The Ward

It’s like being back in the womb except for the temperature, its bitter cold. He can’t tell if his eyes are open or closed because he can only see the same black emptiness. He can’t scream, not when his lungs are full of water. He can’t kick or punch his way out, his foe is formless and all encompassing, like wrestling with God. His limbs might as well be in chains, bound in chains and thrown overboard to sink helplessly to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean like a cask of spoiled cargo.

-The hell was that?

The brown skinned kid with the Caesar fade was almost blinded by the fluorescent lights when he awoke. After rubbing his eyes, the room gradually came into focus and he realized that he was in his high school cafeteria.

-Another one of those crazy ass dreams. Why’m I always drowning in my damn dreams? Why can’t I dream about good stuff, like flying or havin sex or something?

A slight smirk came over the boy’s face as a subconscious joke about the phrase “wet dream” crept into the back of his head. Looking around the room, he realized that he had been sleeping at one of the round tables at the end of the lunch-line. A strange sinking feeling came over the boy, not unlike the way he felt the time he saw a dead cat lying in a ditch on his way to school last week. Though he was completely alone in the spacious room, he had the feeling that someone was watching him.

-What the hell was I doing?

The boy felt as if he was grasping at smoke as he tried to recall his most recent memory. As he looked down at his shirt, the memory began to return. He was wearing a gray hooded jacket with a pair of white basketball shorts which had a pair of green lines running down each of the legs on synthetic fabric. They were the same grays all the athletes wore as well as a few of the team managers, and the shorts were the same ones the coaches gave to him at the beginning of the season. He unzipped his jacket to see what else he was wearing. All he wore beneath was a white Jersey with the word, “Bulldogs” written across it in green letters above his number 13.

-That’s right, we played the Bobcats tonight.

With this came the memory of walking alone across a bridge, the bridge on Liberty Street that spanned the flood-control canal. The canal was full of dark rushing water. It wasn’t yet sunset but it had been raining all day and by that time of day, the gray clouds had turned black and all the light was the darkest gray. It was like Hell all day, but fortunately for him the rain had ceased by the time the day was over.

-No, that was weeks ago.

A more recent memory came into view; at least it felt like it was more recent. He was in the cafeteria sitting right where he was at that moment. It was after the morning workout and he was eating breakfast with his friends, cracking jokes and exchanging stories about girls they’d messed around with. All lies, at least for him it was. He was still a virgin, but not from lack of trying. The closest he’d ever came was in the back seat of a Mustang that belonged to this rich White girl he had met after a game a few weeks ago. He only got as far as the zipper of her jeans before they saw a police car roll by slowly. It sort of ruined the mood for the two of them, so the girl dropped him off at his house. Josh had to settle for nothing more than an intimate kiss in the front seat of the car as well as his own vivid imagination beneath the sheets of his bed in the privacy of his room. Though she was cute, Josh knew that she only wanted him because he was on the varsity team.

He heard his coach’s voice from behind him saying, “Hey Josh, c’mere I wanna talk to ya for a sec’.”

Josh sighed before standing up from the table, quick to hide his disdain before facing Coach Hunter. Coach Hunter stood almost a foot taller than Josh, but he was considerably shorter than most of his team’s starting five. His face was always a perpetual shade of red even when he wasn’t yelling his head off on the sidelines. Red to match his hair and his freckles, he had a crew-cut and the freckles more or less covered his face.

Coach Hunter spoke as he handed Josh a stack of papers stapled together, “I wanted to talk to you before you went to class.”

Josh looked at first packet the coach had handed to him. It as the collection of plays, but the coach normally only gave the hard copies to his starters, all the rest just studied the board at practice and before games.

Looking back at his Coach with a curious expression Josh asked, “What’d you wanna talk to me about?”

The coach replied, “Josh I’m starting you tonight instead of Rodney.”

Josh asked, “Okay, but why?” to which the coach responded, “Our offense against the Bobcats will be stronger with you in.”

Josh shrugged and replied, “I guess, but I’m not that good.”

The coach said, “Yer better than you think, you just gotta apply yourself more.”

Josh looked at the paper and then started rubbing his shoulder in that nervous way he always did since he was a little kid.

Coach Hunter asked, “What’s wrong?”

Josh replied, “Its jus...Isaac’s gonna be pissed, now that his ‘perfect five’ is gonna be messed up.”

The coach said, “Well he’s gonna have to get over it. It’s not his team it’s all of ours. You make sure you look at that sheet, I’ll see ya after school.”

Josh rubbed his head, though the conversation with the coach happened just that morning it seemed like it had been months ago, like he was watching ghosts of the past acting out his memory in clouds of smoke. He stood up from the table and looked around the room. Something was wrong. He walked over to the double doors next to the lunch-line entrance and looked through their windows to the stone pavilion that covered the school’s east entrance. The only light in the pavilion was coming from the single wall light protected by a cage of thin metal bars. The area where the student parking lot should have been was engulfed in a gray haze. He couldn’t even see the sky, it was so thick. He pushed on the door, but it would not budge.

-Damn janitors must’ve locked it already. But still, I should be able to open from the inside, shouldn’t I?

Josh turned around and surveyed the room once more. It was like a church, with the stage in the front off to the left of the main hallway.

-This place is pretty clean for a game night.

