I Gave It Space

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 Ι was 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 have 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.

I find it difficult to describe what I felt as I stepped inside. It was something both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

Incidentally, that disturbance was nothing compared to what would happen soon on the fourth floor…

I climbed the concrete staircase slowly and carefully, supporting my weight on my good right leg while keeping one hand against the reinforced concrete wall beside the stairs for balance. The first two floors were completely empty, just like the ground floor, so I continued up to the third. The same scene awaited me there, with only one small difference: my footsteps echoed almost… metallic. It was not a sound the rubber soles of my sneakers should have been making against concrete. I moved around the space in a slow circle for a while, and when I failed to notice anything unusual, I climbed up to the fourth floor.

The ‘metallic’ sound of my footsteps followed me all the way to the staircase, where it was replaced by another sound, more steady and continuous, like a faint hiss. Along with it came a flickering grey light on the landing, welcoming me to the fourth floor.

In the center stood a large CRT TV playing static. I approached it hesitantly. My surprise might not have been so great if I hadn’t noticed that there were no cables anywhere, nor anything that could possibly be powering the device. I examined it closely and pressed the buttons on its frame, but nothing changed. The CRT TV continued to play on its own, as if it were haunted.

Certainly, the weirdness of the concrete tower had nothing to do with ghosts or similar nonsense. I suspected that the Knit Kids might have set up the television to unsettle me, but…

How could they possibly know the man who suddenly appeared on the screen?…

When the video started playing, a sharp sound, like metal scraping against metal, pierced through my head. It was not coming from the television, but from inside my own head. I could even feel my eardrums vibrating under the pressure.

On the screen, a man was standing at the highest point of a rocky, sunlit shore, wearing a black t-shirt and black jeans. It took me literally two seconds to recognize him, since I often saw him on the news.

It was disturbingly wrong how much he resembled the Greek reporter Stavros Ioannidis — his appearance, his voice, everything… He was speaking toward a stationary camera without a microphone. At first, I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Suddenly, a blinding flash in the sky, like an explosion, made him turn around and point toward the horizon above the calm sea. He said something else to the camera, and then the image cut out abruptly. For a moment, I thought it was over, but the video quickly jumped back to the beginning and started playing again. The whole thing continued in a loop that I found myself drawn into watching.

Only when the painful noise inside my ears finally stopped I was able to hear the reporter’s words clearly (in flawless English instead of Greek):

“The abnormal phenomenon appears to be continuing at a steady rate. The biggest question that remains is how her troubled mind was capable of something so dangerous and beautiful…
This is the third meteor so far. All of them are passing over the sea…”

(After the flash in the sky, he continued):

“At least she keeps them away from my head…”

I listened to it so many times, sitting in front of that mysterious CRT TV, that I still remember every sentence. But I couldn’t make any sense of it or guess what ‘thing’ had borrowed the identity of Greece’s most respected war correspondent in order to present an impossible asteroid phenomenon.

And, besides, why was I even supposed to care?

I remember that, beyond my confusion, it was the first time in that otherworldly city that I felt fear reaching my bones. I only managed to tear my eyes away from the screen when my heart started beating far too fast. Then I stood up and walked to the edge of the floor to look at the sky. Nothing was falling from up there. There was nothing to see except dense gray clouds that were not even moving. When my gaze drifted downward, I considered throwing the CRT TV off the building. It was certainly heavy enough, but I could probably push it over the edge and put an end to whatever it was doing to me. I could have at least tried, but I didn’t…

I refocused on my goal of exploring the entire tower. There were still three floors left. I headed quickly toward the staircase while the imposing male voice continued filling the atmosphere. It suddenly stopped and was replaced once again by the television static. I stopped too, instinctively, but only for a moment.

The fifth floor was filled with steel support posts. At first, there seemed to be about twenty, though I didn’t actually count them. I tried to count them, unsuccessfully, as with every step I took I would see another post where there had been none before. For some reason, I was unable to focus my attention on the whole space, even though it was small. At least I realized in time that I needed to move along the perimeter in order to stay oriented and reach the next staircase.

What I found on the sixth floor could not possibly exist in any building. The entire ceiling was covered with stalactites of various sizes. They were not dripping, but there were scattered patches of moisture on the floor. I cannot deny how impressed I was by the sight. I don’t remember how long I stood there watching the stalactites, perhaps a bit less than I had spent in front of the CRT TV.

