note: The house is growing. Or perhaps it's you who is shrinking. And with all this extra space is coming.... time. Time enough, maybe, to make some changes.]
  
  > look at pictures
  You don't really enjoy having your picture taken. You haven't for years. If the camera comes out, it's always you who is holding it, or trying to blend into the background blur, looking away.
  
  When you were first married, it was fun, and you still have the black and white passport sized set of linked photographs from the photo-booth in which you and Derek made funny faces at the camera, laughing.
  
  > Inventory
  You are carrying:
  a map
  
  > look at the map
  You started drawing the map on the day you noticed the house start to grow. Now, your drawing seems to have taken on a life of it's own. Each morning, it has changed. Sometimes, when you are walking around the house, the map seems to come to life in your hands.
  
  You see that since yesterday, there is a new door on the west wall of the hallway, and a new door east of the Main Bedroom.
  
  > About you
  You don't often look at yourself. It's difficult to pinpoint the moment when you stopped looking in the mirror, or glancing at your hair in a handy reflection in a shop window. How would someone else sum you up? Elaine Paterson. 40 years old. Dowdy in a neat and unassuming sort of way. Quiet. You wear thick jumpers when it's cold.
  
  > look at the plant
  Perhaps it's where you put it, but for some reason, over the years, this plant has grown slowly, the leaves small, the trunk pencil-wide.
  
  You remember the day you brought it home. "It won't grow flowers, you know," had said Derek as soon as he saw you come in the door.
  
  You nodded and smiled. "Yes," you had said, "It says so on the label." You remember having a cold, coughing, the wind outside had made your fingers feel like they belonged to someone else.
  
  "You know," he had said, "Malcolm and Judy were thinking of inviting us to dinner tonight."
  
  "Oh?" you replied, unwilling to commit, a vague feeling of dread creeping over you.
  
  "We should go. Maybe you could try and make an effort this time."
  
  You didn't answer him, but you felt bright spots of red appears on your cheeks. He turned, losing interest in both the plant and you, and walked away. Three steps. You had been left holding the plant, uncertain.
  
  "Where shall we put it," you had said to his back,  your voice small. "It might look nice in the lounge."
  
  "Good Lord, no," he had snapped. "What's the point if it will never flower? Ugly looking thing anyway. Keep it out of the way somewhere."
  
  You had burst into tears right there in the middle of the entrance hall. It was the first time you had ever cried in this house. Maybe that's why you remember it so clearly. So you had stuck it away in the upstairs hall - out of sight.