Lavender Mist

The Psychologist

As she hesitated to keep walking through the emptied hallway on the upper floor of the school, Maggie listened to the voices from the ground level and how there were less and less of them, while children were exiting the building. Briefly, she even became slightly jelaous of them. They were so careless, after they had finished their classes, free to leave the crowd (which was, however, decreasing) and to return to their homes. Maggie knew only about a few more of the students, that stayed in the hollow classrooms, talking to teachers, and some of them were with their parents. That, however, was happening bellow her and she was all alone on the floor above. For a few times, purely out of curiosity, she wanted to pull the door handle on several doors of the empty classrooms, but she prevented herself from doing that, knowing that they were certainly locked. Passing by a window, broken in half, she interrupted her heavy walk and threw a glance out to the school yard.

From the entrance, which wasn't visible under the canopy, a colourful, talkative bunch was spreading, and their playful voices mixed into a blend of noise and vanished deep into the evening silence. Some students could barely be seen, since they almost reached the yard gate, which was, unlike the school doors, not illuminated by a weak, orange light of a street lamp.

When she distanced from the window, Maggie felt an even stronger regret for deciding to stay in the school some longer. Only then she realized how much the yard, covered in peaceful, night air, differed from the cold corridor, where she felt like the entire world was empty. Yet, she tried to ignore that regret and went further away from the window, continuing her slow, long journey.

The school hallway felt infinite, while she was, with every second, hoping that at least a teacher or a student, who also stayed late, would pass by her. Its loneliness and walls, on which the eternally working lights were reflecting, reminded Maggie of a hospital. When she came to that thought, the voices from the ground level started sounding rather like distant howls of patients and she suddenly wished for them to end. Finally, she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw a grey, double door, which lead into another, shorter hallway.

Maggie peered through one of the two long, narrow windows on the doors. This part of the school looked equally, if not even more lonely than the rest of the way, that she had gone. It seemed more menacing than she had ever imagined it when she would carefully, so that no one would see her, stop by it's beginning and observe it with curiousity, which was only limited by fear. From the first day of school, Maggie dreaded this short hallway, just like the back entrance of the theatre. However, she knew that she could adjust to it, just as she got used to the cramped passage, which brought her to the stage and to Pablo. She couldn't trust that strange corner of the school. Yet, the teachers seemed to love it. While they weren't in classrooms, they would spend time behind one of the only few doors in the corridor. Maggie wasn't sure how they all could squeeze into such a small space, but she didn't know how big those rooms were. She only knew that they were the teachers' favourite place. It was probably because rarely any child had courage to cross to the other side of the grey door and therefore, that part belonged to them only. Indeed, it looked more serious and important than the humble rest of the school, with some broken windows, dented, metal lockers and uncovered floors, that were rarely cleaned.

Before she pushed one of the door wings, Maggie looked back in the direction, where she came from. Only for a split second, she was certain that she would turn back and give up entering the hallway. However, the wish for answeres, which seemed to be planted in her thoughts for a long time, pulled her to do what she originally wanted.

The voices had already gone completely silent when she opened both wings of the door, before hurrying to enter the corridor, so that she wouldn't change her mind and go back. For a while, the doors were swinging back and forth behind her, making a low hum, and then they gradually stopped. The hallway didn't have a single window and the only one, that Maggie could see, was on the other side of the entrance. It was open and a branch was poking through it, bending and audibly scratching the glass. The floor was no longer made of only dirty tiles, but it was covered with a rough, black carpet with some visible dark stains. The low ceiling and grey walls suffocated the brown colour of the wooden doors, behind which were the mysterious rooms for teachers. Only one of the doors was different than the rest. It was grey, the same colour like the walls, and it divided the hallway from the psychologist's office.