I Gave It Space

[Reading time (full story): 35 minutes]

_____________________________

There are very few opportunities to share an experience as absurd as mine. And who would believe it was not just another one of the fantasy stories I usually write? Not even psychologists are open-minded enough to listen to such an irrational confession.

I hope that some of you, at least, will find a reason to believe me once my story is over.

Every word of it is true, and I will tell it exactly as I lived it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It happened two months ago, on the last Sunday of March. I woke up feeling deeply uneasy for no apparent reason, even though I had slept well the night before. I couldn’t even remember having a dream. By noon, that uneasiness had turned into a headache accompanied by a faint ringing in my ears. As miserable as it may sound, the sunny spring day outside didn’t improve either my mood or the headache.

I searched the bathroom cabinet for painkillers, only to realize I had run out, so I grabbed some money and my house keys and hurried out to the pharmacy on duty in my neighborhood.

I should mention that there is a cobblestone passageway, about fifteen meters long, connecting the entrance of my yard to the street through the tall concrete fences of the neighboring properties. That’s where I usually leave food for the strays.

My haste, an old loose stone, and one poorly placed step came together in the perfect combination for me to twist my left ankle. The sharp pain forced me to sit down for several minutes, which gave me enough time to think that the day still had plenty of room to get worse. And it did, in a way that not even my overactive imagination could have predicted.

I admit that I didn’t notice the 'slip' right away. I was distracted, lost in my thoughts — unpleasant thoughts, mostly. Even the absolute silence didn’t strike me as strange, despite how unnatural it was even for a neighborhood as quiet as mine. It wasn’t until I managed to stand up again and turned toward my house that I realized I was no longer somewhere familiar. Unexpectedly, I found myself standing at an intersection, surrounded by the concrete skeletons of unfinished buildings. The bizarre gray uniformity of the place was completed by a cloudy sky.

I looked around in every direction, confused and frightened, but not terrified. The moment I realized I was probably trapped (God knows where) I took off my glasses and burst into tears. Yes, that’s how I handle difficult situations. The crying didn’t last long. Once the initial shock wore off and my ankle pain was still manageable, I tried to comfort myself that, since Ιwas obviously not in Silent Hill, there was no time for drama. I needed to find a way out quickly. There had to be one.

It wasn’t courage or determination that pushed me to act immediately. Not even close! It was simply disappointment turning into apathy. Let’s just say I didn’t value my life as much as I should have. Even though I desperately wanted to return home, there wasn’t really anything there that I would miss. Probably only my neighborhood cats, the creatures that shared my antisocial nature. And as for my family, they would not mourn the loss of their failed daughter for more than 24 hours…

I randomly chose a direction and started to walk, limping slowly. Everywhere I looked there were only similar unfinished buildings, ranging from two to five floors with no exterior walls, and asphalt roads with no markings or sidewalks, intersecting only at right angles. It was a completely empty city that, for some reason, had stopped being built at the concrete stage.

It looked less like a city meant to house people and more like a massive art installation in tribute to the architectural style of Brutalism. It was hard to imagine anything living there at all, not even insects. Maybe that was why I was moving with such a loose kind of caution. Or maybe it was because the place itself radiated an undefined sense of familiarity.

There was something else as well: the headache and the faint ringing in my ears hadn’t gone away. It wasn’t exactly pain anymore, like earlier that morning, but more like pressure pushing outward from inside my head. It was uncomfortable, but it wasn’t really causing me any major problems.

The further I walked through the concrete city, the less disoriented I felt — that sense of familiarity I mentioned earlier.

I looked at all the buildings I passed and wondered what an exit from such a simple and specific dimension could possibly look like. Maybe it was just a door placed somewhere it shouldn’t exist. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, or how long I was supposed to keep searching, only that I would recognize it if I saw it. So far, though, I hadn’t come across anything particularly incongruous.

Although the roads seemed perfectly paved, I occasionally noticed small depressions arranged in a straight line. They were all nearly identical in size, and something about their shape reminded me of cat paw prints.

I kept walking until I emerged into a large open area paved with black and grey cobblestones arranged in circular patterns. It was probably the city’s main plaza, left unfinished and empty, just like every other structure there. I stood for a moment, right in the center. There was a marble plaque engraved with the Latin phrase 'ALTERUM LIMEN MENTIS' (I've found out that the whole phrase means 'The Other Threshold Of The Mind').

I chose a direction at random again and turned right.

