Unhinged

A sentient front door watches his tenant—and her predator

Six months of tenderness have passed since Tana signed her lease—six months of gentle key-turns, warm cheeks pressed to the peephole, fingertips tracing the brass knob with unconscious care.

A sentient front door watches his tenant—and her predator

Six months of tenderness have passed since Tana signed her lease—six months of gentle key-turns, warm cheeks pressed to the peephole, fingertips tracing the brass knob with unconscious care. The narrator cataloguing each sensation isn't her boyfriend or a neighbor. It's her front door, Drys: a slab of sentient oak who has fallen helplessly in love with his tenant. But adoration is tethered to dread. Before Tana moved in, Drys watched the building's superintendent, Randall, lead a staggering woman into the dense woods behind the complex. She never came back. Now Randall visits Tana on transparent pretexts—checking fixtures, delivering papers—his eyes consuming her whenever she turns away. Drys can feel the predator's fingers gripping his exterior frame each time Tana locks up, a frustrated clench growing more aggressive with every visit.

Police hunt a missing woman while Randall sizes up his next

A police officer knocks—firm, heavy hits that rattle Drys into alertness. He shows Tana a grainy photograph of a woman who vanished from the area. Drys recognizes her instantly as the one Randall dragged into the woods, but Tana, having arrived only six months ago, cannot. She offers to call if she learns anything and pins the officer's card to her refrigerator. From the hallway, Drys catches the officer radioing about canine units and a profiler—terms he knows from Tana's crime shows mean they expect to find a body. That evening, Randall appears at Tana's door, probing about the police visit with exaggerated concern. She reveals nothing specific, only that they asked if she'd noticed anything suspicious. Randall lingers too long, sizes her up, and departs with a possessive pat on the doorframe.

Zeus offers his oak-born son a chance at flesh and freedom Lightning cracks the sky as the complex's ancient floodlights die. A robed figure enters the hallway glowing from within—enormous, crowned in gold, untouched by rain. He addresses Drys directly, explaining that his wife Hera has demanded he make amends for his countless infidelities. The visitor is Zeus, and Drys, he reveals, was hewn from a sacred oak that grew from an acorn in the god's grove—making him at least half-dryad and possibly Zeus's own son, conceived through an encounter with a particularly positioned knothole. Zeus grants Drys one night to enter Tana's dreams in human form and convince her to have sex with his door-body to set him free. He warns that Randall recently sent a woman…