I can’t remember which room is mine. I must be at least a hundred steps in. If only this building wasn’t so odd. There are no floors, just random doors with random numbers, lining the staircase like arbitrary picture frames, only one of these frames is my home. In fact, everyone lives in these frames. They have to. Surely I’ll recognize mine when I see it.
I kept moving one step at a time, slow and attentive, trying to recall the number on my door, of which I hadn’t the slightest clue. Maybe they were picture frames. Maybe there were no numbers but pictures instead. What was mine? A family portrait would make sense, but I am not married. Perhaps a headshot of myself, then? If I was bold enough I’d paint my own picture – one that said more than, “You’re alive!” It would tell me what I care about, what my passions are. If I was zealous about shoes, perhaps if I was a cobbler, I would paint my favorite pair of Sunday loafers, the ones I’d wear to meet with God – the only ones capable of withstanding a divine presence and not being wholly burned up. Of course, I am not religious, nor do I care much for shoes, but I tell you, after a long day of whatever it was I did, the picture welcoming me home would remind me why I ever left in the first place.
As I continued climbing, I decided that pictures made more sense than numbers and started looking for anything I could identify with. The first picture I saw was a small, dark archway resembling a mouse hole. Who could fit through that tiny door? Just as I was about to move on, the door opened and a petit brown mouse cautiously crawled out. It is a mouse hole! He looked up at me, to the left and right, then back at me. “Hello, little mouse,” I said, but he did not reply. I wonder what he’s thinking. He wrinkled his nose, as if his whiskers had picked up a signal, and scurried between my feet and off into the distance.
I got back to thinking as I moved onward but was again interrupted as traffic in the stairwell began to congest. It wasn’t like a traffic jam, still and corrosive. It was restless and violent, more like a glass overflowing. People were marching impertinently both ways, banging shoulders and checking others without remorse. I flattened my back to the wall and waited for the rush to calm before carrying on. As I stood with my neck cocked to one side, I noticed an old man being pushed around from the corner of my eye. When the area cleared, his head was roosted on a step with the rest of his body sprawled below. He either fell or was forced down and apparently had no energy to get back up. Perhaps he was injured. I should check on him. “Are you alright?” I said, still against the wall.
He tilted his head to look at me but did not respond. You could tell he was puzzled by my gesture. Maybe he’s been alone for years, and this is the first time in a long while that someone has paid him any mind. Or maybe he thought I was a picture on somebody’s door. What an odd display, he might think. Circus-folk must live there or perhaps a ventriloquist. I came off the wall and leaned closer to him. “Where do you live?” I asked.
He looked at me with stale eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I left there years ago, before I was twenty.” He rocked his head to a more comfortable position and shut his eyes. “I was very different back then. I was just out of school and giddy with freedom. I wanted to have adventures. Every night I would dream of some new excursion and spend the whole next day planning it out. This lasted for months, begetting one grand, innocent conquest. And afterwards, I thought, I’d like to fall in love.” He paused for a moment and opened his eyes. “But here I am, still trapped within these rotten walls. I never found the way out, but I never stopped looking. I got lost in this dismal hall; the black goes on forever in both directions. Given time, the darkness even attacks you, taking you prisoner to the chipped and languished wooden stairs.” He turned his head once more and looked me in the eyes. “We are bound to this place, and so I yearn for death. Only then will these walls crumble. Only then will I be free from confinement.”
His eyes fluttered and shut, and his head rolled to one side, but he was still breathing. I guess I’ll leave him here. I don’t really have anything to say. I went on my way, but I didn’t think of home. Everything was mournful. Every door I passed could be that old man’s. All these empty graves, all these dreadful deaths… Death was all I could think about. I thought of dying, that final moment before you go. I tried to imagine not existing, and the feeling it evoked was surprising. It was not bleak or frightful. It was exhilarating, a sudden rush of the fullness of every sense leaving your body. It felt like infinity, like I finally understood the universe. That’s what I want behind my door. I want to step inside and stand on a singularity before it explodes. I want to witness the billions of years of despotic collisions of matter that led to this point. I want to know what caused this thought. I want to stand beyond the horizon, from the Maker’s perspective, and watch the world unwind.
I stopped for a moment and looked around. The walls were cracked and dry, and the steps were full of splinters. Everything was disenchanted. There were no pictures anymore. The numbers were back. Stupid, meaningless numbers. I read the ones within my sight. Three hundred and ninety-one. Four hundred and twenty. Two seventy-five. Their order confused me, and I became slightly disoriented. I could hear someone’s footsteps in the distance, but they soon stopped. Maybe he encountered the dying old man, and maybe that old man is telling him the same story he told me. Maybe, in ten or so minutes, I’ll be standing next to a complete stranger, drained and forlorn. We’d be stranded together between lifeless doors, with no consolation. The dizziness worsened.
I don’t want to go home anymore. I don’t even believe in home. Maybe the old man’s right. Maybe I should just sit and wait for death. I turned around and pulled my pants to my waist, preparing to sit, but on my way down there was a cheerful pitter-patter that broke the silence. I stopped in an awkward squat, and as the noise came closer, it was accompanied by a muffled squeaking. A brown mouse came bustling out of the darkness flaunting a rich piece of cheese. He went under my rear and between my feet and stopped on the step in front of me. He stood up on his hind legs and stared at me with beady eyes, content. “Hello, mouse.” I stared back at him and shyly asked, “Do I know you?” I was suspicious of the mouse but not in a bad way. He used his tiny hands to hold the cheese steady and started gnawing at its middle. He quickly ate through it and dropped a piece in front of me. Then, without a word, the little mouse plopped back on all four and left me here, hunchbacked and ambivalent.