Now that my memory is putting together all the pieces of that otherworldly experience, I feel angry at myself for having wandered through that place like a tourist. No matter how dead my soul felt, or how little I cared whether my body ended up dead as well, it was childish of me to underestimate the dangers hidden in a place that operates by its own rules, beyond logic…

The street I was on looked like an endless straight line. I kept walking slowly, never once feeling the need to stop. Basically, I don’t remember feeling any biological needs at all — I wasn’t tired, hungry, or thirsty. There was only the pain in my leg to remind me I was still alive.

Somewhere along the way, I could distinguish that the road led to a dead end in front of a tall concrete wall. Clearly, it was an entirely empty space. But as I got closer, I saw four small, white figures standing facing the wall. They were completely still, like statues. They looked like children (one slightly shorter than the other three), and they were covered from head to toe in white knitted suits.

Before I even dared to get any closer, they turned toward me, all four of them at once, in perfect synchrony.

I could feel them looking at me, even though their flat, blank faces had nothing but thick white knit. For a moment, all five of us took the exact same barely perceptible step back. And then, one after the other, they ran into an alley on the left.

This strange encounter should have shaken me enough to snap me out of my apathy. Instead, I stood for a moment in front of the empty wall, convinced I would see something out of place. There was nothing.

I was looking in the wrong direction…

So, I turned left and entered the alley too.

From that point on, things took a much more absurd turn. Everything seemed intentional rather than a series of coincidences. At least, that’s what I suspected. After all, I might have been the guest of honor in some kind of cosmic joke…

The alley was narrow and darker than the surrounding streets, running between empty concrete backyards. After my first few steps, I felt a slight dizziness, more like a brief loss of balance, which passed immediately. A few meters further on, I came out into a playground — it was just a single roundabout, actually. The mysterious Knit Kids were on it. They were rotating slowly without holding on to anything, and all four of them turned toward me, synchronized again.

I tried to quicken my pace, even though I was limping. They made no move at all. They kept rotating, and with each turn their heads remained fixed on me.

They probably found me more peculiar than interesting, and I admit the feeling was mutual.

Before continuing into another similar alley, I remember glancing back once or twice, but nothing had changed in their monotonous game.

When I stopped where the new alley led me, the first word that came to mind was 'incongruous'. The building standing in front of me was quite narrow, cubic, and taller than all the others. I counted seven open-space floors, consisting only of wide columns, like massive tables stacked on top of one another.

A strange tower…

I decided to climb all seven floors, but given my injury it would have been somewhat difficult and time-consuming. I wasn’t in a hurry, though. Before going in, I sat down on the single step of the entrance.

One of the Knit Kids — the smallest of the four — was standing at the mouth of the alley, a few meters away from me. The others were nowhere to be seen. One possible explanation was that they might be hiding in order to attack me in a more insidious way, having sent the 'cutest' one as a decoy. I hoped, at least, that they would kill me quickly.

For a while, it felt as if the scene had frozen in time. It was just the two of us, motionless, staring at each other. Even now, I still wonder how that creature managed to look at me with such a blank face. I doubt that what was hidden beneath the full-body knitted suit was human. Perhaps there was nothing inside at all, and it had simply been made that way. I couldn’t even determine its gender, if it had one.

As long as the moment didn’t feel particularly threatening, I took the initiative and spoke first. I asked it if it was an alien. To my surprise, it seemed to understand me and shook its head from side to side. A successful first attempt at communication gave me the courage to ask next if it had come to make sure I wouldn’t find my way out. This time, it didn’t respond. It remained still for a while, then suddenly looked back, and finally revealed its hands, which it had been hiding behind its back all along.

It threw two long pieces of rough wood in front of me and made a series of gestures that resembled the sign language. Then it ran off and disappeared into the alley before I could ask what it meant.

For a city whose construction had been abandoned halfway through, it was unnaturally clean. There were no leftover building materials anywhere, nor any objects that could explain the presence of wood. No trees, either. So I had no idea where the Knit Kid might have found those pieces of wood, or whether it had offered them to me for the purpose I ultimately chose. I simply did what seemed useful:

Using my pink shoelaces, I tied the second sock and the two pieces of wood around my aching ankle. The makeshift splint wasn’t perfect, but it made walking a bit easier.

There was no point to stay outside any longer. I got up and turned to the entrance, which was nothing more than a wide opening between two square columns. The same Latin phrase (ALTERUM LIMEN MENTIS) that I had seen earlier in the plaza was engraved into the floor.