You probably won't believe this…but I recently discovered a portal in my apartment. Literally stumbled over it three months ago.

No, I can't prove it. Nobody can prove it. The scientific method simply doesn't apply in this case. Can't be sure, but I think it exists outside the parameters of conventional physics. It radiates no energy, gives off no heat and emits no light within any spectrum, visible or otherwise. Direct observation is impossible; it cannot be examined, tested or measured.

Mainly because it isn't always open.

But when it is, it takes me away for a few minutes. Or hours. Or days. Hard to tell. Stepping over takes its toll on the mind; quantum paradoxes, altered perceptions. No sequence of events. Sorry. Difficult to write, impossible to describe. The portal. Unstable. Singularity in the alcove. Blinking on and off, never one way nor the other. Threshold, vestibule. Doorway to other places. Like Narnia, only no wardrobe, witch or lion.

Portal.
No, singularity.
No, singularities.

It Hovers. No, they hover. In the alcove before the doorway. Never quite there until I step through. They watch from the foyer when the door is neither open nor closed. Gateway. Rift. Fracture. Inside. Outside. Upside. Downside. Like in that Stephen King book.

Focus.

At first I thought I was time‑traveling to different points in the 20th century, but then I began to realize that these were anomalies in the fabric of the multiverse, temporal fragments of realities which never really existed. The experience itself is a little like lucid dreaming, except for being wide awake. That's how it feels: terrifying and exhilarating, stepping between worlds and the voids beyond them.

Sorry. Tangent. It's the portal. It does that to you. Scrambles your thoughts. Nothing makes sense after the first few trips. Nothing makes sense after the last few trips. The singularity warps everything out of shape, no matter which direction you turn, no matter which direction they turn. There's more than one. There has to be. No other explanation.

OK: the Portal in my Alcove.

No idea how such a thing could possibly exist, no idea how an Einstein‑Rosen Bridge could have formed in a Brixton tower block, so I don't blame you for doubting my story. I doubt it myself, doubt my own sanity most of the time. All the same: it's there. They are there. They hover in the alcove before doorway, neither open nor closed, until I step through. And when I do, I change — both in body and in mind — until they bring me home to this world.

The memories don't last long, which is why I have to set this down as soon as possible. Before the images fade, turn gray and distant and lustreless. The recollections are already starting to dim in the back of my mind, most of it's gone already. Can't wait any longer, the words are starting to lose all meaning.

Remember.

So many times, so many places, so many worlds.
So many forms.

Every time the portal opened, I was carried into a life that felt both alien and intimately my own. Sometimes it was only a flicker of strangeness, a borrowed word or a misplaced street sign. Other times, it was a full immersion — an identity so complete that I forgot who I was before.

I'm about to describe one of those times.

The transfer itself is impossible to predict. I could sometimes feel a vague tug beforehand, like a thread tightening at the edge of my awareness, but the moment of passage always caught me off guard.

It lasted only a fraction of a second, yet it stretched out to eternity. A micro‑second elongated until it felt like whole lifetimes were passing in the space between one breath and the next. The ground seemed to vanish beneath me, my body dissolving and reforming in the same instant. Stars glittered behind my eyelids, blazing like miniature supernovae, while the air itself bent and warped around me. And then, without warning, I was simply there — thrust unceremoniously into another world, another life, another body.

A female body.

I glanced about as I always did, wavering and disoriented. That would pass as soon as I got my bearings, as soon as I understood where — and who — I was.

It was early evening, probably late autumn judging by the vague chill in the air. I was standing inside a British military barracks where the troops were preparing for some kind of amateur show. The lighting and décor suggested the mid‑forties, but some anachronisms were apparent — the electrical systems seemed more advanced than they should have been. While everything seemed perfectly normal, I was still slightly dazed from the sudden transfer. I looked around again, taking in the immediate surroundings, then checked the time and date on my handphone. It said something like 6:30 EV Fiveday. I couldn’t quite make out the year, as it seemed to jump between decades as I read the numbers.

Handphone? I thought, Fiveday? The words sounded both natural and unfamiliar, as if I'd forgotten something I'd known all my life. The handphone (cell phone?) also looked somehow wrong. Too large, too heavy, too many buttons and studs and wires. It was clearly some kind of analogue device, yet appeared to have limited digital functions. And what about the date? Why did it keep changing?

Temporal flux, a voice spoke up from my subconscious, different universe. Different rules. Different laws.

