Illusionaut

  • ~24.5 min Trubel had been lingering outside the nondescript metal door for nearly two hours, appearing to study the door and the faded sign above it. The Deli , it read in dusty script. Her coat was wrapped as tightly around her as the fraying fabric allowed, but still, the cold air dug through it. The cold was not enough, however, to drive her out of the elements and through the door. Once or twice she approached it, hand shaking as it neared the handle, only to draw back at the last second as if the handle were a snake. It should have been easier to enter the door the longer she waited, but it seemed to only grow immeasurably more difficult. It did not help that in her entire time waiting no one had entered or left the building. Had someone sallied up, opened the door, and safely entered into a cloud of inviting warmth, it may have lured her in. Similarly, the safe exit of any sort of person would have assured her that one could brave whatever lay beyond. But the road was empty,

My grandfather was an inventor. All his life he's been tinkering with something, either taking something that existed and changing it, making it into something brand new (Or at the very least different), or inventing something entirely from spare parts. And while nothing he invented was ever earth-shaking it was always one of my greatest delights, ever since I was a little boy, to see what he'd made. Childhood visits to his home would always begin or end with me sitting on the couch, a look of absolute fascination on my tiny face as he showed off whatever gadget he'd put together in. his workshop this time around. It was like having my own personal Santa who worked all year round to fill my eight-year-old mind with wonder and glee. My older sister was likewise excited, no matter how much she tried to hide the excitement it filled her with, probably in an effort to appear cooler or more mature than myself. And while, because of real life getting in the way, the visits becam