The Passageway
by Rayo Casablanca

How it works is like this:

When you wake up, you pull the lever and the little door opens. When the little door opens you can leave the room. But when you do, and this part I haven’t quite figured out just yet, the door, the little one, it closes behind you. Not quietly either. It pretty much slams shut. The noise it makes is louder than anything you’ve heard before. It’s someone running a knife across a plate hard, making that screeching sound, only they’re doing it into a microphone, they’re blasting the crashed plane sound of it straight into your head. This sound lasts for days. Reverberating the way it does around the little corridor outside the room, the sound is your new constant companion.

2. The Corridor

Beyond, the passageway, it’s small. Tight is a better word. If you’re claustrophobic I would suggest not pulling the lever, not opening the little door that makes the hideous squealing sound that you will live with pretty much the rest of your life. If you do pull the lever and open the little door -- let’s call it an accident -- you’re not going to want to leave the room. Seriously. Don’t. This duct is so small it’s crazy. Unless . . .

3. In the Corridor

You’re not really listening. And nowyou’re in the corridor. The tiny screaming door has shut fast. The sound of it shutting is here. The walls are closed in all snug. I’m assuming at this point your breathing has either picked up or slowed considerably. If you’re like me, and everything I know points to that being the case, then you’re actually okay with being in the corridor right now. Snug. Held tight by the sheet metal. Tickled by the rivets. If you’re anything at all like me, you’re just happy to be out of that cavernous room. In here, cozy as you are, anything else is cavernous. Still, you definitely shouldn’t have left the room.

4. The Heat

You’re still tired. Still have that ache of sleep in your back. Chap to your lips. Though you are cozy you’re still going to want to inch forward. Move towards the end of the passageway, away from the little door. This is mostly because the heat is coming on. The sheet metal you’ve got wrapped around you like a blanket? It’s going to be heating up something awful. Those rivets massaging your spine? They’ll likely be one hundred thousand degrees in a few minutes. Maybe hotter. Can you imagine? I hope so.

5. Inching

Not as easy as it sounds. Not in such a rigid space. Inching involves moving only the outside of you. Legs aren’t the key here. Hands aren’t going to get you going. You’re going to have to think caterpillar. Like an eel. Have you ever seen an eel in a tight spot? Say, trying to slither -- I assume the locomotion eels use is most akin to underwater slithering -- through a tiny hole? It’s this sashay of skin. Just the skin and the most immediate muscles. The ones just an inch in. I’m not sure how it works to be honest. What I’m telling you is good luck. What I’m saying, really, is just go with your inner centipede and God speed. It’s only twelve feet for fuck’s sake.

6. Twelve Feet Later

The corridor isn’t blocked. There are no globs of people to push out of the way. No oil slicks of melted down fat. This should tell you that for the most part, people inch when they have to. They inch surprisingly well. The heat certainly helps. When I did it, the sweat made all the difference. That was the most eel-like I think I’ve ever been. I’m sure a round of applause are in order.

7. Another Door

You’re tired. Exhausted maybe but not dead. Sweating heavily as the heat finally dies away. Maybe your arms and legs are singed. I’m not sure if you’re wearing pajamas. Me? I sleep naked so when I did -- however long ago that was -- I pretty much came out hairless. Slick and smooth as a baby. Guess what? You’re almost there. This new door is as small as the loud one only there’s no lever to open it. This new door, it opens from the inside. Crafty, huh? I should tell you now that the room coming up, on the other side of this new door, it’s not nearly as big as the last one. All the people whose bodies aren’t piling up into the hothouse corridor? There’s no way they’re behind this new door. The room coming up, it’s only big enough for one person. Just telling you now.

8. New Door Slides

The new door opens. It slides open easily and there is no outrageously loud metal grinding on metal sound. Just the cool whoosh of a door sliding open. Inside, well, another room. And it looks very much like the first one twelve feet ago. You’re planning on going back to sleep once you’re inside. That’s what I did the first time. (Was there a second time?) What with all the inching you’ve been doing. The sweating. The panic. You’re going to want to relax and it helps that you’re not afraid of tight places. It really helps that you’re perfectly content in a less than cavernous room.

9. Different Room

How it works is like this: you enter the new room, the smaller room, and the door, the new door, it closes behind you. Not abrasively. It is so quiet. It operates so efficiently, that you can’t even remember the sound of it closing. Like the way you can’t really recall the sound of a whisper or when your eyelashes bat. This is a sound that will never stay with you. A sound as fleeting as, well, memory itself. The thing is, in this new room, small as it is, comfortable as it is, you’re not going to be thinking too hard about the door closing. You’ll be thinking about the other person in the new room with you.

10. How You Look

You’re worried. I’m certain that’s the look of it. The twist of your face. Your mouth agape. That’s worry if I’ve ever seen it and not the healthiest kind. Not the kind when you’re looking out at a storm and wondering if your bus will be late. This worry, it’s more, well, primordial. Maybe it’s fear. It’s true there are two of us in this other room. And it’s true I told you there wasn’t much space. Not much space at all. How will we fit? Where will you sleep? Truth is, none of that matters. The other people, the ones who didn’t inch, who didn’t make it in the corridor? There’s a reason they aren’t great globs of grease. There’s a very good reason their lumps don’t block the way. Me.

11. Sleep

What you do last is this: you curl up, just over there, where your feet can be on one wall and your back can be on another, fetal, as they say, and you close your eyes and wish yourself back to sleep. Just curl inside yourself and imagine that none of this has happened. That this is all a dream. You do that and let the screeching sound of me grinding my teeth just blend in together with the still reverberating sound of that first little door closing. Just like that. There. Shhhh.

Copyright belongs to the author on the publication date unless otherwise noted.