Life is but a dream

By Rick Hartford

The opening to the manhole fades away as I crawl into pitch black.

Can’t take the chance using my flashlight.

Have got to keep moving, keep moving.

The cold concrete culvert I am in is part of a series of storm runoff tunnels running under the city.

There is no room to stand up. I crawl as fast as I can. My knees are scraped and bleeding. The heels of my hands are bruised and sore.

How far have I gone? Fifty yards? A hundred? I come to a junction. Left or right? Or continue straight? I enter the tunnel to the left. I feel like a rat in a maze. With no end in sight, only more darkness ahead.

I look at dumbly at my mobile phone, the screen lights up. It has 20 percent until it dies.

I call Windy.

No answer.

I turn the phone off and put it in my pocket and continue on, head down.

How long ago had it happened.? An hour ago? Two?

I was working late. Delivering a package to a law firm on the 26th floor, the security guard’s eyes narrowed as I checked in at the desk.

“What?” I said.

He dismissed me with a nod toward the elevators.

I got into the middle elevator and pressed the up button. I had the car to myself.

My destination: the 26th floor.

There are actually 25 floors, I note. Because they don’t have a thirteenth floor on the panel.

Bad luck.

Superstition.

Yet, there is still a 13th floor, I think to myself. Even if you call it something else, it’s there. The elephant in the room. An Event Horizon which you pass through to get to the Fifth Dimension. A Bermuda Triangle, where all those military airplanes disappeared.

I feel a slight jolt as the elevator begins its climb. Then, oddly, another jolt. This one is more severe.

I think about Windy. We are going to meet up for drinks after work. She’s a bike messenger, too.

The car passes the12th floor and up towards the theoretical 13th when the car stops and the lights go out.

I turn on my flashlight. I see the phone they have for emergencies at the bottom of the car. Why is it at the bottom? I sit down and pick it up and put the receiver to my ear.

“Hello? Is anybody there?”

“Nothing.

None of the controls work and the door won’t open.

I try opening the door open with my hands. A trickle of sweat slides down my right armpit.

My fingers slip as I try to get a purchase on the door.

No good.

I look up and see a trap door in the ceiling of the car. I jump up, trying to knock it open with my hands.

Too high.

I go back to prying the door open, but my hands keep slipping from my sweat. I pray that the car doesn’t move. In my minds eye I am halfway through when the lights come on and the car surges up, slicing me in half, my lower body bouncing off the steel cords as it drops to the ground floor. Gradually I get it open wide enough to allow my body to squeeze through onto the 13th floor.

I am curled up on the floor, panting. There is no one on the floor and no lights. I find the staircase and start jogging down the stairs.

Fuck the delivery.

Coming out onto the ground floor I hear the screaming. There is no security guard in sight. There is no light on the street. I push the front door open and the sound is deafening. Screaming people are running past the building and racing down the block. I see a thick pool of dark red blood on the street. An old man slips on it and falls. People run right over him. It’s like a nightmare Pamplona. There is terror in a man’s eyes as he passes me. I call out to him but he doesn’t answer and disappears, swept up by the crowd.

The pack is nearing the end of the block when they are met by something going in the opposite direction. There are terrified screams and howls of pain and you can smell the blood in the air. People are crushed as the pack reverses itself. Now people are running in both directions.

I see a man in the middle of the street, struggling to pry a manhole cover up. He has strong thick fingers and looks like a construction worker. He manages to pry the cover up and off but as I approach him his head explodes in a pink mist and he falls into the manhole, his body awkwardly jammed halfway down, headless. I grab him under his arms and I am immediately covered in blood. Now I know what dead weight means. I manage to get him up and into the street where I leave him and and quickly drop down into the manhole.

The screaming above grows fainter as I crawl further into the bowels of the city. I come to a junction. Left or right? I read somewhere that left with a choice, rats in a maze will go right.

That’s what I am. A rat in a maze. Just after I enter the new tunnel I Iook back and a beam of blinding light shoots past, illuminating the place I had just been.

I turn and begin to crawl again, frantically..

I have no idea how far I have gone, but I stop when I hear something ahead.

It’s a trickle of water and very soon I can make out a drain spout up ahead on the right. The culvert opens up onto a ledge just above a brook.

I emerge into the cool night and look into the beautiful sky lit by the moon and listen to the sound of the water. Peaceful, at first, but I have a growing feeling of dread.

My phone rings. It’s Windy!

I am about to say something when she speaks.

“Don’t talk,” she says breathlessly. “Just listen. Reset your password.”

“Windy, what…”

I can hear her crying now.

“Please just do it,” she says, her voice becoming a whimper. “They said you would know what to do.”

I look across the brook and there is an old man sitting on the far bank with crazy white hair looking exactly like Albert Einstein. He gives me a hopeful smile and shrugs his shoulders. He is wearing a pink bathrobe and red slippers. I get the impression that he has escaped from an insane asylum.

I speak into the phone.

“Windy?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

Ok. I’ll do it.”

The call ends. I try calling back but she doesn’t pick up.

Albert Einstein gets up and begins to do the Charleston.

“What are we waiting for, Sonny? Let’s get going! We have to get back to the 13th floor.”

I look at him for a long minute. “How did you know about the 13th floor?”

“What’s 13 times 2? Twenty six, an easy deduction. I’m Einstein, remember? Now let’s get going. You have a package to deliver.”

I look back at the city. It is completely dark.

Einstein and I walk for a little more than a mile to the office building in the center of the city. The streets are empty, no sign of the catastrophe I lived through. The manhole cover is firmly back in place.

Nobody in the lobby. Einstein and I take the stairs to the 13th floor. A woman in a grey sharkskin suit and a wild blonde Afro is waiting for us.

“’Since the elevator is broken, we are going to have to take the stairs the rest of the way,” she says. “Who is this guy?” she says to me.

“He’s Einstein. Who are you?”

“Attorney Dewey’s secretary. Do you have the package?”

“I have to deliver it personally,” I say.

“Very well. Follow me.”

We take the stairs to the 26th floor. Ahead of us a door opens up to a law firm. They have the whole floor. It is a beehive of dozens of suits and skirts and attache cases and attorneys huddled in glass walled offices.

They turn to look at us as we enter. Dead silence.

Dewey’s secretary turns to me.

“Okay, give it to me.”

I hold out the package.

“Not the package. The password? Did you forget it?

“Yes, I say. “I was just about to reset it. Why is that important?”

A door opens and two men in uniform are holding Windy as they enter the room.

“It’s the Nazi’s” Einstein says.

“Shut up, Einstein,” one of the men says.

“So what is it,” the secretary says.

I lean over and whisper in her right ear.

She backs up with her hand on her face as if I had slapped her.

“There’s something really wrong with you,” she says. “Leave the package on the table and get out.”

She now has a small pistol in her hand, jerking the barrel toward the exit. Me, Windy and Einstein exit stage right, the secretaries and the attorneys and the Nazi’s watching.

The secretary slowly closes the door in our faces.

We take the stairs and emerge into the street.

Einstein lights a cigarette. A little white plume climbs into the air. He looks amused.

“What are you thinking?” I ask him.

“Life is but a dream,” he says.