Only one floor remained.

Up to that point, nothing worked the way it was supposed to, nothing I heard matched the space, and nothing I saw had any logical explanation. I didn’t know whether it was the tower or my perception that was at fault, probably both. The final floor showed me how deep that went.

This time, instead of concrete, I stepped onto black-and-white terrazzo, clean and polished. In the center stood a staircase, carelessly painted white, rising straight toward a rectangular opening in the ceiling. The top step ended against a narrow reinforced concrete wall.

The rooftop, of course! From up there I could observe the entire city. I moved closer, but then continued along the staircase. I wanted to check the space first. Now that I think about it, maybe the space was also checking me…

On the back side of the narrow wall there was a large vertical mirror.

It is an instinctive impulse to automatically look at our reflection when we pass in front of a mirror. It has nothing to do with vanity, but with the confirmation of our existence. And that is exactly what I did when I stood there: I was confirming that I was still me.

On the other hand, how could such a reflection be real? My face looked blurred and not particularly solid. It was more like a very dense fog trying to imitate my form. It was the same with my hands in the mirror, but when I looked at my real ones, they were normal.

I took off my sweatshirt. I wanted to see if the rest of my body had the same distorted reflection. I wasn’t surprised by what I saw. I was both real and spectral at the same time.

I reached my hand toward the mirror, and my fingers met only solid glass. Nothing unusual, although it was quite cold. And then I did something very odd on the spur of the moment.

After all, I didn’t feel much like myself anymore.

I turned around and pressed my bare back against the mirror. The cold should have been deeply unpleasant, but it was not. Instead, I felt it running down my spine like a revitalizing shock…

The unnaturally pleasant shiver spread through the most sensitive parts of my body…

In those few seconds, even my breath came out freezing…

I pulled away only when the ice-burn sensation left my back completely numb. I put my sweatshirt back on, but before leaving, I glanced over my shoulder.

The mirror had cracked. The small fractures scattered across its surface continued to spread, forming shapes that resembled letters. The letters slowly became words, and the words formed a verse I had not read for the first time:

“When the snow falls pink,
And stains your skin,
It hails the Queen of December.”

Perhaps I still have that birthday card somewhere. I had always been fascinated by the dark inspiration that seemed to seize him whenever my birthday came around…

I stepped closer to the mirror again and pressed my fingers against the cracked glass. The moment I felt the sting, I pulled my hand back and headed for the staircase.

My climb up the final staircase should have been far more careful, since there was nothing on either side to hold onto. I simply kept my pace steady, and that was about all I did for my safety. When I reached the top, I immediately looked up at the sky. Behind the dense gray clouds, flashes of red lightning flickered in the distance. Rather than impressing me, like the stalactites of the sixth floor, the sight filled me with an inexplicable sadness. I could not remember why I felt so sad — even now, I still can’t.

I walked lazily toward the edge of the rooftop and continued along the perimeter, like a guard on an observation post. Under normal circumstances, I would never have done that because of my fear of heights. But the circumstances were not normal, and neither was my behavior. I was not even surprised by the absence of wind at such a height.

It always helps to see things from above. For example, it was quite a surprise that the city was not as large as I had thought. Also, just beyond its boundaries stood scattered massive black rocks. The cloudy sky ended directly above them. Beyond that, there was only endless white — not fog or snow, just white emptiness.

My gaze lingered for a moment on a few rocks with slightly shiny surfaces…

Then I turned to the left and looked down toward the entrance of the tower. The Knit Kids were there. Each of them was moving with a similar rhythmic motion, as if they were dancing, even though there was no sound anywhere in the entire area. The longer I watched them, the more the sight annoyed me. Their silent cheerfulness was getting on my nerves.

I thought about my ex once again as I returning to the stairs. I descended the floors faster than I should, ignoring my injury. I stopped on the fourth floor because of the male voice, which was now saying something new. When I approached the CRT TV, it was playing a slightly different video. The reporter was still on that unfamiliar rocky shore, except now the sea water had reached his shins.

I listened to him speak, again in English.

“A fourth one fell into the sea behind me just a few moments ago, about a mile away. It only caused a small tsunami, nothing serious… I’m afraid she is already losing control, and still no clear sign of resistance…

Isn’t my voice the last steady thing?…

As I said, the fourth has fallen.”