The floor was spotless, every tabletop shined. The fluorescent where much brighter than they should have been, in fact there was almost always at least one or two which flickered over and over, but not now. Everything was all too perfect.

-Are my eyes messed up or is somebody playin a trick on me?

Josh had never known the cafeteria to be very aesthetically appealing, but at that moment it was like watching an old silent film about his school. Everything was black, white or gray. The chairs which had once been dark green were now black. The tabletops, once blue, were now a lustrous white. Even the once red fire alarms were now black with white lettering. As if that wasn’t enough, it seemed that someone had taken the liberty of replacing all of the vending machines with empty black trophy cases. The four large windows which once allowed a view into the basketball court were now sealed with white cinder blocks and four extra empty trophy cases had taken their place.

-Maybe the front doors are still open.

Josh was walking toward the other end of the cafeteria when he heard the faint yet unmistakable sound of a metal door closing in the gym.

-Someone else is here.

Josh cautiously approached the metal gym door, the light reflecting on its black surface making it difficult to see. He was hesitant before opening the door, not entirely sure he wanted to find out what type of person hangs around inside a school at nighttime. He opened the door and was relieved to find that the lights in the gym were not nearly as bright as the ones in the cafeteria.

-The fuck is going on!

The gym was nothing like Josh remembered it. The bleachers were gone, the murals on the wall were replaced with a pair of horizontal green bars that ran parallel across all four walls and the walls themselves appeared to have been forced inward to occupy the space left by the bleachers leaving only about four or five feet between them and the court line. There were no scoreboards and the American flag which used to hang on the wall opposite the gym’s entrance was replaced by a simple white sheet, like a sail from a ship. The speakers had been removed as well as most of the hanging lights so that all that illuminated the gym was a pair of dim naked bulbs hanging from opposite ends of the ceiling.

Josh looked to the center of the court where a solitary leather basketball was resting on the half court line. Alone, the ball seemed to whisper the word to Josh, “Alone.”

-I’ve had worse dreams I guess.

Josh walked over to the half-court line and picked up the ball. He turned to aim at the goal on the cafeteria’s side of the gym when he realized that the goals themselves had changed as well. They were not the regular white boards which were usually mounted on the wall, but more like those cheap plastic ones on a metal pole, not unlike the goal in the drive-way of his house. Josh took a shot and the ball fell through the rim with a swish.

-I sure hope Freddy and Jason don’t come runnin out the locker room at me.

The locker room; the ghost of the hours past returned and Josh saw himself in the locker room, suiting up for the game. He had heard rumors when he first entered the locker room, whispers that some head-hunter was in the crowd that night, scouting for new blood. From what school he belonged to, Josh never knew but he thought he might have seen him on his way inside. There was a strange skinny looking White man whom Josh had never seen before, he was wearing brown khakis and a gray polo shirt. Josh couldn’t have cared less. He never planned on playing ball past high school anyway. Intramural All-star was good enough for him. Josh was listening to his “Blazing Arrow” CD, his favorite Blackalicious album on his music player. On game nights Josh normally listened to Linkin Park or Jay-Z or something similar, but he was in one of those moods. He wasn’t exactly angry and not really depressed, but some weird combination of the two. Either way, he didn’t feel good and the only remedy was to listen to “Chemical Calisthenics” on his black ear-encompassing headphones.

Josh was lacing up his clean white Jordans on the bench in front of his locker when he noticed number 50 approaching him with his lackey number 46 at his side. Number 46, Andrew Hunter, was the coach’s son which was evident through his blazing red hair. Unfortunately for Andrew his acne had taken the place of his father’s freckles. Josh thought to himself, your face looks like my back, as Andrew approached him with that same goofy smile on his face. Number 50, Isaac, was a senior in every sense of the word. He was the team’s captain as well as its oldest member. If it weren’t for Justin, the six foot eleven monster, he would have also been the tallest player on the team. Isaac had medium brown skin with low cut hair and a little white patch on the left side of his head which was about the size of a Kennedy half-dollar but not quite the same shape.

Isaac looked down at Josh with that same arrogant sneer which he gave to all the underclassmen on the team before he said, “Guess you’re starting tonight, huh?”
Josh pretended not to hear him through his headphones and went back to lacing up his shoes.

Isaac continued, “You know it’s a scout out there tonight, right?”

When Josh didn’t respond Andrew chimed in, “Here’s what’s gonna happen. You get the ball and you pass it to me or Isaac, got it?”

Josh didn’t acknowledge either of them, but brushed off his shoes and turned back towards his locker as he turned up the volume on his music player.

Isaac stepped forward and pushed the headphone off of Josh’s right ear as he said, “Hey, Drew’s talkin’ to you.”

Josh batted his hand away and shouted, “Get the fuck off me!” as he pushed Isaac away.

Josh’s push had a considerable amount of force to it, despite how short he was in comparison to him. When Isaac regained his balance he stepped forward and grabbed Josh by his Jersey and said, “You don’t fuckin’ push me, nigga!”

There would have been an all out brawl if Justin hadn’t run over to the three of them and pried them apart with his gigantic arms. Isaac and Josh were still going at it until Coach Hunter grabbed Josh by the shoulders and pulled him away from Isaac.

The coach yelled, “What the hell’s goin on here?” his red face growing even redder.

