by Joe Koch
(1000 words)
Drew looked through the peephole for two and a half minutes before venturing out. Nineteen-seventies brutalist architecture massed with obstinate bulk. False entryways and unwelcoming corridors defied trespass. The buried thrum of recirculating air pulsed through steel ducts behind uniform ivory-toned walls.
The new place had improved Drew’s mood, but not their anxiety. It was private and quiet, an introvert’s heaven. No one had been around to see Drew break down in tears when they settled on soup for dinner and realized they didn’t pack a can opener.
No one passed by in the hallway for Drew to accost, stumbling over their words to explain they’d thrown things into the car in a guilty rush. Ashamed under Christopher’s glowering, they didn’t dare go back, and the food they’d grabbed on impulse was pre-packaged junk. A classic amalgamation of Drew-style mistakes ending up in no dinner. Christopher’s laughter inside Drew’s head never let them rest.
You don’t have to tell everyone your whole life story, Christopher said.
Shaking him off, Drew labeled the voice: “Toxic.”
The hallway was empty. The outdated luxury units in the five level apartment block were enclosed by stairwells and insulated against tenant noise by smartly placed mechanical rooms. Drew quit worrying about disturbing the unseen neighbors while lugging boxes up to the third floor when they realized each doorway’s nook rendered them equally invisible. After countless trips, they didn’t cross a single soul.
The place promised bliss, with no noise except the calming pulse of hidden machinery. But Drew’s blood sugar had dropped after all the exertion, and with no one else on hand, the extrovert’s easy task of knocking on a stranger’s door threatened to overwhelm them.
Don’t be an ass, Christopher’s internalized voice jeered. Pick any door. What’s the worst that can happen?
An onslaught of possibilities flooded Drew’s mind. A murderer might lurk behind such silent sequestered doorways. A sexual sadist might scheme to trap their next torture victim. An isolated grandmother might die with Drew in her unit, and if a heretofore undiagnosed seizure disorder manifested in Drew simultaneously they would also collapse, leaving both corpses to be devoured by the old hoarder’s innumerable cats. Her unit swarmed with them.
Breathless, Drew tiptoed into the hall.
With a clammy fist, Drew knocked on an apartment door. No answer.
They exhaled.
Christ, remember to breathe. Drew wasn’t sure if Christopher’s voice mutated or if the thought was their own.
Challenged by the devious angles obscuring each entryway, Drew sought the next unit. They noted canvassers and thieves didn’t stand a chance of kidnapping new cult members or making a quick get-away in the maze of convoluted passages. Drew finally stumbled across a door. Tensing up a sweaty fist, they knocked.
No answer again. The same exhausting search and lack of response occurred on the third, fourth, and fifth attempts. At the sixth door, a shadow passed over the peephole. Drew’s fidgeting hands burst upward in an exaggerated wave.
They bounced on their heels and spoke too loudly. “Hi there!”
Shadow and light switched places across the aperture. A tree outside the hallway’s horizontal glass-block window shook. Leaves played hide and seek with a streetlight. Drew blushed as no one answered and they realized the light was coming from outside the building. At least there was no one inside the apartment to see them cringe.
Resigned to skipping dinner, Drew miscalculated on the way back to the stairwell and ended up on the second floor instead of the third. An easy mistake; the stairway configurations varied depending on the floor and the direction. Drew took what they judged a north running corridor behind a vibrating mechanical room to access the stairwell they’d used to move in. Ascending a truncated set of five steps, they faced three more staircases branching off from the landing. One led downward. Two led upward at steep angles. Drew gasped in frustration.
They took the shortest staircase upward. It bypassed the third floor and deposited Drew in the fifth floor corridor.
Drew cried out to the empty hall: “Oh, come on.”
They slogged back down the stairs. They didn’t remember how many passages and landings they’d passed on the way up. The climbing and descending on an empty stomach left them lightheaded.
Drew could swear the number of alternate routes proliferated with each step. They ducked into an open hallway, impatient to exit the diabolically expanding stairwells. They’d left their apartment unlocked, keys and phone out in the open on the kitchen bar because they were just stepping out for a second. Drew reached into their pocket, desperate enough to call 911, if only they had their phone.
Don’t be such a child, Christopher chided.
“Shut up!” Drew turned and hid their tears from the unpopulated corridor.
The murmur of concealed machinery whispered; a sitcom laugh-track muffled by spackled walls and insulation. The sound of Christopher overheard from the bathroom chuckling with his buddies.
No, no; of course not. Old machines make strange noises. No big deal. Drew only needed to reverse engineer the path to the correct stairwell by counting the number of doors knocked upon. They were on the floor with the distinctive door lighted through the glass block window. Drew turned the corner and there it was: the suspicious peephole, the tree anxiously rustling opposite its entrance.
For no reason other than their love of symmetry, Drew knocked on the door. When it opened, the objects that applauded Drew’s over-dramatic facial expression created a rippling sound much like subdued human mirth. Above the pulsating roar of machinery, Drew didn’t hear the subtle cutlery sounds of their transecting planes or acknowledge the gift of appreciation they conveyed through dividing sections of his grotesque gape into elegant geometry. Like all residents, Drew was returned to their unit after the game with a winning prize they were sadly unable to use. What remained of Drew lay piled neatly on the futon beside a brand new electric can opener.
END
Joe Koch writes literary horror and surrealist trash. Joe is a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and the author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands, The Couvade, and Convulsive. They’ve had over fifty short stories published in books and journals like Vastarien, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, and The Queer Book of Saints. Find Joe online at horrorsong.blog and on Twitter @horrorsong.