I was trying to calibrate the chronometer when I heard someone clear their throat directly behind me. I turned and saw an impeccably groomed Captain approaching from the officers' lounge. He asked if I were the evening's entertainment. I blinked momentarily — I understood his words perfectly, but he was speaking a dialect of English I'd never heard before. Paradoxically, it sounded both native and foreign at the same time. The accent was restrained and cultured, and I immediately understood he'd grown up in a place called Oxforte.

The officer — whose name was Clark, or Klarkeor something similar — repeated his question. I snapped momentarily out of my fugue, glancing down at myself to realise I was indeed "the evening's entertainment." I was dressed in a parti-coloured cabaret outfit with thick layering underneath. I could also feel elaborate hose and corsetry clipped into place around my thighs and torso. It should have been an uncomfortable revelation, but once more, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Nodding my reply, I followed him up to a makeshift stage where the resident musician was tuning up on the piano. The audience burst into applause, cheering loud enough to shake the rafters. The officer took my handphone and asked if I wanted him to take some lightpix with it. I replied Yesplease and made my way across the floorboards toward the pianoman, waving toward the assembled crowd. I felt an inexplicable sense of affection for them, and the expression bravelads flickered on and off in my mind’s eye, along with an image of soldiers marching off to war with the Unionjack soaring overhead.

The pianoman struck up a jaunty rhythm, his fingers hammering the keys with reckless precision. The notes rang out sharp and bright, echoing against the rafters as though the whole barracks had been transformed into a music hall.

I lifted my skirts, the fabric catching the lamplight in shimmering folds, and kicked my legs high in time with the melody. The stockings flashed black, garters snapped white, and the crowd roared their approval, clapping in unison until the sound became a thunderous pulse beneath my feet.

Each step felt both familiar and strange — my body moved with the ease of long practice, yet I knew I had never danced this way before. The floorboards trembled under the rhythm of my boots, and for a fleeting instant I thought I could hear another set of footsteps, faint and ghostly, keeping pace with mine.

The soldiers shouted encouragement, their voices blending into a single chant that rose and fell with the music. I spun, skirts flaring like a golden wheel, and for a heartbeat, time seemed to pause as if the dance itself were pulling me deeper into the fabric of this world.

I smiled, breathless, feeling a rush of affection for these bravelads — men who laughed and clapped as though the war outside had been banished by a few kicks and twirls. Their faces blurred in the lamplight, yet their joy was unmistakable, and I found myself dancing harder, faster, determined to give them every ounce of delight I could summon.

The music faded into a final flourish, and the hall erupted once more in applause. Breathless, I lowered my skirts and stepped forward, where a cluster of bravelads surged toward the stage. Their faces were flushed with laughter, their eyes shining with gratitude. One by one they reached for my hand, some clasping it firmly, others leaning in for a quick kiss on the cheek. I smiled at each of them in turn, consciously pushing aside the thought that many of these goodboyz would never return after they shippedout.

The young captain (Clark or Klarke or whatever) was hovering at the edge of the stage, nodding discretely toward the Officer's Lounge. I shook my head in gentle response. I couldn't abandon the lads so soon, not when their spirits were lifted by something as simple as a song and a smile. I slipped away toward the punchbowl with a polite excuse, the scent of citrus and spice teasing my nose. As I lifted the crystaline ladle, I felt the faintest tug at the edge of my consciousness, like the room was gradually listing to starboard. I barely noticed it at first, too caught up in the warmth of the moment. But the tug grew stronger, insistent, until the room seemed to tilt beneath my feet.

The transition was instantaneous, a whirling rush of oblivion as I slid sideways in time. Infinity seemed to consume itself from the inside out: I was everywhere and everything; I was nowhere and nothing. Reality collapsed in on itself then cascaded back into blinding, radiant existence...

Then suddenly, shockingly — it was over.

I was back in my apartment, the cell phone lying near the now-dormant portal. Apparently, it had returned with me as the anomaly winked out of existence. I paused, righting myself, lightheaded and disoriented. Where had I been, when had I been? How long had I been away? No idea. Could been days, could've been hours, could've been seconds. Impossible to tell: different universe: temporal flux. Memories tangled, confused, distorted by the passage through the singularity. Had any of it actually happened? It could almost have been an hallucination…

Except for the Lightpix I discovered when I checked through the phone's gallery...