Josh said nothing as he glared at Isaac. He simply picked up his headphones and mp3 player, tossed them inside his locker and slammed the door. As Josh left the locker room, the coach glared at Isaac for a moment and then the rest of the team.

Hunter said, “Alright, all of ya get yer sorry asses out there. Let’s go.”

Josh retrieved the ball and took aim at the old rusty goal with the dirty plastic backboard. He mumbled, “This game used to be fun,” as he took another shot. This one bounced off the rim, shaking up the metal chain netting and sending the ball bouncing toward the opposite end of the gym. Josh sighed and walked lazily to the other side of the court to retrieve the ball. He looked at the walls were the bleachers should have been as he walked past them. It wasn’t that great a loss, the bleachers; they never held anybody who was there for him. Josh’s mother always had to work during his games and his father, well who knows. The only person who ever came to watch Josh play was his older brother Daniel, but he might as well have been on Mars. Daniel was now about three states away studying physics on some all expenses paid scholarship. Josh was glad for him, who wouldn’t be? But deep down, he was jealous, jealous of his brother for being so sure of what he wanted to be when he finished school. As Josh bent down to pick up the ball he noticed that something had changed in the locker room doors as well.

-Where’s that light coming from?

All that could be seen through the windows on the doors that led to the locker rooms was a pale white light. Josh carried the ball to the door to the right of the goal and looked through. Nothing but the white light could be seen, no ceiling, no walls, no floors, no up or down and no source for the light it was just everywhere.

-I wish Danny was here.

Daniel always knew how to explain things like this to his little brother. Josh thought back to when he was ten years old, lying on his back in the his bed room with the lights out, staring up at the plastic glow in the dark stars on his ceiling while Daniel laid in the next bed explaining to Josh what Dark Matter was and how it could supposedly explain the arrangement of all the heavenly bodies in the universe. Josh still talked to Daniel on a daily basis to tell him about school, the family and girls he almost got lucky with; but it wasn’t the same as having him there, it never was.

Josh imagined Daniel standing next to him while he looked through the window, talking in that funny voice he always used when he was talking about science and math, “You see Josh; we’re at the part of the black hole known as the event horizon, the point beyond which events from within cannot affect the outside observer. Black holes are made out of massive astrophysical compact halo objects, which have so much mass that not even light can escape the attractive force they exert.”

-Whatever you say, bro.

Josh walked over to the other door on the same wall and observed the same empty void.

-This wall is the border of Purgatory.

Purgatory, Josh brought up the topic with his brother one time a few months before he went off to college. Josh had read all about it in the Divine Comedy and he wanted to know what Daniel thought about it. Daniel went off on a rant about religious indoctrination and whatnot. Daniel thought it was a black mark on human evolution, Josh thought it was just a cool story but then again Josh seemed to be the only one who actually enjoyed reading those old epic poems.

That faint sound of doors closing returned again and Josh turned around to see that the window on the door between the gym and the cafeteria was now glowing white as well. He dropped the ball and dashed to the other side of the gym. Josh pressed his palms against the sides of the door and watched everything in the cafeteria rapidly fall out of focus until it too was consumed by that pale light. He grabbed the handle of the door, but it wouldn’t open.

Josh banged his fists on the door and yelled, “Lemme out! Open this fucking door!”

Josh grabbed the handle with both hands and utilized all of his strength to pull against it. It was no use; he barely managed to shake the door in its frame. The left side of Josh’s hoody began to slip down his shoulder as he fought to open the door. He did not let go of the handle as he sunk to the floor, falling to his knees and resting his head on the cold metal.
Hot tears began to trickle down his cheeks as he cried weakly, “Somebody let me out. I hate this place.”

For a moment, Josh thought he could feel the sensation of someone grabbing his right hand and squeezing it gently.

He could have sworn he heard Daniel’s voice whispering like a ghost in his ear, “I’m here Josh. It’s okay, everything’s okay.”

Josh looked up at his hands, still holding the door handle and nothing else.

-You’re wrong, bro. Everything’s not okay, it’s all wrong. I hate this place. I hate this school, this gym, these clothes, this life. I want out.

For once, Josh was glad to be alone. The only thing he hated more than crying was for people to know he was crying. Josh imagined his brother standing over him, looking down at him as he cried like a child that had lost its favorite toy. Daniel would never have said anything, but Josh knew he would be able to see the disappointment in his eyes. Josh let go of the door handle, turned around and rested with his back against the wall and his arms around his knees. When Josh finally managed to calm down, he wiped the tears from his face and looked up at the pair of light bulbs hanging on the ceiling, dangling like a pair of lost sneakers on a telephone wire.

-This place is getting darker.

The bulb closest to the place where Josh was sitting had begun to flicker in a strange rhythm. It shined brightly for a fraction of a second, blacked out and shined a bit longer, slightly dimmer than before. The other bulb did not flicker, but gradually faded so that it was becoming dimmer in relation to the first. The rhythm of the flickering bulb reminded Josh of his grandfather’s heart monitor after he had his first stroke four years ago. A week after they visited him in the hospital their grandfather had another stroke which would take his life.

-There has to be another way out.

