Liminal

I found it at a bus stop.

Waiting for the 8:15 from downtown to the Park’s Ridge neighborhood so I could walk thirty minutes home. There was plenty of people around me and even though it was dark the bus stop’s lights made is safely bright. It was, like a crack in a door, between a tall trashcan and Coke machine. It wasn’t much brighter than the place around it but it was just bright enough to make this strange thin rectangle stand out of place with the rest of the environment.

I just stared, and stared, and stared. I couldn’t stop trying to figure out what it was. Slowly I came to perceive I was observing a room on the far side of that opening. An unpleasant yellow carpet with some kind of repeating maroon pattern and that wood paneling with thick black vertical lines that was popular in the seventies. I became kind of mesmerized by the light that illuminated that space and its slow irregular modulation of brightness.

The bus arrived and the sudden motion jerked my attention back to the people around me as they shuffled aboard and I joined the line. Looking over I couldn’t find the spot again and decided it was an optical illusion generated by my fatigue and the odd light of a brightly lit night.

Two days later I got off work late and was waiting for the 9:15 with one other person. A young man, he ignored me and I ignored him. His attention moving between where the bus would be coming from and a game on his phone. Mine was nearly dead and I kept it firmly in my pocket fighting the urge to look at the news and drain the battery.

I saw the space again but this time my attention was drawn to it by movement. It was like something walked casually past your bedroom door and I could clearly see the opening between the trash can and the Coke machine. I stood up immediately wanting to examine the illusion further and moved towards the machine.

“Don’t.” The young man had spoken and the sudden voice intruding on the quiet of the falsely brightened night made me jump. He was looking at me very intently.

“I just.” I started to lie, to cover up what I intended to do and I don’t know why.

“The machine doesn’t work.” He nodded slowly toward the trash can, gap, and Coke machine. I looked over and back at him. The machine was lit up brightly and clearly worked. “Don’t.” He was strangely intent as if he was trying to convey something through a coded phrase.

I understood he was talking about the gap, the opening to the room with its strange light and ugly carpet. But I wanted to see very badly. “I’m just getting a Coke.”

He glanced aside for a split second then back at me. “You won’t get one.”

I turned away and walked towards the gap with the confidence of one sure of their path.

The young man watched as the stranger walked towards the gap. He jumped when the thin desperate arm thrust out and grasped the stranger’s jacket jerking him against the opening. He could see only part of the face the arm led to, emaciated skin unhealthy with ague and a blood shot too white eye with an uncomfortably dilated pupil. The sound of the body being forcefully pulled through the small gap struck deep into the young man’s psyche and he vomited bile onto the bus stop’s floor. When he looked back up all that remained with a small blood puddle. Then the bus pulled up and he boarded it.