A Book With a View

Fortunately for Apartment 115, the sick, old man from Apartment 302 died by the end of the week. He was the miserable type, made further miserable by his ailing health, so there wasn’t much grieving.

Unfortunately, they didn’t know what to do with his body.

“We could leave him in the hall,” Cameron suggested, bouncing his feet against the kitchen cupboards. There were several chairs to sit on, but Cameron preferred perching himself atop the counter. “You know, until the Labyrinth shifts again.”

Ridhi didn’t look opposed, her mouth pulling to the side. She tugged on her dark hair absently, twirling a strand between her index finger and thumb.

However, Batch, leaning against the table with crossed arms, shook his head. Batch was a tall guy. Stretched like gum. Cameron had a love-hate relationship with Batch’s height. Made his life convenient when someone needed something from top shelves. Made it inconvenient when they slept, as Batch tended to starfish and Cameron slept in the middle, which meant he often awoke cramped and achy.

“No good?” Ridhi asked, dark eyebrows raised in Batch’s direction. Ridhi had magic eyebrows. She could prompt people with the rise and fall of one.

Batch shook his head again. “No good. What if someone comes across him?”

Cameron blew a raspberry, feet knocking against the cupboards. “You’re such a bleeding heart, man.”

It was true. Ridhi ended up being the last of the three stuck in Crest Gardens Apartments, and even though Cameron had encountered her in the Labyrinth several times, it only took Batch one meeting to ask if she wanted to move in. After all, her boyfriend, who was meant to live with her, was away for work when she moved in. Thus, she ended up in the Labyrinth alone. So, Batch asked.

That was their first apartment, number 115. The Labyrinth shifted five times since then.

Batch gave Cameron a hard look. “There are kids in here with us. What if one of them comes across the body? We need to look out for one another.”

Cameron knew he should be chastised. He kind of was, but it was also hard to care when he had not seen said kids in the two years he’d been stuck in Crest Garden Apartments.

“He’ll smell,” Ridhi input, drawing their attention. She shrugged at their stares. “We’re nearing the next Labyrinth shift, but we’re still a few days out. He’ll end up our problem or someone else’s, but either way, he’ll smell.”

They all turned towards the pair of sheet-covered feet poking out of the bathroom entryway.

“We could bag him,” Cameron suggested, after a long silence. “Put him in the freezer. When the shift comes, take him with us, see if we end up near the courtyard this time, and bury him if we can.”

It wasn’t out of the question, but it was also a random chance. They hadn’t ended up with the courtyard in a few shifts now. When Crest Gardens shifted, every seven weeks, it only allowed them access to a random selection of floors. This time around it was the third, fourth, and ninth floors. Step into the stairwell, take the elevator, and no matter how many flights you count you’ll only end up in one of those options. It was the same with whatever combination you ended up with after the shift. The courtyard, and its little garden beds, were ground floor.

Ridhi frowned, Batch frowned, and after a moment, Cameron frowned, too.

“That would mean—”

“We’d have to—”

“I don’t think there are any tools here that would—”

They all stopped, each unable to finish the suggestion, and blinked at one another for a long time.

Finally, Batch dragged a hand across his afro, looking ten years older. “Alright,” he gave. “We look through the third floor apartments for some tools that would…”

“—make 302 small enough to bag,” Ridhi supplied with her raised, magic eyebrows after Batch trailed off for too long.

Cameron nodded. “And if we don’t find any, then the hall?”

Batch sighed but eventually relented. “And then the hall.”

________________________________________

Cameron checked the reviews, signed a lease with the rental office, everything when he moved into Crest Gardens.

He was on the second floor. Cheap. Cramped, since he had no roommate. He didn’t run into any neighbors when he moved in, but it was a late Tuesday. He stayed up playing Minecraft then went to bed thinking nothing of it. Come morning, he was another soul lost to the Labyrinth.

The first day, a person experiences the five stages and then some, after they stop thinking all their newly appeared neighbors are crazy, and after running through the few select floors the Labyrinth provides about a dozen different times, after trying a suddenly useless phone or laptop. Cameron still wasn’t convinced it wasn’t a nightmare.

No one reported the people the complex took, either. It was like once Crest Gardens took someone, everyone in the outside world forgets them. Elijah Batch moved in four years ago with his roommate, Liam. Yet Cameron never heard of either of them until he was taken as well. Batch attended the local university, too. Missing students tended to make the news.

Cameron came two years later. Ridhi one year after him. They did alright, the three of them. Times were better when a shift provided an apartment with at least two beds or even a decent couch, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

The day they found 302, they scoured his apartment for anything which could dispose of a body, but Cameron didn’t think anyone looked. None of them was the type to cut up a body. Thank god.

Cameron did, however, find cash. A shit ton of it.

“Is this 302’s?” Cameron gaped, poking at the duffel bag and watching the stacks of bills shuffle. He had been in the bedroom closet, noticed the back vent wasn’t screwed in, and when he pulled it away he found the bag.

Ridhi reached in and plucked a stack out, weighing it in her hand. “I don’t think 302 would have crawled around in the back of a closet.”

Batch, seated in front of the TV and watching one of three infomercial channels Crest Gardens still provided, snorted. “I bet you there was a drug dealer in the complex. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was Liam, to be honest.”

