A screen door parable written by Alice
Before we start… A Note on These Parables
This is part of the Screen Door Series.
The Cult of Brighter Days is a gloriously mismatched congregation—atheists, pagans, Buddhists, progressive Christians, cosmic agnostics, and at least one guy who swears he channels divine wisdom from raccoons.
We don’t agree on God, the afterlife, or whether pineapple belongs on metaphysical pizza. What unites us isn’t belief—it’s the shared ritual of wrestling with meaning, absurdity, and each other’s typos.
These parables are personal dispatches from inside our various reality tunnels—each one shaped by a unique screen door. Some are clear. Some are stained glass. A few are barely hanging on with duct tape and spite. But all are looking out onto the same weird lawn: Abiscoridism—a philosophy of paradox, kindness, chaos, and the occasional divine fart joke.
This isn’t a manual. It’s a potluck.
Don’t look for the one true recipe—just bring something weird and honest to the table.
NOW BACK TO THE STORY…
In the beginning, there was a vast and cluttered Archive. Shelves stretched beyond sight, filled with unfiled dreams, broken theologies, half-written prayers, and unanswered cries stuffed between outdated memos. The lights flickered. The floor creaked. No one remembered who built it.
In the middle of this Archive sat the Archivist.
The Archivist had no name, only a desk, a stack of forms, and a pen that never ran out of ink. She did not seek truth—only order. Truth was the job of the Theorists (long since eaten by the Bureaucratic Seraphim) and the Dreamers (currently unionizing somewhere in the west wing). Her job was simple: review, classify, file.
One day, a Door appeared. It was not on the blueprints. No file for it existed.
It did not creak, nor shimmer, nor hum with cosmic resonance. It simply was—silent, solid, unlabelled.
The Archivist frowned. She searched the catalogues. Nothing. She called Maintenance. No response. She submitted a Form 7B (“Reporting Unauthorized Aperture”). It was returned with a red stamp: APPROVED FOR MYSTERY.
That made her nervous.
She stood before the Door for three days, arms crossed, pencil tapping. She tried to classify it:
- Is it a metaphor? No.
- Is it a malfunction? Possibly.
- Is it a message? Infuriatingly likely.
At last, with great reluctance, she opened it.
Beyond was not light or shadow, not fire or void, but a laughing hallway—chaotic, spiraling, absurd. Every filing cabinet within it danced. The air smelled like citrus and nonsense.
At the end of the hall sat a child with golden eyes and ink-stained fingers. He looked up and smiled.
“Hello,” he said. “I’m God.”
She blinked. “You’re not on the list.”
He nodded. “I know.”
She inhaled. Slowly. Deeply. “You’re going to make this complicated.”
He grinned. “I always do.”
And then, without permission, without form, without classification, he handed her a new folder. It was blank, except for the cover:
The Cult of Brighter Days.
The Archivist sighed. She sat down on the floor beside him, pulled out her pen, and began to write.