Josh remembered that there had always been two doors on the cafeteria side of the gym. He stood up, fixed his hoody and walked behind the goal to the other door and looked through the window. This door should have led back into the cafeteria, but all he saw was what appeared to be a short utility hallway with a tall, black metal door at the end.

-Don’t really wanna go in there, but if nothing else is open...

Josh grabbed the handle and pulled. He felt air rushing past him as the door began to give way. Much to Josh’s relief, he was able to open the door completely, but he didn’t step inside just yet. He turned around and examined the gym once more. By then the room was so dark that Josh couldn’t even see the opposite wall. That white light was gone and only the dying bulbs were left to illuminate the room. Their glow was so dim that Josh could barely see the outline of the basketball on the edge of the court. Staring at the ball again, it seemed to whisper to Josh, “alone”, once more. Josh sighed and turned back to the hallway as the light bulbs in the gym flickered one last time and died.

The lighting in the hallway was even dimmer than the gym had been when Josh first entered it. The concrete floor was painted dark gray and the walls were made of white cinder blocks. There was a considerable amount of dust and torn paper scattered across the floor. Josh looked around and noticed the smaller metal doors, two pairs on opposite ends of the hallway. Josh looked through the window on the door to his left and saw an empty closet whose far end was shrouded in shadows. As he stared into the shadows Josh imagined that he could see a white Jersey with green lettering far off in the darkness until the body that wore it lunged at him.

Josh jumped backwards a little bit and then began to laugh at himself for being so nervous. There was nothing behind that door but shadows and his own imagination. Josh looked to his right and through the window on this door he saw a young White woman standing next to an empty desk in a room with bare stone walls. The woman was mildly attractive, probably more so if her long black hair wasn’t all tangled and frizzy, not to mention the erratic way she flailed her arms around as she spoke frantically into her cell phone.

-Now where’ve I seen you before?

Josh pressed his ear against the door and through the metal he heard the muffled sound of the woman’s voice shouting, “Where did you find him? How long? Yes...well was he breathing or not? I’ve got a light pulse!”

-Who’s she talking about?

Josh grabbed the handle of the door but it was locked. He pounded his fist on the door, but the woman ignored him.

-Quit bein a bitch and open the damn door!

The woman yelled excitedly, “Mild response to painful...”

-This is bullshit.

Josh gave up on the woman and continued to walk down the hallway, the paper crunching beneath the soles of his shoes as he approached the ominous black door. Josh heard a loud metallic click. He looked over his shoulder to see the door to the gym closing shut. Through the window nothing but darkness could be seen.

-I wonder if the gym’s still there.

Josh continued to the second door on the right. Through this window Josh could see the same room with the pale woman on the far side, but from this angle he could see two more people. The first was a thin middle-aged man wearing brown khakis and a gray polo shirt. He was sitting in a leather lounge chair, leaning forward and resting his forehead on his crossed fingers. With his head tilted toward the door Josh could clearly see a bald spot on the top of the man’s head. Adjacent to the lounge chair was a black leather sofa and in front of the sofa was a little girl with pig tails, scribbling in a coloring book laid out on the coffee table. The girl was about four or five years old, she had light brown skin and she wore a white dress with a dark green bow around the waist. Josh watched the little girl as she put down the green crayon and reached over to the pile to the left of the coloring book to select another. As the girl picked up the black crayon, she looked at the window through which Josh was watching her.

-Can she see me?

Josh grabbed the handle and pulled, but was not surprised when it didn’t open. Josh banged his fist on the door and cried, “Hey! Tell that guy to come open this door! Please!”
The little girl smiled and continued diligently scribbling away with her black crayon.

-Dammit!

Josh sighed and looked to the other door on the left. This one was just a dark closet as well. Josh stared at the window and imagined Isaac’s giant head floating around inside there. It would spot Josh and burst through the door to devour him whole. That would be a fitting end to this nightmare of his.

Josh imagined that Isaac would be angry enough at Josh to want to devour him like a shark eating a minnow. The game didn’t go well, not for Isaac at least. That’s not to suggest it wasn’t a great game. The Bobcats played fiercely but Josh’s team managed to take home the win in the last quarter. Josh was still a bit angry about the locker room incident so he barely passed the ball to Isaac at all in the first half. But even without passing to Isaac, Josh managed to leave the game with his first triple-double in his entire high school career. Josh smiled when he reminisced about the people in the stands going, “Where’s this kid been all season!”

If you were on the opposite team you would have thought Josh was the star player instead of Isaac. Josh couldn’t wait to tell his brother about the game, he called him on his cell phone when he was in the locker room, but he only got his voicemail. Josh left Daniel an excited message and promised to call him again when he got home. Isaac must have been pretty angry, because Josh didn’t see him at all when he left the locker room.

Josh stood before the great metal door like he was awaiting judgment from some mighty deity. The door was black with a large silver knob on the left side and a couple of slabs of gray metal bolted across it in a cross-like pattern. Looking at the cross on the door, Josh reminisced about a drawing his brother had made in his sketchbook. That was another thing about Daniel, he was good at drawing. There wasn’t much Daniel wasn’t good at. In fact if it hadn’t been for his brother, Josh would have never learned to play basketball. Josh’s earliest memory was of himself holding on to a little rubber basketball while Daniel carried him with his arms around his waist toward the little cardboard goal which their father had stuck on the side of the living room wall. Josh smiled at the thought of his big brother trying to teach him to play basketball before he learned to walk.

