Perfect Blue Buildings

Kate looked up and was immediately dizzy.

“I’m going to fall over backwards.”

She felt a hand on her back, warming a handprint into the skin between her shoulder blades through her light blue sweater. “You’re not going to fall over,” Geode said.

“It’s so… so…” She stopped, still staring up. The light from outside trickled in though the gaps in the walls, twining around ten stories of mostly bare rebar and bits of decaying wallpaper moving like leaves in the air. “Tall.”

“It’s perfect,” Geode breathed.

A slow wave of a breeze swept some of the wallpaper out of the way, blinding Kate for an instant. They fell back into place and suddenly she could see it all clearly, every detail all the way up to the ceiling: the crumbling concrete that was in some paces still draped around metal, the hanging dust in the air that seemed as solid as what was left of the walls and the way the light fell through it in rays, the drips from last night’s rain seeping through the roof and falling down the many tiers like a fountain made of silver string. The only sounds were a faint drip, drip, drip in the corners and the wind like drowsy breaths through the walls.

“Do you know,” Kate started, then trailed off and listened to her words diffuse into the empty space.

Geode caught on and smiled faintly. “Echo…”

“Not quite… It spreads too thin to bounce back.” She looked up again and fought the urge to crane her head too far back. “Do you know what happened to the floors?”

“No,” Geode whispered back. “It’s just hollowed out. No one knows why.”

“What about…”

“No one knows why,” Geode repeated, with the mysterious half grin that had drawn Kate into coming here at all.

The dust was all around them, making the air seem thick. As Geode led her to the center of the space, where the concrete floor was especially worn, Kate thought dazedly back to why she had agreed to come. You’re off in your own head too much, Geode had said. Do something. Come do something out in the world.

Kate walked through life as if asleep and she knew it, but in this curiously dreamlike place she felt more awake than anywhere else. She felt as though anything that could happen might, and it was making the skin at her temples and the back of her neck damp.

“Okay, stand here.” Geode put hands on her shoulders and guided her to the worn spot. “Now just… look around. Get out of your head.”

“What should I look at?”

Geode laughed, backing away. “Everything! It’s not all going to disappear if you take a moment to just exist in a perfect place.”

Kate flushed and looked up cautiously. The light wafted in and out of her eyes, by turns sharp and soft, almost relaxing in its rhythm. She was aware of the walls reaching up around her, all of its lines and cracks and crumbles. The metal jutting out of the wall was bent at different angles, acute and obtuse. Reaching… up.

“It looks like it was pushed,” Kate murmured, tilting her head back a bit farther than she probably should have. “Is that possible? That everything was pushed out through the ceiling…” She felt herself leaning too far backward and tensed for the fall. Then she realized her toes were pointing down and the first tier of rebar was almost eye level. “Oh my god!”

A few feet away and below her, Geode grinned. “I told you this place was great.”

“It is, but…” She reached out and touched one of the curved iron bars, feeling flakes of rust slough off under her fingertips. “How is this possible?”

“Nobody knows. You can go all the way up to the top if you want.”

Kate looked up at the distant ceiling doubtfully. “How long does that take?”

“Does it matter?” Geode asked lightly. “We have all day. Just do whatever you want. And don’t worry, if you want to come down it’ll let you. That’s how it works.”

I don’t think I want to come down ever, Kate thought as she continued to float gently in the air. It was very pleasant, like waking up slowly in a warm, soft place. As if every care and thought weighing her down had fallen away. The walls seemed to grow thinner as she rose, and held her in less. There was a feeling of infinite space.

She passed what had been the edges of rooms, seeing only pieces of what they had been. A fallen patch of wallpaper caught fluttering in the metal and disintegrating concrete here, a broken and empty picture frame hanging crookedly from the wall there, the remnants of the outlines that had once held it all together. The inside of the building was broken; the outside still stood. Kate saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to see a full-length mirror, webbed with fine cracks but not quite broken, and she stared at her reflection.

The light falling into the building seemed so bright that she could almost see shadows of the bones beneath her skin. She could have been a saint, or an angel, from the corona of dusty air hanging around her like a second layer of clothing. When she moved her arm it followed her outline, clinging as if attached. This was why Geode had brought her, to get her to see something extraordinary existing in the middle of such an ordinary reality.

Everyone could look like this, she thought. I’m no different than I’ve ever been, underneath all this, but… In this place, anyone could be an angel. It just comes out.

It was being in the exact center of the building. The light was brighter there, and the further she rose the clearer it became that this was because the middle of the ceiling was gone, disintegrating around the edges of empty space and framed by dark patches of dripping rainwater. Looking down, she could see a curiously symmetric shape to how the rebar had been torn: not merely pulled up but to the right as well. She smiled at it, at the bones and glow of her soul showing through her skin. Everything came up and out, like the central swirl of a galaxy. It was the center of everything, of the universe.

Kate rose gently through the ceiling, and above it. She had lost all sense of time and all thought of how she was going to get back down. Below her she could see the outside of the building, and it was a color she had never noticed before – a deep, perfect blue.