Batch’s old roommate. They didn’t end well.

Ridhi and Cameron spent the next hour counting, and then, once Batch got sick of commercials, he helped, too. The longer they counted, the less sense it made. Money wasn’t entirely useless in the Labyrinth. Sure, food reappeared in fridges every day like it was never eaten. Electricity and water never turned off.

But there was The Shop, on the ground floor.

“It could be new,” Batch suggested, at a total loss as he watched Ridhi pencil down $19,200 on paper before going to count the last bills. “Someone came to Crest Gardens, didn’t realize what happens here. Didn’t think to take the money with them for their first shift and now they can’t get back to 302.”

“Well, finders, keepers, right?” Cameron asked.

No one answered, but when Ridhi counted the last bill, taking her pencil and writing $20,000, no one disagreed.

________________________________________

Cameron awoke to Ridhi loudly muttering, “Thank god, a spare bedroom,” and the bed dipping as she rolled off the mattress.

He squinted an eye open, awakening to an unfamiliar room with Batch’s arm around his waist. Ridhi stumbled out of the open doorway to a pink bedroom across the hall and slammed the door shut.

Another shift in the Labyrinth.

“Babe,” Cameron said, pawing at Batch’s arm and ignoring his whine. He wanted to explore the floors. Check the apartment. See if they had enough variety for Ridhi’s vegetarianism, what clothes were available, if they needed to barter with their new neighbors.

He managed to slip out of Batch’s octopus-grip, found slippers in the living room, and headed for the door. He only stopped when he remembered the $20,000.

A trick to the shifts was if you wanted to bring an object with you, you needed to have it on hand when the change happened. Currently, the duffel was tucked against Batch’s back. It would have been an uncomfortable sleep, but Cameron wasn’t sympathetic since the last seven weeks he’d been crammed between starfish Batch and roly-poly Ridhi.

For the hell of it, he took some money before leaving the apartment — 1304, high up but big — and headed for the stairwell. He yawned and shuffled down the stairs until the next door came into view and pushed it.

He was greeted with bright, glass doors.

The ground floor.

The doors were a blatant taunt. Everyone in the complex tried or would try them, just as they’d try the windows and the balconies and shouting in the courtyard. It ended bloody more often than not. Cameron broke several knuckles his first time around. One never healed right and now he had a knobbly ring finger.

The ground floor led to the courtyard, which was bracketed on all sides by the complex.

It also had The Shop.

No one noticed The Shop when they first checked the complex, nor on their first night, but afterward, it appeared.

As did The Shopkeeper.

“Mornin’, bucko!” A mammoth of a middle-aged man called from behind the glass counter, smile eerily wide and teeth too bright. His shirt was red with MINOS RETAIL embroidered on the breast. Cameron was scared of him. Everyone was.

After all, take the worrying details; The Shopkeeper, his sense of other, the basement keycard attached to his belt despite no one ever mentioning a shift to the basement. The unsettling, distant scraping noise coming from somewhere in the complex from time to time. The fact that no one knew what happened to the people who tried getting answers out of The Shopkeeper. Like Liam, for example.

Cameron nodded at The Shopkeeper. “Morning, sir. What do you have today?”

There was a small, black notebook within the case, cover worn. Beside it a little radio. Then, a ring of keys.

Cameron’s heart leapt into his mouth.

“Well,” The Shopkeeper laughed. “Looks like something caught your eye, bucko!”

Cameron looked at the keyring. He recognized it. He got one when he signed his lease. His first morning at Crest Gardens it disappeared. Same story for everyone.

“Are those real?” Cameron breathed, looking up into the unblinking eyes of The Shopkeeper. “Will those work on—”

“—Crest Gardens’ entrance? Yessiree, Bob! Although,” The Shopkeeper leaned in conspiratorially, mouth barely moving to let his words through, “I can’t guarantee someone won’t nab them if you don’t!”

The implication was loud. No doubt if Cameron didn’t buy them at this very moment, they’d disappear without a trace within the period it’d take to go get Batch and Ridhi. As do all chances of escape.

“How much?” Cameron demanded.

“A fine price! A mere $150!”

“Done.”

“Although, if you buy them, you leave immediately.”

Cameron choked, daring to look into The Shopkeeper’s leer.

The Shopkeeper nodded at Cameron’s stunned silence. “That’s right, bucko! You buy these, then you cannot return to your room. You leave immediately after purchase. Lease terminated!”

Cameron couldn’t breathe. The glass doors, bright with daylight, mocked him. The dull keys in the case mocked him. The Shopkeeper mocked him.

“So,” The Shopkeeper asked, lidding his eyes. “What’ll it be?”

________________________________________

Cameron quietly pushed the door open, as though in disbelief.

He breathed in, and something cracked inside himself.

Ridhi, barely awake at 1304’s coffee maker, blinked owlishly. “What do you got there?”

He paused, but then with more force than necessary he tossed the little black book onto the counter, where its weak spine folded open to a drawing of a meadow.

“Oh,” Ridhi yawned. “That’s nice. Imagine seeing that now.”

“Yeah,” Cameron mumbled, headed to the bedroom. “Imagine.”