Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

“No.”
“But you’re sitting on it. You expect it. The floor is always there. You
don’t think about it. Except now you are, aren’t you?”
He was. He was thinking about it quite a bit.
Which is why he suddenly found himself sinking through the floor.
He scrabbled for purchase, trying to reach for something to keep him from
falling farther. He was up to his chest by the time Nelson held out his cane,
cackling as he did so. Wallace grabbed ahold of it as if it were a lifeline and
pulled himself back up, only to start sinking again almost immediately.
“Stop thinking about it,” Nelson told him.
“I can’t!” In fact, it was all he could think about. And even worse, he
wondered what would happen if he fell through the floor completely, only to
hit the earth beneath and then go through that.
But before he sank to the center of the earth only to perish (possibly) in
the molten core, Nelson said, “Did it hurt when you died?”
He blinked, his grip on the cane tight. “What?”
“When you died,” Nelson said. “Did it hurt?”
“I … a little. It was quick. One moment I was there, and then I wasn’t. I
didn’t know what was happening. I don’t see what that has to do with—”
“And when you were there and then you weren’t, what was the first thing
that went through your head?”
“That it couldn’t be real. That there had to be some mistake. Maybe even
just an awful dream.”
Nelson nodded as if that were the answer he expected. “What made you
realize you weren’t dreaming?”
He hesitated, his grip tightening on the cane. “Something I remembered.
I’d heard or read it. That it wasn’t possible for you to see your own face in a
dream with any real clarity.”
“Ah,” Nelson said. “And it was clear for you.”
“Crystal,” Wallace said. “I could see the indents on my nose from my
reading glasses, the stubble on my chin and cheeks. That’s when I first started
thinking it might not be a dream.” A fleeting thought, one he’d shoved away
as hard as possible. “And then…” He swallowed thickly. “At the funeral.
Mei was … I’d never seen her before.”
“Exactly,” Nelson said. “The mind is a funny thing. When we dream, our
subconscious isn’t capable of constructing new faces out of nothing. Anyone