My good online friend and beta reader, LurkerWithout works nights at a hotel. Having held this job myself, I understand his psychological pain. To pass the time, he will occasionally doodle and share those doodles with the masses. (That’s you and me, in case you were wondering just who was amassed.) Today’s offering is worth reposting, both for its humor, but in particular the fourth panel:

I love the angle of the door and the streaks that give it texture and make me feel like I’m looking at a door that’s really there and really weird. But it’s the question! The question demands an answer and my brain just starts turning.

What is behind the crooked door?

Is it a crooked world? Is it a world filled with optical illusions where everything is level, but based on its craft, everyone walks slanted in an attempt to maintain their balance? Or is it metaphorical? Is the world on that side the same as ours but crooked? Half-way between this world and the bizarro world, where everything seems normal until the twelve-foot tall white rabbit comes out of his pawn shop and beats the shit out of you because you were looking through the window too long. Don’t fuck with the white rabbit. If you’re looking you’re buying else move along.

So move along you do, walking down a street like any other you might walk in New York at night, feeling dirtier than it really is because the air is stagnant and filled with exhaust. You turn in an alley because that’s what one does when he feels like he’s being followed and no matter where you go, you always feel like you’re being followed inside the crooked door. That’s where you meet Tommy the Rat, but he’s not a squealer. Bobby the Hamster is, but Bobby the Hamster is Tommy’s bitch and the hamster doesn’t do anything without the rat’s say so (unless you can get Bobby alone and buy him an orange soda, but since you don’t have the peach pits to pay up, how are you going to get an orange soda?).

All you have is cloth money (as dollars are cloth not paper, so we really need to change that phrase) and that doesn’t get you very far here. You need yourself some peach pits or people will think you’re a chump.

Maybe you can turn a trick or two, but the corners are already full of fellas and their pimp looks like she can kick your ass. It doesn’t much anyway cause the fellas are as broke as you. No one wants humans anymore. There’s nothing finer than the foxes uptown. They don’t have pimps. They have services with phone lines and operators. An hour with a fox costs more pits than you could make in a year turning tricks down on the corner, so just give that up and see if you can’t pick up some day labor down by the docks.

When does the sun rise here?