Archives
The train car was spinning, round and round, like a teacup ride at an amusement park, even as the train continued its forward travel on the tracks. I guess that’s how this train worked, because no one seemed bothered by the irregular motion. My mum, sister and I kept traveling to forward cars. Forward, ever forward, putting more distance between them and us. We lurched as the brakes squealed, and the momentum of the train slowed, slowed, until it came to rest at an empty station. We disembarked. Can’t stop moving. The train behind us started again, the cars spinning as the whole thing disappeared into the distance. We headed towards the only building in sight; a department store, standing out against the dusty backdrop of nothing. Perhaps that was where they wanted us to go. Doesn’t matter. There were no alternatives. We hit the doors running, up the escalators at the back. Knocked into a man on the way. Sorry, guy. No time to be polite. We kept moving up, past the service desk, past the shoes, past the brassieres, past the toothpaste. Who needs a choice from 150 different kinds of toothpaste? To the fifth floor, against the north wall, lay our destination. A utilities cupboard, to the unsuspecting; so much more, to someone in the know. Someone like me. But how to get them in? I could get into the closet, no problem; I had my key. But I couldn’t get them past that point, couldn’t get them through the next passageway, without help. There was only one person left who could help me. And he wasn’t here. But as we rounded the last corner on the fifth floor, skirting the laundry baskets and the colored plastic clothes pegs, there he was. Coincidence? Perhaps. Maybe he needed laundry detergent and heard me running. The pattern of my footfalls must be familiar to him after all this time. He met us at the entrance to the utility closet. Inside, we shut and locked the door behind us. Now came the tricky part. The entryway was still there, at head height, behind the bleach bucket, like I remembered. A small door, set in the wall, only 12 inches high by 12 inches wide, with a plastic handle. No key to open this door. I pulled it open. The hinge was a little rusty. Clearly, this one had been forgotten. Behind that door was another, this one only 10 inches by 10 inches. And set inside the second door lay the third, 8 inches by 8 inches. As the third door swung open, he and I froze. There were people inside the room. There should not have been people inside the room. We could see their faces, staring back at us, and smell the stink of unwashed bodies in an unventilated, confined space. It was a big room, but there had to be, what, 50 of them? Before I could figure it out, he knew what had happened. He always was quicker on the uptake than me. He said this must be the last lot. The final group of people two of our comrades were moving, almost a year ago. They had been killed in the war, presumably after getting these people into the room, and no one else had been aware of them to get them back out. I had no idea how they’d survived this long. It took… special talents, to move regulars. I hesitate to call it magic, because, what is magic? Here, it was just an ability a few of us had, the ability to move people through a series of miniature entryways to a hidden room only a few knew about. Sounds silly when it’s written out. We could get in on our own, he and I, but it always took a second to move the regs. We got my family in, and promised to be back for all of them. It was convenient to pretend, for their sakes, that we were in control of our futures.
Outside, the black figures had drawn closer. They were here.
***
The house may have been my dad’s, in a different life. The front room, where we stood near to the wall, was the same. The door, the fireplace, the lounge. But the floors were wooden; that was different. They should have been carpeted. But it didn’t matter. He was with me, and the sun was streaming in the open windows. The music swirled around our heads before disappearing up the stairs. I closed my eyes, and the light reflected inside my eyelids, so I opened them. It was nicer to see his face anyway. And the rest of him, as it was no longer restricted to the confines of his outfit. A breeze blew in from the windows behind the couch, but it was not chilly. A strand of hair came to rest across my face. It was an excuse for him to touch me. To raise his hand and sweep the curl back behind my ear, to follow the contoured lines of my neck down to my shoulder, and rest his hand around the nape of my neck. There was no thought behind the movement. His other hand slipped around my waist and settled against the small of my back. It was only natural to close the distance between us, to take that step forward. To resist his arms, his embrace, was not an option.
[Edited for explicit content.]
***
The liquid kept falling. More and more, falling into a basin that could only hold so much. And then it stopped falling, but the basin started to overflow anyway. We were upstairs, in a bathroom the size of my last apartment. One side of the room was made of fly-screen, and looked out to a forest. Ordinarily, quite refreshing. It was nice to look out at the trees while in a bath, or doing whatever else needs doing in a bathroom. But right then, the basin continued to overflow. I’ve no idea what it was filling with, or from where the liquid was coming from. But the drains weren’t working. The drain in the shower, the sink, the toilet... none of them were draining. The level of liquid in the bathroom was rising at an alarming rate. Already, we were standing in 4 inches. You were with me, and had no suggestions. My suitcase rested on the floor behind us. It was imperative that the contents of my suitcase remain dry. When there is no recourse, actions are made of desperation. You and I retrieved our plastic yellow and green containers, with Yoplait written across the side, and bailed out the bathroom. It was perhaps not the best use of recycled yoghurt containers. But it worked. We bailed and bailed, until the ground outside, below the screen wall in the bathroom, was coated in a layer of wetness. And the sun shone, shone, and all the millions of water droplets, busily refracting the light, pondered their immortality.
