May 28 2007
Escape
(The following story is a joint effort by Sarah Flanigan and Jess Em. We hope you enjoy it.)
The mean summer sun burned a hole in the sky and glared down at me. Mocking and relentless. Grimacing, I turned the key in the ignition and heaved a breath of surrender.The journey to Monday morning dread had begun and I navigated the streets on autopilot.
The weekend was never long enough, nor the work week short enough. Dread was my only friend and confidant there and it whispered in my ear, “Turn back. Go home.” I turned the music up louder. I still heard my dread whimper and whine but pretended to sing along.
My office building loomed over the tiny, surrounding shops and mimicked an architectural flip off. Or maybe it was just my attitude that colored it that way. Nothing like going to a job where you are feared and hated to get the bitter taste of resentment going and the stomach acid brewing.
The slowest elevator in the world is in my building, like the largely old world neighborhood in which it resides, it lumbers and groans with each effort to move forward.
Odd. An empty lobby at 8:58 a.m. A first. I glanced toward the street, through the open door, was there any traffic? “Dah-ding!” the elevator announced, and I moved inside like the good soldier. Each floor announced with a smaller, less significant ding. Top floor, end of the line. The doors opened like a pair of ancient elephants parting company.
The empty hallway smelled of grit and old ashtrays and people who were anti-deodorant. I reached for my keys but the door was already open. No doubt, one of my employees was trying to prove something or angling for a pay raise.
I pushed the door wide, my hand flat against the cool surface. “Morning,” I murmured but there was no one there. I ambled further into the belly of the beast. The staff kitchen was surely atwitter with discussions of dates, diets and bad television shows.
But in my approach, I heard no voices, smelled no coffee, felt no energy. “Why are all the lights off back here?” I groused when my knee hit the door jamb. A flick of the wrist and there was light but nothing else.
“Damned cleaning crew,” I muttered, realizing they’d left the door open. I checked the safe and the cash drawer but everything was as I’d left it the night before.
Urgent and shrill the phone rang and jolted me into the corner of my desk. “Crap!” I dove for the phone. “Good morning, Dr. Black’s office, may I help you?” The screech of a fax scratched at my eardrums and I slammed the phone down.
Where the hell was everybody? Why was it so quiet? I could almost believe I was the only person in the building.
Shrugging it off, I started a pot of coffee and poured a cup when it finished brewing. Astounded by my luck, I found some real half and half and watched the swirls it made in the hot, aromatic brew.
9:15 a.m. Still, no one had arrived. No one had called. Where were they? I turned on the radio while I prepared for the onslaught of patients that would pour through the door any minute. Helen Reddy sang, You and Me Against the World. Irony, I love it. I sang along while I executed the mundane chores of turning off voice mail, checking for messages - none? Printing off the appointments for the day.
Whoosh, the door opened. “Finally,” I said, craning my neck through the cashier’s window. “I was beginning to think . . . ” My words were sucked into a vacuum. No one there. Just an open door. I went through the adjoining door to the waiting room and crossed to the door to close it but felt compelled to look out into the hallway. No one. I stepped out. All the other doors were open but the offices were empty. The creepy-crawly feeling that hurried up my spine put my feet in motion and I retreated into the office. I locked the door behind me. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
“Stop it. Just call them. They are all late and that’s all that’s going on.” I lectured myself as I fumbled through my Rolodex for phone numbers. First I dialed the doctor. A recording said the number was disconnected. I dialed again. Same recording.
My chest tightened and I pushed down the panic that was trying to snake its way up my throat. “Calm down, will you?” I told myself. I dialed the next number. And the next. And the next. All of them were disconnected. What are the odds that every number I had written down was wrong? I dialed information. What else could I do? Oh come on, that number was disconnected too?
I gave up on the phone and regarded it suspiciously. “Am I being punked?” I looked around, smiling. “Okay, you can all come out now. Very funny. Come on! I’m onto you, no point in keeping up the charade.” I smiled and grinned. Of course, I was on Candid Camera or something. They were playing a joke on me and were watching all of it from a video van on the street.
I poured myself another cup of coffee and went back to my desk. They’d wander in shortly, thinking they had done something funny. “Screw them,” I said and turned on my computer. I clicked on my email but nothing came up. Strange. No email, again? “Servers must be down.” I clicked on my homepage, again nothing came up. Not even an error page. Nothing. As though there was no Internet.
I eyed the clock - 10 a.m., still no one. Still, the utter quiet. I’d had enough. I didn’t know what was going on but I was leaving. Maybe it was a holiday or they’d gone to a party without me but I was damned if I was going to sit there all day by myself. I grabbed my bag and headed for the door. My hand closed on the doorknob but it wouldn’t turn. Thud, went my heart. Oh right, I’d locked it. I released the deadbolt. Still, the handle wouldn’t turn. “What the hell?” I twisted at the knob, banged my fists on the door. “Hey, let me out! Hey, is anybody out there? Hello? Hey!”
