Odd Prompts Week 20

This week’s prompt from Odd Prompts is from Becky Jones.  “You step out of your front door to an altered world. Subtly altered, but altered.”  Meanwhile  nother Mike Barker got my photo prompt of an abandon house.

Short, but the idea of a portal house amused me.

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Breakfast dishes tossed in the direction of the sink, I grabbed my hat, keys and bag and headed out the door.  Two steps out I turned to lock the door but paused to look around.  Something wasn’t quite right.    Not something like the door was the wrong color, or the wrong shape, more like a feeling.  I looked around, bushes next to the steps, mat in the right place, so I turned and looked around the yard.  Maple tree just to the west of the porch, check.   Mail box at the end of the walkway, check.  House color, chocolate brown with golden sun trim, check.  It was like doing one of those picture comparisons except one picture was in your head.   Car in front of house, brown Crown Victoria, check.  So what had caught my subconscious attention?  It had been something on the porch, when I turned toward the door.  Old flower pot in the east corner next to battered paper box. Something on the west side of the porch?  I looked towards the Juniper bush and noticed the bench was missing.  I slowly turned and looked again.  Rock in the corner of the yard that stopped people from driving through the yard was where it belonged.  Houses all looked to have correct colors, no one was moving yet so I couldn’t check people.  Cars looked right; maybe someone had just decided they needed the bench more than we did.  Wait, the mailbox.  I looked again.  No, not the box, the trees.  There were supposed to be a small blue spruce tree at the end of the walkway opposite the mailbox.

I went back in and opened the panel beside the door.  The display showed XG97.  I sighed.  One of my counter parts had apparently come in during the night and failed to leave a note.  I reset it to AU86 and stepped back out.  I looked around again, noting that the bench and tree were back.  Slapping a note on the door to a) let my on-site counterpart, where ever she was, know to check the settings before exiting and b) remember to leave one herself.  Wandering around in the wrong universe had been known to cause dimensional incidents.  Rules exist for a reason.