Versailles had it's hall of mirrors.
Kramer had a hall of doors.
Doors were everywhere. Big doors, little doors, metal doors, wooden doors, ornate doors and plain doors. There were doors on the ceiling and doors on the floor.
Choose carefully thought Kramer, but his choices would have to wait. The doors changed to eyes, staring down at him. Then to mouths, each one whispering unintelligible words, low hissing sounds and soft murmurs.
Back to doors.
Kramer opened the nearest but held back going through and just looked. He could see the universe in its entirety. No Hubble telescope for this boy. For a moment Kramer thought he knew the secret of life, of life, universe and everything, it was just there, within his grasp, then it was gone. Great clouds of cosmic gas giving birth to stars that fired his imagination as he stared into the void.
Then the door shut fast.
Kramer chose another, a great metal door with rusty hinges which creaked open slowly as he approached to reveal another, then another and another and so on until they disappeared into the distance. A line of open doors stretching as far as he could see, and them some.
Kramer stepped through, but the doors shut tight one after the other, Slam! Slam! Slam! Slam in quick succession. The sound resonated around the vast room and echoed off walls and floors, and eyes and mouths and doors and more doors.
The sound appeared solid now. Kramer could see the waves of energy zig-zagging across, bouncing at angles off the walls and the floors and the eyes and the mouths. They swallowed the sounds then spat them out again in short machine-gun bursts. "There's a killer on the road", "Ella Guru, Ella Guru, she knows all the colours that nature do".
Kramer opened another. Primo Carnera rode by on a pink and blue striped pantomime horse, shouting "Zieg Heil", before riding off into a blue sunset. "Adios amigo". "See you soon", the room shouted back.
By now every door Kramer opened revealed madness.
Cartoon characters floated by. Long-gone friends smiled from one, whilst Groucho Marx, clean shaven, performed the soliloquy from Hamlet in perfect French from another. John Wayne and Lou Reed held hands and duetted a rousing version of "A European son to Delmore Shwartz". Che Guevara ran the first sub four minute marathon only to be reported killed in action leading a band of guerrillas trying to release a group of hostages forced to watch Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera for eternity. Harry Lime, his kilt looking very fetching, played with a yo-yo with a mile-long string. Cuckoo, cuckoo.
Doors to the left of him, doors to the right: into the valley of death rode 600 Chinese chefs, brandishing blood-stained meat cleavers and demanding home rule for Disneyland. Madness, madness.
The doors were now moving. Moving closer together and starting to spin. Round and round. Their spinning gaining speed until it was one huge blur, sparks flying off like a giant Catherine Wheel. Remember, remember the 5th of November. Come back Guy, all is forgiven. Where are you when we need you most?
Then the spinning stopped.
In front of Kramer remained one large black door, just visible in the blackness that surrounded it. On a small sign at the bottom, written in Japanese, was the legend : "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here", and Kramer understood it perfectly.
With one bound he abandoned everything and duly entered.
It was just as black on the inside.
