It started out just like any Saturday morning. Josh had his coffee and
biscuits topped with jelly, put on his suit, kissed his kids on the
forehead, smacked his lips together in a faux kiss to his wife, and was
out the door. On the way to the synagogue he whistled a tune and
observed the hustle and bustle of the town which was similar in
intensity to the rest of the week but yet markedly more festive. Once he
got inside, he went up the five flights of stairs, walked around the
main sanctuary where the rabbi was delivering his sermon, and slipped in
through the back door, his entrance noticed only by as few eyes as
possible, as was his intent.
The next hour and a half did not contain anything remarkable in and of
itself, either. He spaced out for most of that time, vocalizing the
words imprinted in his memory through years of repetition. Once every so
often someone or other across the divider in the women's section caught
his eye, but he quickly looked away, once again a reflex honed by years
of training. This time he didn't stay too long for the drinks, bagels,
and dessert following services. He had just a tiny sip of scotch to warm
up his insides, walked through the crowd greeting and saying goodbye in
the same breath, and walked out into the stairwell.
At first, he didn't notice anything strange. Descending from the fifth
floor which his congregation rented on Saturdays, he passed the fourth
floor with the yoga class, the third with the kids' karate school, and
the second floor whose function he was not privy to, as the door leading
inside was always closed. He buttoned his jacket in preparation for
going outside and turned the corner onto what was supposed to be the
steps leading out to the lobby. Instead, he was greeted with the sight
of just more stairs.
Reasoning he must have miscounted the floors, Josh chuckled to himself,
and walked down two more half-flights. The same image presented itself,
however. It looked like the landing between the second and the third
floors, or maybe the third and the fourth - he wasn't sure. The door
leading into the floor was closed, which was not unusual for this time
of day. "This is a bit strange, perhaps I've miscounted the extent of my
miscounting", he thought, letting out yet another chuckle.
Rotating another full turn down the stairwell, the scene was repeated
once more. At this point Josh started to question the reality of the
events, and wondered if he was, in fact, still in bed viewing the
remnants of his dream, and would wake up any minute to repeat his
coffee, suit, and praying routine, this time in actuality. Not
particularly enjoying the thought of that, he decided to instead chalk
it up to his recent state of general tiredness and lack of sleep - which
he then and there resolved to improve. Focusing back on reality, he
proceeded further down the stairs. It was the same unidentifiable
landing, the door closed, the same plaster walls devoid of any unique
markings, the same railing going up and down and disappearing around the
bend. This added a sizable infusion of validity to the hypothesis that
he was asleep, however the the entire morning's events felt too vividly
real. Besides, Josh was never able to achieve any kind of state of lucid
dreaming, despite several attempts in his youth, inspired by reading
about it in some magazine article.
For the next several minutes, he ran down a dozen or so more flights
down the staircase , tried running back up (only to reach the same
looking landing at each turn, albeit with considerably more effort), and
attempted to bang on and to open the door, which only responded with a
loud metallic thud. He stopped, and excited by the possibility that this
could finally be his first ever lucid dream ("and without even trying!
maybe it's something I ate last night?") , he tried to imagine himself
flying, as was the instruction in that magazine piece. Nothing happened,
his feet were still firmly planted on the ground, and after several
attempts he gave that idea up. He pinched the skin of his hand and
experienced the ordinary painful sensation, then with his fist, hit a
wall, which only affirmed its solidity and the still continuing ability
to inflict pain on his knuckles. Slowly, the possibility was dawning on
Joshua that this was not a hallucination or an illusion or the product
of his imagination gone wild, but rather something with a substantively
more real component. His rational mind resisted any such thoughts, but
this rationality kept being slowly eroded by the combination of the
extraordinarily normal behavior of objects within his reach (such as his
body, the walls, the flickering lights on the ceiling and so on) and
the extraordinarily bizarre configuration he found himself and these
objects in.
Josh didn't remember exactly how many hours ago panic began to set in,
but that feeling of helplessness and terror crept into his mind at first
as a tiny spark, and then continued growing within, enveloping and
redirecting all of his thoughts to itself. The panic did not stem from
anything that his body physically lacked, although he was very thirsty
at this point, nor did it arise from any sense of danger or a fear for
his safety. Rather, it was entirely from the utter incomprehensibility
of the situation, and from the doubt he was now assigning to anything
and everything he has ever thought or known to be true. His thoughts
traced back over and over to the morning, to discover, perhaps, any sign
or portent of what was impending, any event that he might have missed
that could have possibly caused all of this. But he found nothing -
nothing stood out, and the change of gears from the ordinary into the
irrational happened quietly and imperceptibly, when he exited from the
fifth floor and started his initial descent. His watch now showed that
it was 6pm, and he wondered if it was already dark outside, and whether
outside existed anymore, or if it even ever existed. He sat down on the
floor, his body aching from walking what must have been hundreds of
flights today, leaned against the metal door, and closed his eyes.