The video was trapped in the same loop as before, although I didn’t pay it the same attention. I leaned closer to the screen and dragged my bloodied fingers across its surface. I whispered, “It’s okay to lose control,” and continued my descent through the remaining floors.

I was not surprised that I didn’t find the Knit Kids outside. They had already shown me how unpredictable they were. From the playground, I didn’t continue into the alley, but chose a new direction instead. As I had noticed from the rooftop, it would take me more quickly to the city’s boundaries.

I found myself in a neighborhood with features I had not seen anywhere else in the city. Firstly, I came across a few small green plants along the edge of the road. They all seemed to be the same size and color. When I bent down to touch a leaf, its texture was unusually smooth and rigid. As I moved forward, more and more fake plants appeared — and then, a wooden bench.

A wooden bench, like those you find in gardens, felt welcoming even among so much concrete and asphalt. Of course, I sat down without a second thought.

The opposite three-story building also had something unusual that caught my attention: the narrow wall between the front columns of the first floor was covered with a black-and-white geometric mural.

In the center, a phrase was written:

‘IS THE HERO STILL GLITCHING?’

I didn’t understand how quickly they appeared, or from which direction they came. It must have happened while I was still looking at the mural. Or when I had taken off my glasses to wipe them on my sweatshirt. The Knit Kids sat down next to me on the wooden bench, squeezing me in the middle. All I could feel was their pressure against me, nothing else. They were completely still. I tried to remain still too, even though I was breathing faster.

It was so unsettling, the way they were pressed against me…

I turned my head to the right and found myself so close to the blank white knitted face of the creature beside me, which had already turned towards me. The same had happened with the second one. I didn’t even need to look at the other two on my left.

I leaned slightly forward, pressing down on my elbows, but their bodies pressed against me even more. I kept pushing until I managed to stand up. I wonder how long the five of us would have stayed there, completely still and squeezed together like a single body, if I hadn’t finally broken free from their pressure.

I didn’t bother to look back at the Knit Kids on the bench. Instead, I took one last look at the mural and left…

At that moment, there was only one place I wanted to return to. The sound of a human voice, even a fake one, was the only comfort I had…

In the playground, I realized they were only a few meters behind me, side by side like a wall. When I reached the front of the tower again, they stopped too, maintaining the same distance between us.

‘Don’t even try to come any closer’, I shouted at them. I didn’t care whether they understood me or not. This territory was mine…

My cold, distorted tower…

The Knit Kids responded with a synchronized step forward, and then remained frozen in place. It wasn’t clear if I had set the boundary, or if they had…

The only thing I was certain of was that the city had begun to change: the fake plants, the bench, the mural, they couldn’t have appeared by chance. Inside the tower, the additional ‘decorative touches’ were even more pronounced: the black-and-white terrazzo from the top floor had spread to all the others except the fourth. There, a gray carpet now covered the concrete, and between the four square columns, nets made of pink shoelaces had been formed.

Even the CRT TV was not exactly the same. Now, the complete broadcast of both videos was looping on the screen.

I sat down and removed the makeshift splint from my injured ankle. I wrapped the shoelaces that had been holding it in place around my wrist instead of threading them back through my shoes. Then I lay down on the carpet. I stared at the concrete ceiling and began repeating the reporter’s words precisely.

My voice immediately synchronized with his.

In my tower, the real and the false were mixed up together with such unsettling ease:

“The abnormal phenomenon appears to be continuing at a steady rate. The biggest question that remains is how her troubled mind was capable of something so dangerous and beautiful… This is the third meteor so far. All of them are passing over the sea… At least she keeps them away from my head…

…A fourth one fell into the sea behind me just a few moments ago, about a mile away. It only caused a small tsunami, nothing serious… I’m afraid she is already losing control, and still no clear sign of resistance… Isn’t my voice the last steady thing?… As I said, the fourth has fallen.”

The fourth floor still brings the same image to my mind: something between a cocoon and a tomb. The carpet did not warm me. The nets of shoelaces were not walls of protection. The sense of coziness was not real. But still, slowly fading away there felt strangely relieving.

So I closed my eyes.