Daniel’s drawing, as Josh remembered it, was of an elephant. It was a pretty normal looking elephant aside from its legs which were unusually long and slender, almost resembling a spider’s legs. On the elephant’s back was a gothic style cross and off in the background were several other “spider-legged” beasts with religious icons on their backs. Daniel called the drawing “Space Elephants” and when Josh asked what it meant he told him it was inspired by a painting by some famous Spanish artist whose name he couldn’t remember.
Josh leaned forward and placed his ear against the cold metal to the right of the cross. Through the door, Josh could hear the faint sound of running water. He looked up at the gunmetal cross on the door once more and then reached for the knob. It was almost too big to fit his hand.

Josh mumbled, “Space elephants,” as he turned the handle.

As if that had been the secret password, the door responded with a loud dull click as whatever inner-mechanisms prompted the door to open out and away from him. The hinges groaned like a wounded beast as the cold air rushed through the threshold, blowing the bits of dust and paper back towards the end of the hall.

When Josh stepped through the door, he immediately considered turning back. This room was the least inviting one he had seen thus far. It was like a sewer or a giant air vent for some unknown facility. The room was a rectangular corridor with concrete walls, ceiling and floor all of which had various cracks and dark stains all over them. To the left of the door was a giant slow moving fan whose blades protected the entrance to the circular ventilation shaft beyond them. Looking beyond the blades, the shaft seemed to go on for a mile or two before fading into darkness.

-Christ, its cold in here!

Josh could see his breath in front of him as he descended the cement steps in front of the door. He zipped up his jacket and pulled the hood over his head. Josh was cursing himself for not putting on his sweatpants in the locker room when he heard the sound of the door closing. He turned around and watched silently as the door slowly closed shut and the noise click of the lock echoed through the tunnel. There was no handle on this side, no cross either. It was just as well, Josh thought, he didn’t think he would be able to make much use of either at this point.

-This whole building changes every time I go through one of these stupid doors.

Josh approached the fan and gazed down the lengthy shaft. The fan blades were moving slowly enough for him to easily jump through, but he wasn’t too keen on the idea of walking for eternity down some dark tunnel. All of a sudden, that eerie “dead cat in a ditch” feeling returned and Josh looked over his shoulder expecting to see some horror movie icon wielding a sharp object behind him. He was relieved when he saw that it was just a little girl standing in the end of the corridor.

The girl was standing alone in the fluorescent glow of the door to her left. She looked like she could have been the other little girl’s older sister. She was about seven or eight years old and she was wearing white stockings with a pink skirt and a white blouse. Her hair was fixed in a pony-tail that ended in a dark brown afro. Though Josh could not see her face very well, he had the feeling that she was in some sort of trouble. Josh was about to call out to the girl when she turned and ran through the door.

-God damn it. Why can’t I meet someone normal in the fucking place?

Josh sighed as he began to run down the corridor. The dirty puddles of water on the floor stained the sides of Josh’s shoes as he treaded through them. He had half a mind to give up the chase before he reached the end of the corridor. Part of him wanted to be surprised by what he saw next, the other part told him he should have expected it.

-This is getting ridiculous.

Josh was standing in the entrance of a large rectangular room, not unlike a small stadium. The arch shaped ceiling was secured with steel rafters about fifty feet overhead. The walls and ceiling were made of some sort of thin metal that had been painted a brilliant white. The floor was made of concrete across which thousands of pieces of shredded paper were scattered. There was a rectangular depression in the center of the floor which resembled an empty swimming pool. The depression was about the size of a basketball court and there were no rails or chains to prevent a careless person from falling inside. In the center of this depression was a metal structure that was painted the same brilliant white as the rest of the room and shaped the same way, but it was only about the size of the wooden shed in the back yard of Josh’s house.

-A useless model of a useless gym, awesome.

Josh wished he had left his phone in his jacket instead of in the jeans inside his backpack which was now missing. He would have called his brother and the two of them would have been able to figure a way out of this maze. Daniel was always the problem solver of the family. Josh remembered the day of his graduation. It was no surprise to anyone that he had graduated first in his class. Daniel was one of only a handful of black students in his class and everyone in town knew that he was from a poor family, but that never stopped him, nothing could. Daniel was an exceptional artist; he’d been getting straight A’s since he was in elementary school. And on top of that he had enough time to play three sports all throughout high school. Josh was certain that Daniel could have gotten a football scholarship if he’d stuck with it, but he opted out of athletics altogether to pursue a career in science and mathematics. The day he got Daniel got his acceptance letter in the mail; he announced to Josh that he was going off to help build the Super Large Hadron Collider. Josh could only smile and pretend that he knew what that meant.

Standing up on that stage at his graduation ceremony Daniel looked like a God to everyone, powerful, far away and untouchable. Of course he would go to college out of state; this town was too small for him. There was nothing to keep him there, not his friends, not his parents, not even his little brother.

Josh sighed as he looked around the room. To his right he noticed an open entryway into some other smaller room.

-Awesome, another fucking door. Just what I needed.

Josh jogged with his hands in the pockets of his jacket as he made his way through the entryway. This door led him into a dimly lit rectangular stairwell. Josh looked up and saw the little girl standing on the platform above him. Painted on the wall behind her was a giant number 2 in green paint.

