Staircase Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
Terrance stopped on instinct. He had kept close track of each step
on the stairs. Terrance had been skipping every third step. Every third step –
that was the bad step. That was where the danger lay. That was what would kill
him if he wasn’t careful.
Terrance looked left and then right, but not behind him. He didn’t
know how far he had come and didn’t want to know. He was afraid it wasn’t
nearly far enough. Step after step after step after step. It was a long climb.
He could feel the sun on his face. That was a good sight to see.
The sun meant he was making progress. The sun was lucky. He wanted to believe
that this meant he had a chance to make it. Terrance paused. It wasn’t so much
that he needed to rest. He wasn’t in the best of shape, but the stairs weren’t
so much a physical challenge as they were a mental challenge of dedication and
determination. One foot after the other, one step at a time. It all boiled down
to the will to make yourself move, the determination to take just one more
step, no matter how slowly you took it.
Terrance had been ascending the steps for what seemed like
forever. He didn’t know if that was really possible, but that was what it felt
like. He didn’t know. He didn’t keep track of things like that. He did keep
track of the thirds. “Life, love and death,” he had been told before he began.
He didn’t believe it. He wasn’t a superstitious man. And yet, he had skipped
the third step and then he did it again with the sixth. From there on out he
had created a pattern and he stuck to it. He was good and sticking to patterns,
whether he believed in them or not.
Step after step. Foot after foot. One by one by one. And then do
it all over again. It seemed like the recipe for his entire life. He was a man of patterns, routine. It was
simple and ordinary and extremely functional.
The stairs weren’t simple or ordinary and they were hardly
functional. They were the Forever Stairs. They went nowhere and everywhere.
They went up, a long long ways up. And they went down – as far down as they
could possibly go.
Terrance didn’t actually remember when he got on the stairs, what
level he was at, or when his first step really occurred. He figured that was
like life – nobody gets to choose when their life is going to begin and nobody
really ever remembers their first step. The stairs seemed like a path when you
reflected upon them, but really they were just as uncertain as any step or any
choice of any path in life.
Terrance had been warned to stay hidden. He didn’t know how that
was possible while on a flight of stairs, but he had tried to stay as invisible
as he possibly could. He was to avoid strangers and avoid eye contact. He was
an unwelcome trespasser. To climb so high, to show such hubris, only opened
himself to being too easily struck down. There were those that would tear from
below. There were those that would kick from above. Tumbling down an infinity
flight of stairs seemed unpleasant to say the least.
Periodically he looked ahead, but usually he kept his focus just
on the next step. He knew he had to watch for strangers. He knew he had to
watch for those that would attack and destroy him. They would appear out of
nowhere, without warning. They would stab him in the back if given the chance.
Terrance wanted a chance to be holy, to be clean and righteous. He
wanted a challenge and he wanted to prove his mettle and finally rise to an
occasion. He wanted to clean his soul and come out the better for it.
He took another step. And then another. And then another, making
sure to skip ahead past the third step of the pattern. He walked and he walked
and he walked forever. Not knowing where he was going. Unable to look back to
see where he had been. It was routine. It was pattern. He just had to make himself
stick to it. Over and over and over again. Forever. Forever or until death,
whichever came first.
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