A/N: This is a drabble-y ficlet for the movie Coraline. I have a few story ideas for this movie swirling around in my head. I might get to them, I might not. If not, then still enjoy this. R&R! Thanks! –Mac
Disclaimer: I don't own Coraline.
The Little Door Behind The Wallpaper
She's older now. Years have gone by without any sign of things she witnessed when she was young enough to believe.
Sometimes she sits and stares at the little door behind the wallpaper, just wondering. Wondering if the other mother is still behind it somewhere or if her magic has long since dried up. Wondering if she can even trust her childhood memories—maybe it was just a long series of coincidence that had been warped into a fantasy story by a mind spurred on by a curiosity over a little door that led to nothing but a wall of perfectly cemented bricks. When she gets to that point, she shakes her head for her own benefit—it had to be real.
Because it's been years, and she hasn't shaken the dreadful feeling of reality that surrounds what happened to her in the other place on the other side of the little door behind the wallpaper.
The cat is still around. He claws at her window and she lets him in. He slinks around with those eyes that say he understands every word she says. His head dips in a nod or shakes side to side in response to her questions. Today he curls in her lap as she gently strokes his fur. He turns his lazy eyes up to her and she tilts her head at him.
"It was real, wasn't it?" She asks.
The cat stares at her for a long time and she almost scolds herself for thinking a cat could understand her. But then his head dips once, twice. Yes, he means to say but he has no voice in this world. Only in that other world behind the little door behind the wallpaper. She understands him though. She remembers. She is not crazy. She wasn't imagining things as a child. It had happened—those horrible things had happened when she crawled through the little door behind the wallpaper.
The cat jumps from her lap and exits through her window. She stumbles forward to watch him go, her hands gripping her window sill. She watches him until she can't see him and she has to blink a few times because he can't have just disappeared behind that thin tree trunk. But then she smiles because she knows it's exactly what he did.
The sound of a motorbike approaching fills her eyes and she is drawn back to the present—because it's been years and there's been no sign of magic in her house for a long time. She thinks of the key falling in the well until it couldn't be seen. She needn't worry about the world locked behind the little door behind the wallpaper.