The Mercurial Nature of Narrow Ambition
Light a candle. There are streamers hanging from the ceiling, cobwebs and dust turning them the same dim color as the walls. But you will be grateful for the open flame. There is a stair. A basement. A sub-level. Keep going — the walls are asbestos, but that fire will still kill you if it catches. There’s precious little oxygen down here as it is. Place your hand on a grimy, hollowed out railing, going more by touch than by sight. Feel years of grit slide and crunch beneath your boots on each step. Is that candle guiding you, or blinding you? With how dark this place is, it can’t make things worse.
A spider dances over your hand — no, just a loose hanging wire. Miles of virgin copper rest in these walls, never once having known an electric spark. Minutes ago your footsteps disturbed puddles of silt on the stair above. Now that same silt falls on your head, in your hair, in your ears, in your eyes, in your nose. Your mouth is tightly shut. You hug the wall, praying that the skeleton of the building can yet support your weight.
Your feet reach concrete with a hollow echo. Mildew and rat droppings. Black mold. Rotting, wet cloth. Rust. These are the smells of the lowest floor. The darkness is equally close and vast. Behind you, the staircase, beside you, a pockmarked wall, but in front of you is only the faintest of crossing shadows. You approach a crumbling pillar, gaps in the concrete revealing the corroded rebar inside. Behind it, a shelf so old it’s fused to the floor, loaded with nondescript boxes that would likely disintegrate if you touched them. Past that, a rough metal cube that probably used to be a home appliance. Next, a pile of rotted pallets so menacing you prefer to step around. You hear scurrying noises within as your candlelight disturbs the shadows.
You go on like this, deeper and deeper into the lowest floor. The minutes stretch on into an hour. The detritus becomes more arcane. A mangled ironing board. A shattered pot, the dead trunk of a palm tree still planted in the wreckage like the mast of a shipwreck. A plastic folding table with metal restraints bolted to it. A pile of envelopes, each one of them stapled shut along the top, each one ripped open from the bottom. A metal shop cart, laden with empty canvas sacks. A long metal poker, suspended from the ceiling by a mess of plaster and wiring. A dank pile of furs. A statue of a frog, 5 feet tall, carved out of ivory. The frog’s hands have been broken off. You give it a wide berth.
Your eyes are bleary, your throat raw. Your head swims with the noxious odor of decay all around you. Your limbs feel stiff. Your ears throb to the rhythm of your elevated pulse. The candle burns lower. Here, at the back, under a tarp, under a workbench, in a rat-chewed cardboard box. You slip it into a jacket pocket. A scorched lawnmower leers at you from the corner. Black, oily liquid drips onto it from a bulge in the ceiling.
You turn around and start heading back towards the stairs, but something is wrong. The items in the dark are becoming more eclectic. A human skeleton with a rodent shaped skull. A stack of bicycle wheels, graffitied with alien runes. A hole gapes in the floor — something sharp and metallic glints in the darkness. The building groans. Red wires hung like an orb weaver’s web. A faceless mask of copper resting on a table. You stumble into the table and send the mask tumbling to the ground — the inside is an impossibly detailed image of a screaming human face.
Your candle is very low now. The dust is thick enough to see. Your feet drag on the gravelly concrete. The item in your pocket feels wet and heavy. You almost think you can feel it eating through your jacket lining, digging into your bare skin. You clamber over a sideways refrigerator with something leaking from its door. The candle flickers. A noise behind you? Where are the stairs? A forest of supporting beams, thick spiderwebs laced between them. A hole in the ceiling, a spiraling trickle of dust falling from it to form a neat pyramid on the ground. The pyramid is almost as big as you are. You see scraps of fabric near the edge. Best not to dwell on it.
You should have brought a rope. You should have brought more light. Your candle is about to die. Precious globs of wax run down your fingers, burning your skin. You try to catch them all, and scrape them off back into the candle. Your hands are soon mottled with livid red lines and polka dots. You accidentally breathe through your mouth, and the feeling of grit and rot on your tongue is strong enough to make you stop and retch. You double over. Your numb fingers slip. The candle falls.
It is many hours before you stumble through the door of the building back out into the open air. Your clothing is torn, your limbs bleeding, your eyes black with fear. You cough up viscous, brown phlegm. The openness of the empty sky above you shocks you, and you fall to your knees. The stars seem impossibly bright. A burning dome. Memories of the sun drift through your consciousness. You shudder in fear. Time in the dark has changed you. Agoraphobia, photosensitivity, pneumonia, hypoxia. The item in your jacket is forgotten. You curl into a ball under the shadow of the building, and weep.
