Gate to Nowhere

Nona had always hated airports after midnight. The way the harsh lighting made everything look bleached and artificial, the way her footsteps echoed too loudly in the empty corridors, the way time seemed to stretch and distort until she couldn't tell if she'd been waiting for twenty minutes or two hours.

But tonight was different. Tonight, the waiting area felt alive in a way she couldn't explain.

She'd missed her connection in Denver—some mechanical issue that stranded her until the 6 AM flight. The gate area had emptied hours ago, leaving only a few scattered travelers slumped in uncomfortable chairs, their faces lit blue by phone screens. The coffee shops had pulled down their metal grates. Even the janitors had moved to distant terminals.

Nona found herself walking. Past gate C-14, C-15, C-16. The carpet beneath her feet was that particular shade of blue-gray that existed nowhere else in the world except airports and office buildings. The fluorescent lights hummed their endless song.

That's when she noticed the corridor.

It branched off to her right, between gates C-22 and C-23, marked only with a sign reading "Terminal Services." She'd walked this path a dozen times in the past few hours, but the corridor hadn't been there before. She was sure of it.

Nona paused, checking her phone. 3:17 AM. The numbers seemed to pulse on the screen.

The corridor stretched ahead, lined with the same industrial carpet, the same buzzing lights. But something about it felt deeper than it should, as if it extended far beyond what the terminal's architecture could possibly contain. A faint sound drifted from its depths—was it music? Voices? The whisper of air conditioning?

She looked back at the gate area. The stranded passengers dozed in their chairs, unchanged. The departure board still showed her delayed flight. Everything normal. Everything exactly as it should be.

But when she turned back to the corridor, it seemed to beckon.

Nona had always been practical. She paid her bills on time, kept her receipts, never jaywalked. But at 3:17 AM in an empty airport, surrounded by the hum of fluorescent lights and the weight of sleepless hours, practical seemed like a foreign concept.

She walked into the corridor.

The sounds grew clearer as she moved deeper—not quite music, but rhythmic, like breathing. The fluorescent lights stretched endlessly ahead, each one identical to the last. Her footsteps echoed, but strangely, as if the sound was coming from somewhere else entirely.

After what felt like hours but could have been minutes, she reached a door. Unmarked, painted the same institutional beige as everything else, but somehow different. More real than real, if that made any sense.

Nona reached for the handle, then stopped. Through the small window in the door, she could see another waiting area. But this one was full of people she almost recognized—faces that tugged at her memory but remained just out of reach. They sat in the same uncomfortable chairs, under the same harsh lights, but they seemed to be waiting for something else entirely.

Her phone buzzed. A text from her sister: "Flight okay? You never texted back."

Nona looked at the screen. 3:17 AM. The same time as before. But that was impossible—she'd been walking for at least twenty minutes.

She turned around. The corridor stretched behind her, identical to the path ahead. No way to tell which direction led back to her gate.

But somehow, that didn't frighten her. In this place between places, between her old life and whatever came next, between sleeping and waking, between 3:17 and 3:17, Nona felt something she hadn't experienced in years.

She felt like she was exactly where she needed to be.

The door handle turned easily in her hand.

On the other side, the waiting began again.