Josh looked to the girl and said, “Hey hold on a sec! I just wanna...”

Before he could finish the girl turned and ran up the steps to the next level.

Josh mumbled, “I jus wanna talk to you, aw shit.”

Josh sighed and began to run up the first flight of stairs.

-I’m not even old enough to get my license but I’m supposed to save this girl?

Josh was making his way up the flight of stairs which led to the fifth level of the stairwell as he sang a lyric from a song he’d heard Zack de la Rocha singing on one of Daniel’s abandoned CDs, “I wanna be...Jackie Onassis...I wanna wear a pair of dark sunglasses...I wanna be... Jackie O, oh oh, Oh Please DON’T DIE!”

Josh laughed as the last few words echoed off through the stairwell and into the depths of his mind. As Josh approached the platform with the big green 5 painted on the wall, he imagined the words echoing back to him until he could have sworn he heard some melancholy ghost whisper in his ear, “please don’t die, Josh.”

-What? Don’t be stupid, I’m not gonna die.

Josh was feeling a little tired when he reached the fifth floor so he leaned against the wall. There was a window to his right which he did not notice inside the stadium structure, but he paid it little mind. This place seemed to sprout new doors and windows whenever it felt like it. When Josh looked out the window he saw, standing in the entrance that led between the stadium and the dark corridor, the same man he had seen in the utility hallway. He was holding the hand of the little girl in the white dress as he scoured the room in search of something. The little girl was still holding her coloring book by a few of its pages and she had a bored look on her face. At least, she was bored until she looked up at Josh’s window and smiled deviously.

-They’re looking for the girl. I’ve gotta find her before that fuckin guy does! He’s up to something, I know it.

Josh dashed up the stairs with a newfound sense of urgency. He knew he had to find the girl as if his life depended on it. The numbers on the wall grew greater the higher he climbed. Sweat was beginning to form on his brow. He stopped once more on the eighteenth floor to open up his jacket. He had half a mind to forfeit his pursuit until he leaned over the railing of the platform. The man and the girl were down there a mere five floors below and advancing. Josh couldn’t understand it. For them to catch up that quick, they would both have to have been sprinting most of the way, but looking at them now they were walking slowly and holding hands.

Josh shook his head, wiped the sweat of his face with the sleeve of his jacket and continued. Ten floors later, Josh stopped again. This time he removed his jacket entirely and left it hanging on the guard rail. He grabbed the front of his shirt and used it to fan air onto his chest. The cool air, though somewhat relaxing, did little to soothe his aching back or the throbbing in his head. Josh looked down the stairwell again, to see that the slow moving duo were now only four floors below him.

-Son of a bitch!

Josh pounded his fist into the guard rail and angrily began to jog up the stairs once more. He maintained this pace until he reached the thirty-eighth floor. By then his sweat had soaked through the collar of his jersey and along the center of his back between his shoulder blades. His knees were beginning to ache as well and he felt a pinch in his ribs whenever he inhaled. Josh was beginning to feel lightheaded as he ascended the next step.

“Don’t die, Josh.”

Three floors later, Josh’s lungs felt like they were full of hot tar. Josh leaned against the wall beneath the green 41 and began a coughing fit. Each cough stung the back of his throat as if it were on fire.

-This ain’t no dream. I wouldn’t be this tired if it was.

Josh heard the footsteps approaching. He sighed and turned to walk again. As soon as Josh took his first step, he felt a sharp stabbing pain in the side of his chest. He fell to his knees and grabbed the side of his chest where his heart would be located, digging his fingers into his skin through his jersey.

“Please, don’t die.”

The pain made his eyes water, but he could not stop, at least not until he found the girl. With all the strength he could manage, Josh grabbed the guardrail and pulled himself to his feet. In the back of his head he heard the music from his Blackalicious CD playing. He heard Saul Williams reciting his last stanza, “through meditation I program my heart to beat break-beats and hum bass lines on exhalation.”

Josh squeezed the flesh beneath his hand as he asked, “Why’s he say that, bro? What does it mean?”

His conjecture was answered by nothing but the faint howl of wind through the stairwell, the faint howl and the even fainter ghostly whisper, “don’t die.”

Josh hung his head and sighed before he continued up the next flight of stairs. Five floors later, Josh’s legs felt like they were filled with shattered glass, glass which broke into even smaller pieces which tore his flesh when he fell to the floor. He couldn’t even manage to stay on his knees but merely lay on his side. It was painful enough for Josh to lay there breathing normally, but when the coughing returned he couldn’t even manage to curl into a ball like a dying insect. Josh found himself thanking God that he didn’t eat anything before the game, because he was sure he would have vomited all over himself if he had. Josh looked up at the wall in front of him, “46” was painted on the wall in green letters and the numbers seemed to be laughing at him, laughing like Andrew’s toothy grin.

-Forty-six? That’s Drew’s number isn’t it?

Josh closed his eyes and his tears soaked into the concrete floor, even his tears burned his face. He knew he had failed.

-Mom?

That same ghostly sensation he had felt in the gymnasium returned, but this time it felt like someone’s hand was gently rubbing his forehead.

Josh felt his breathing becoming gradually less erratic when he heard the faint echo of his mother’s voice whispering in his ear, “Don’t give up, Josh.”

