SHUT THE FRONT DOOR

It was very late on a moonless, starless Monday night when Simplicius Simplicissimus noticed the front door of his house was gone. He stood there for a while, latchkey in hand, arm outstretched for the absent lock, wondering what to do next.

He thought he should perhaps tell somebody. But it was almost one in the morning – so technically, already Tuesday – and everyone would be asleep by now. (To sleep was the only thing Simplicius truly wanted as well.)

Besides, front doors had the bad habit of disappearing all the time. Everyone knew that – no one knew why. A door would just go walkabout one night and stay gone for two, three months, sometimes a year. Some would never come back.

People had tried all kinds of things to prevent doors from becoming unhinged and walking away. Yet the doors – well, some doors – would still go “door-ing” in the middle of the night. Unless there was a baby in the house. No front door would just up and walkabout if there was an infant in the house – or an elderly person. Front doors were loyal like that.

Simplicissimus wasn't a baby, of course. Nor was he very, very old. And he lived alone – the perfect target. 

So accepting his doorless fate, he penciled “Please knock before entering” on a piece of paper, used a tack to stick it to the doorframe of the missing front door, and went to bed.

As he was falling asleep, Simplicius remembered the book his godfather, Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, had written and wondered if he, too, would one day be able to converse with inanimate objects – and what extraordinary histories those front doors might tell him. 

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©2026 CE

In case you're wondering about the book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicius_Simplicissimus