Stairs Page #2

• Horror
• Short story
• Fiction

								

	As you approach the door, your breath quickens. You can feel your heartbeat in your chest, and hear it thudding in your ears. Your hands are oddly tingly. You are sure, as you reach the door, that it will be locked. In a place like this, there cannot be such an easy escape. The door will have tigers beyond it, or it will lead to thin air, or someone crouching behind will attack you the moment it opens, or you will fly unendingly into space as soon as it opens. None of these more gruesome options fills you with as much terror as the fear that the door will be locked, however, because you have been climbing the same stairs for so long that any change, however unpleasant, would be welcome.
            You put one hand on the panic bar of the door and hesitate. What if the door is locked? What if there is simply yet another staircase beyond it, and nothing more to do but climb? You push slowly on the bar. It remains stationary under your hands for a fraction of a second, then yields. You want to push it open, but can’t bring yourself to face the possible disappointment on the other side. You remove your hand. You stare at the closed door.

            An indeterminable amount of time later, your relentless anxiety about whether or not to open the door gives way to exhaustion. You doze off at the foot of the still-unopened door, and as you slip deeper into nightmares, there is a gentle sinking sensation, as though you are descending slowly in an elevator.

            You wake at the foot of a set of stairs. You are on a small landing, with no doors or windows. There is a clock in the corner which reads 9:51. You realize that this information means nothing, as you have no idea what time you arrived on the landing. Your gaze travels back to the staircase. You have never seen stairs like this before, though a strange and persistent feeling of deja vu will be present for a little while.
            Eventually you begin to climb. After all, there is nothing else to do.

            You pass through several dozen landings that hold nothing but ordinary household objects and clocks that you cannot read, though you are desperate to know the time. After a while, you come to a landing that holds only three items: two clocks on the far wall, which have too many numbers and endlessly spinning hands, and a life-size clown, which stands beside the next set of stairs. You can’t tell whether the clown is mechanical or human. It is dressed in black and wearing silver glasses, and you reflect briefly on the fact that you’ve never seen a clown in either funeral attire or eye correction before. It is grinning, baring a set of long gleaming teeth that make you hesitant to go near it. As you step closer, planning to inch your way quickly past and up the next set of stairs, you notice what appear to be crying faces reflected in each of its silver buttons. You scuttle by and climb the next stairs hurriedly, hearing thudding footsteps behind you but unable to tell if they are real. When you reach the next landing, you see at a glance that it is occupied by four clocks, an enormous live turtle, and a stuffed spider. You cannot help but sneak a look at the staircase behind you as you cross the next landing, but the clown has returned to his post at the bottom of the stairs — where he has always been, you remind yourself, because he didn’t — couldn’t — chase you. The turtle on the landing has a bright painted eye on its shell, and you wonder briefly why it seems as though the eye has seen you before.

            It’s not long before the uncomfortable feeling emanating from the stuffed spider makes you so nervous that you decide to move on to the next set of stairs.
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