-But I’m so tired.

The ghostly voice seemed to be crying softly as she spoke, “Please sweetie, just pull through. You’re my little fighter, you’ve always been. I know you can do it.”

Josh opened his bloodshot eyes. Everything was all blurry, but he knew that it wasn’t over yet. Every screaming muscle and every aching bone begged for Josh to call it quits, to just lie down on the cold platform forever, but he knew he couldn’t. He could not let his Mom down. Josh knew he had to find that girl, if not for himself at least for her. With his right arm hugging his stomach and his left arm gripping the guardrail for support, Josh lifted his trembling feet and continued upward.

“Keep fighting, Josh.”

Lying on his stomach on the set of stairs between the forty-ninth and the fiftieth platform, the pain throughout Josh’s body had manifested itself into a whirlwind inside of his head, scattering his thoughts and throwing images in his face of his darkest memories. He saw his father wrapping the family dog in a blanket and placing him in a hole he had dug in their back yard. He saw himself curled up in a ball beneath the covers of his bed while the sound of his parent’s voices screaming at each other leaked through his bedroom walls. He saw Daniel as a young boy crying as he held his broken right hand after he had fallen out of the oak tree in the city park.

Josh saw himself walking home after the night’s game. A kid with dark red cornrows and a black hoody was walking past him in the opposite direction smoking a cigarette; he looked at Josh and nodded in his direction before he continued. After passing the strange kid, Josh made his way across the Liberty Street Bridge, the one which spanned the flood control duct which had been full of rushing water from the torrential rains that had been falling most of the day. In the corner of his eye, he saw something white lunging toward him, something white and a little bit of green and then darkness.

“Don’t Die!”

Josh opened his eyes and looked up, his vision was still a bit blurry but he thought he could see the specter of his team captain standing with his arms crossed on the final platform. Isaac was still wearing his uniform as well as the same sour look he had on his face when the refs ejected him from the game. Josh rubbed his eyes and looked up once more. He realized that it was not the ghost of Isaac he had seen, but the door on the top of the stairs. He had mistaken its white paint for Isaacs Jersey and the 50 painted above the door for the number on Isaac’s uniform.

Josh dared not stand, but merely crawled up the steps towards the door in front of him. The pain of the stone steps scraping his chest was but a droplet in his ocean of turmoil. The door was a few feet in front of Josh’s grasp and to him it looked like the very image of salvation. Josh used his last bit of strength to pull himself up and grab the doorknob with his right hand. The cold metal soothed him and it felt as if all of the pain in his body was being siphoned out through his fingertips. In a few moments, Josh felt no more pain, just the awesome fatigue of the toughest workout of his life. He opened the door and his senses were flooded with the brilliant white light which lay beyond the threshold.

Josh wobbled through the door in a manner that reminded him of the night Daniel he returned home late from a night of boozing at his best friend’s house. When Josh’s eyes adjusted to the light, he began to look around. He was now standing in the middle of a large classical Roman style terrace complete with an intricate mosaic of a nude goddess emerging from a seashell on the floor. As Josh walked toward the end of the terrace he noticed to his right, a kid with dark red cornrows playing an electric guitar that was connected to an amplifier that had been crafted out of white marble. The kid was wearing a black hoody with a gray undershirt underneath it. Around his neck was a silver cross with black in the center. On his hands were black fingerless gloves and the guitar he was playing was a Fender Stratocaster with the image of an American flag on the front. It was a right-handed guitar, but the kid was playing with his left. The strange tune he played made it seem to Josh that the guitar was moaning suggestively. Josh imagined the girl who was almost his first, running her hands over his head and tracing a finger down his belly. The kid struck a long note with his left hand which lasted long enough for him to take his hand away from the strings, pull the cigarette out of his mouth, exhale a cloud of smoke, nod in Josh’s direction and then continue playing. Josh shrugged his shoulders and continued to stagger to the end of the terrace. He leaned over onto the marble banister and looked out into the room in front of him.

-Well, this brings back memories.

This room appeared almost identical to the model and shape of the stadium at the end of the dark corridor with the exception of its size. The place was large enough to house an entire city, perhaps even greater. He could not really see the other end of the room, but it just sort of faded away like distant hills on the horizon. He looked up and saw thousands upon thousands of hanging lights shining brightly, reflecting off of the mist of the many of clouds floating around near the ceiling. Josh had never heard of a structure large enough to contain real clouds. It was as if God himself had taken all outdoors and built an arena around it.

Josh put his hands looked down into the cavernous room before him. The floor was for the most part occupied by an enormous rectangular pool filled with clear reflecting water. It looked like an ocean in this place. Josh remembered having dreams with giant pools like this. There was always something in the water, some giant fish or squid or whale or something; waiting for Josh to fall in so it could swallow him whole. And that was if he was lucky, for in those strange dreams he could never see the bottom of the pool, but it just went on forever.

