The Intrusion

Thirty-Eight

[Andy]

The door to the elevator is already open when I reach the bottom of the stairs. I think it was miles and miles down, but since time does not exist here, I have no way of telling for sure.

The glass walls inside the elevator glisten, reflecting back the faceless shadow I have become. The mirrors beckon me to pass through, to become something new. To become the thing that exists on the other side of the glass.

The elevator's been waiting.

The floor jerks beneath my feet as the elevator begins to rise.

Floor one, floor two, floor three.

It ascends for what feels like ages, and the passing of floors eventually stops making sense. The digital screen above the door switches from displaying numbers to random symbols, like half of the lights have gone out and the other half are no longer listening to the system that is trying to control them.

It reminds me of the time our VCR broke one rainy day when I was five. Alice and I were trying to watch The Hundred and One Dalmatians. She pushed the tape into the machine to rewind it, but instead of displaying the 7 light digital read-outs of "PLAY" or "FAST FORWARD" or "PAUSE" or "REWIND", it displaying what looked like an alien language to me at the time. Random sensors being triggered. Signals mixed up, like it couldn't make sense of what was going on inside its own system.

When we told our dad it wasn't working, he pulled it out from under the TV, carried it into the dining room, and lay the whole thing on our table. Then, with a screw driver, he took the lid off, pulled his glasses down so they were sitting at the tip of his nose, and examined it.

After about two minutes of poking around in the machine, he finally said with a sigh: "Well, there's your problem."

He stuck the tip of the screw driver into the VCR, wiggled it around for a few seconds, and then pulled a pink piece of gummy taffy out of the machine. He turned to look at the two of us, still holding the screw driver with the taffy stuck to the end of it. With the most serious face he could manage at a time like this, he said to us: "Do either of you know how this piece of candy got stuck in the VCR?"

We were both silent for a second, until Alice suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, I remember that candy!" Almost immediately after the words had slipped out of her mouth, she clasped both hands over her face, realizing what she had just admitted to.

Our dad lost it after that. He couldn't contain himself anymore, and he laughed and laughed and laughed.

So Alice and I laughed too.

It was funny, but the thing is, I don't know why my sister said what she said. I don't think that she was the one that did it.

I think it was me.

I was the one that put that candy in the VCR.

Although, come to think of it, maybe I wasn't. Maybe it was Alice.

I was only five at the time, and our memories from when we are young have a way of getting confused in retrospect.

If you think about something long enough, it changes. Time passes, and it becomes obscured. Confused. Memories are fluid. They can be changed and redirected by just the smallest stick in the river.

To be honest, have no recollection of ever putting a piece of pink taffy into the VCR. The only thing I actually remember is what I thought after my sister admitted to being the one that did it. I remember thinking that she was wrong because it had been me.

That's the thing of it. I remember remembering that it was me, but I don't have any memory of actually doing it.

It's strange to consider childhood memories.

I wonder how much of them I can trust, and I wonder how much of them I've fabricated or extrapolated on or twisted around over my life. Memories of memories of memories, like a giant game of telephone with my own life and by the end of it I'm not sure if what I've got even remotely resembles what I had to begin with.

I wonder who I am, and I wonder if who I am is who I'm supposed to be.

I hear a ding and look back at the digital screen above the door. It's working again. I'm at floor 25.

The door slides open with a groan. As I step out, something snaps behind me, following by a crunching groan. I look back as the elevator compresses and collapses into the space it once occupied. It caves in on itself and falls through the floor—down, down, down—leaving nothing but a giant hole in the center of the building in its wake.

I lean over the ledge. Vertigo grips the pit of my stomach. I'm flying and falling at the same time, but I'm not moving. I'm standing still, and I see nothing.

I see an enormous nothing.

Miles and miles of nothing with a great, gaping, gasping, groaning, abyss of a tomb at the end of it all, like the mouth of a whale opening up wide to swallow the world.

Wind erupts from the hole, like a giant exhale in a tremendous cough. I step back. There is nothing for me there.

My feet carry me down the hallway and towards the door—Jordan's door. I press the tips of my fingers against it, and it creaks open.

Everything feels different. There is a heaviness to the air, a sweet-sick thickness. My feet trudge along as I pass through the maze of mirrors, seeing nothing but the dark shadow reflect back at me where a person should be. Where I should be. 

The door to Jordon's room is open, so I go in. I reach the bed and run my hands along the foot board. I lean over it until Jordan's face comes into view.

Her head is a faceless shadow staring up at me—a mirror image of my own. I lean in closer... and closer... and closer... until I am close enough that I can reach out and touch her if I want to.

And then I do.

An intense pressure, like the kind that builds up in your ears when you go deep underwater or drive through the mountains, overwhelms me. It pulses against my eardrums and skull until finally the tension becomes too much to bare. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. Then, there is a pop. Suddenly, the pressure releases, and finally, I can breath again.