But no one was and now I was trapped inside. My brain buzzed. I was suddenly hot and felt sweat trickle down my back and under my arms. My pulse raised and panic nagged at my insides. I made myself breathe. The door was just stuck or something. There was no diabolical plot in play. I let out a breath, counted to ten and tried the door again, but slowly. It turned. I pulled it open. No one there. No one in the hallway. I locked the door behind me and headed for the stairs.
As I descended each flight of stairs, I tried to rationalize everything. Where the hell could they all be? Why was no one in the building? Why hadn’t I seen one person since my arrival?
I reached the parking level to the staff lot and pushed through the door. The lot was empty. Empty! There really wasn’t anyone there but me. I had to duck under the barricade at the driveway to get through because, surprise, that wasn’t working either. I felt relieved that I’d parked on the street. I don’t know why I decided to, I just did. Lucky for me, I thought.
I walked and it was just me and the birds. There was not one car on the road. Not one. Not one person on the street but me. The panic started screaming in my head again, and it was screaming for me to run. Run!
My feet flew and I was at my car panting and looking around as though the boogie man would jump out and snatch me away to the dark planet. I unlocked the door and got inside, turned the ignition and pulled away. The streets were like the building, eerily empty. As though all the life had been sucked out of the area. Every light I hit was green. There was no traffic. For twenty minutes I drove, apparently the only car in the entire city, traveling.
Finally, I pulled into my drive. I was home and my panic fell away. I knew if I just could get inside the house, all the nonsense would disappear. I got out of the car on rubbery legs. The key turned the lock and I opened the door. Cool air rushed at me from the dark cavern within.
“Sparky?” I called my dog. She hadn’t come running to the door to welcome me. I walked into the livingroom. I whistled. “Here, girl!” I went to the patio door and looked out to the yard. Empty. Just green grass and the Mimosa tree, swaying in the hot breeze.
There was no point in looking further. The house was empty, even I didn’t seem to occupy the space. I was alone. I was completely alone. In my house. Maybe in the world. What cruel trick was God playing on me?
Breathe. In, out, in out. Bring air into my body, think, breathe out. Don’t panic. Think. That is what I told myself. It worked for a moment. Try the home phone, try my cell phone, turn on the television - see if anything works.
No phone, no cell. A vortex of empty sound buzzed across the phone lines. The silence screamed. This couldn’t be real. Unless . . . it was them.
I went into the kitchen for a glass of water, and I heard it - the light tapping at the back door. Incessantly tap, tap, tap, tap, tap-rhythmically, never stopping, tapping lightly in tune with the breeze. But there was no breeze. The air was thick beyond anything I had ever known. No life, no wind, no sound. What happened to all the sound? Nothing except the tapping at the back door.
I knew what it was. I’d heard it only once before, in a time and place that still haunted my dreams, my worst nightmares. The tapping meant they had come. They found me, they knew me, and they were waiting.
I went out the back door, pulled down the line spliced between the roofing tiles, and disconnected it from the lintel at the back door. They would know, soon. But it didn’t matter anymore.
Panic skittered up my spine, my fingers shaking; I went into my bedroom and pulled up the floorboard, for inside was the small box I knew they wanted. The box! If I destroyed the box, the air would come back. The people would come back. Everything would be okay again, nothing lost. “Remember - if this comes into the wrong hands all is lost. There are many who would destroy that which we protect for what is inside this small rectangular container. Never, never let it go to them.”
Fire, air. Together they would eradicate the life inside the box. The life that was destroying the very essence of everything. They wanted it, for it would give them the power. I had to let the others know, but didn’t know how. Except - if I died, they’d know why.
Fire, air. Pure air. I needed pure air. I could make fire, but pure air, without the taint of exhaust and pollutants, no residue. I had a plant, a small umbrella tree, but it would work.
Voices -outside my house, my little home where I felt safe. Where I should have been safe. Sweat beaded on my back, my heart pounded so hard I was sure they could hear it. How did they find me? Were there any others still alive? Time stopped in this farce, this fevered moment in which I questioned my sanity, my being. I heard the voices. And I knew they had come for me.
I took the box, and the matches to the plant, and hurried to strike the match and set the box aflame. I heard them, the voices coming louder and louder from inside the box, and outside the house, and I knew they were close - too close. I had to stop them, destroy it, before they destroyed all.
As the air sucked into the fire, it grew hotter and hotter, crackling away the edges of the box, the plant, the table, and the curtains. The flames licked up the walls of my house, and I knew I should leave, run, but it was my debt to see the box destroyed. To make sure it died - completely destroyed. I felt the fire growing hotter, larger, coming closer, and I had won. As the smoke thickened, my eyes blurred, I lay down to my last moments on earth, and savored my victory over them. And I heard them scream. I had won. The darkness closed around me and, I smiled. The box was destroyed.
I slipped into the blackness.
copyright Sarah Flanigan & Jess Em 2007