This pool was pretty much the same as the ones in his dreams minus the gigantic aquatic beasts. He still saw strange beasts though, roaming around the edges on either side of the pool along the white metal walls. There were about a few dozen or so creatures with long spindly legs, tusks, trunks for noses and big gray ears. Each of the creatures carried the weight of some sort of statue, obelisk or Roman style temple on its back. Every couple of seconds Josh could hear the mating calls of the creatures echoing into the rafters. When Josh looked carefully he could see people riding on the backs of the creatures, patrons of the various cathedrals, mosques, synagogues, and shrines secured on the backs and shoulders of the beasts. One of the animals was carrying a tall, circular tower on its back; a tower that was almost to the height of Josh’s balcony. The tower was incomplete, but from this vantage point, Josh could see the laborer’s spreading mortar and laying the clay bricks for the next level.

-Space Elephants, they always show up when you least expect them. They look like daddy-long legs from up here.

Josh remembered another lyric from his brother’s CD and decided to shout it out over the balcony, “Yeah I’m rollin down Rodeo with a shotgun! These people ain’t seen a…brown skin man since their grandparents bought one!”

His voice echoed through the rafters and faded away. Josh put his hands to his mouth like a megaphone and shouted even louder, “And now batting…MIKE PIAZZA!”

This time the room was filled with the sound of thousands of screeching voices. Josh looked into the rafters and saw a swarm of thousands of bats descending from the ceiling and into the clouds. The swarm circled around the tower and the laborers began cursing in some obscure ancient language as they hurled bricks and tools at them. The bats were each about the size of an eagle or a falcon and they all had soft pelts of bright green fur. Josh marveled as the sound of the thousands of fluttering wings filled his ears. The swarm left the tower and erupted into a giant green sphere in front of the terrace, close enough for Josh to see their yellow eyes. Josh could feel the wind of their wings on his face. They remained there for a moment before the sphere collapsed and the bats soared off to the far side of the room. Josh started laughing as he watched the green cloud moving further and further away. He was having the time of his life, at least he thought he was until he glanced down into the water below.

Though it was far away and it looked like little more than a pink dot from the balcony, Josh was certain that he could see the body of the little girl, floating face down in the pool.

Josh shook his head and cried, “No...no no no, No! Damn it!”

He pounded his fists into the railing, gritted his teeth and for a moment he thought he was about to start crying again.

-No! No more tears. Quit acting like such a pussy! You know what you have to do.

Josh’s legs still felt weak from the ordeal in the stairwell, but he managed to balance his feet on the railing. Under normal circumstances Josh would have accepted that a fall from this height would have surely killed him, but in this place, the laws of physics seemed to hold little bearing. Not even Daniel, with all of his logic, his Hadrons and Dark Matter could have changed his mind. Josh took a deep breath and thought about his mother. He thought about what she had said or what he thought she had said in the stairwell.

He whispered the words, “keep fighting,” before leaning forward, allowing himself to fall into the indoor ocean.

The fall wasn’t nearly as bad as Josh would have expected. In fact it was rather pleasant. For once in his life, he was able to fly in one of his abstract dreams. Josh opened his eyes and saw the dark blue water approaching him. Josh smiled and rolled over onto his back to watch the thousands of lights shining like stars in the daytime growing smaller and smaller. He felt the pressure pushing him down like invisible hands on his chest; hands on his chest pushing him, forcing him over the guardrail of a bridge. No not a bridge, a ship; he was falling from the side of a ship into rushing black water. No, the water wasn’t black; it was deep blue like the Atlantic Ocean and the ceiling was like the white sails of the ship billowing in the transatlantic breeze.

Josh struck the water like a stone plunging into a lake. It did not hurt him; in fact it felt pretty good, like stripping naked and jumping into a river in the middle of a hot summer day. Josh smiled for a moment as he allowed himself to enjoy the feeling of the current gently swaying him, but he remembered the girl and soon began to panic. Josh looked all around him but he could find no trace of her. He looked down and saw nothing but empty darkness. He looked to his left and saw nothing but the marble wall. To his right he saw just another wall until one of the spider-legged elephants tumbled into the water about one hundred yards away from him. The creature’s long legs were useless for swimming as it kicked frantically. The stoic image of the Saint Anthony statue strapped to the creature’s back only hastened the elephant’s descent into the abysmal void. The people who had been paying homage to Saint Anthony attempted to swim for the surface, but most of them were sucked into the undertow of the beast.

Josh looked up and saw standing at the edge of the water, the pale woman with the cell phone, waving her arms frantically as she always does, the skinny man holding the little girl’s hand, and of course the girl in the pink skirt standing off to the side. All were watching Josh descend into the depths aside from the woman who was now screaming and behaving more erratically than ever.

At first Josh felt betrayed by the girl. All the pain he endured just to be tricked into diving into a bottomless pit. But as he looked at her face through the surface of the water and the coolness swept over him, he felt a wave of relief. The girl in the pink skirt put on the faintest of smiles and raised her right hand to wave at Josh. Josh smiled and waved back at her, then leaned back to allow the waters to soothe him further. The ceiling of the enormous structure looked like a giant white jersey through the water; a jersey with a big green 50 on the front emerging from the darkness and fog of the bridge, lunging at him in the corner of his eye. Josh pushed the image out of his mind. He would only allow peaceful thoughts from now on. Josh sank down and slowly disappeared into the shadowy depths. The darkness embraced him like gentle arms; arms holding him tightly, cradling his head, calling him, begging, pleading, “Please wake up, son.”

-But I am awake, Dad. I’m more awake now than I’ve ever been.