I imagined what the Knit Kids would be like if they behaved like normal children. They would probably love riding bicycles through all those empty streets…

When I was a child, I used to ride my bicycle in circles around our large yard while listening to music on my walkman. With every song, my imagination would create a different story. Only when my favorite song, ‘Confide in Me’ by Kylie Minogue, came on would my mind become completely empty — as if I wanted to enjoy a brief ritual of reconnecting with myself. It was a memory I had forgotten for years, yet it reminded me of the most comforting loop of my childhood. If I had ever truly been happy, it was back then.

Whatever had begun pulling me out of my existential fading haze, the final tug came with the abrupt silence of the reporter’s voice. I opened my eyes and immediately looked at the screen: the scene had changed, and he was gone. There was only a sunset sinking into the horizon of the calm sea.

My first thought was that it would be nice to see the tide again…

And a real sun too…

I wanted to go home…

I went outside and followed the way to the neighborhood with the fake plants, the mural, and the bench. None of them were there now, and deep cracks had appeared across the unfinished concrete buildings. Occasionally, I glanced behind me. I was completely alone on the street, and that was definitely unsettling…

When I reached the city’s boundaries, I came across ruins. The upper floors of the last buildings had collapsed. I stopped for a moment and pictured in my mind a path across the largest pieces of concrete where I could step. With great caution, I managed to make it to the other side. I headed to the area of the massive black rocks, while at the same time the sky above my head was turning blindingly white.

From the tower’s rooftop, I had noticed a group of those rocks with slightly smoother and shinier surfaces. Now that I was getting closer, I counted them from left to right — it was the fourth one that interested me. What made it different from the others was that, when I stood in front of it, I noticed a doorknob on its surface. The moment I touched it, a soft creak echoed out, and a metal door immediately revealed itself…

I had forgotten to look back after crossing the ruins. If I hadn’t been so careless, I might have managed to react somehow before their small hands grabbed me and pulled me back violently. The Knit Kids immediately surrounded me.

And then, one of them kicked me hard on my injured ankle. The pain was so sharp that I screamed and lost my balance.

I had not been afraid of them for a single moment since I first encountered them. Their strange presence had only caused me intense uneasiness and an unnatural sense of familiarity but not fear, even though I understood they were not normal children. But now I was afraid of them. Their sudden aggression could only mean one thing: they would not let me leave.

I was on my knees when something changed around us: all the rocks, except the one with the door, had detached from the ground and were hovering about half a meter above it. The Knit Kids seemed more unsettled by the sight than I was, yet they didn’t take long to turn their attention back to me.

I told you, they would not let me leave.

The three of them began to pound the ground furiously with their left foot. Only the smallest one stood still in front of me. The moment I got up, I felt faint vibrations beneath my feet. The concrete had already started to crack but only around me. It wasn’t hard to understand why…

The white void that stretched beyond the rocks and had now replaced even the sky might also have extended beneath the city. An abyss of nothingness, like the ‘out-of-bounds’ area in video games, was waiting for me to fall into it.

As the three continued pounding the ground, cracking it further, I turned to the fourth one — not pleading, but with the calm firmness of an adult dealing with a stubborn child:

“You gave me the sticks to make the splint, and now you’re gonna let me go.”

The Knit Kid gestured by drawing a square frame in the air and then turned its palm upward, as if asking me about the tv. Keeping my voice calm, I said in a sharper tone:

“No more tv for today. Step aside!”

It seemed to ignore me at first, but then it took a small hesitant step back.

For the first time, I felt a sudden cool gust of air brush against my face. The door in the rock had opened. I couldn’t clearly see what lay beyond it, only white light. Along with another gust of air came a creepy, animalistic sound, like a distorted growl. It only made me shiver, but its effect on the Knit Kids was far more macabre:
At the sound of the growl, all four heads turned instantly to the door. Their bodies froze exactly in the positions they were in at that moment — the two with their left foot still raised just before it hit the ground again.

And then, all four childlike bodies began convulsing and collapsing inward, as if being swallowed by some internal force. Their knitted covering crumpled, leaving behind nothing but their empty white suits.

Whatever it was that had given those creatures a human shape was gone. Or so I thought. At that exact moment, my breath left me too, only for a few seconds. Actually, those few seconds were the closest I have ever come close to death in my entire life. The relief I felt when I was finally able to take a deep breath again did not mean I was safe yet. I looked around me once more. Everything remained the same, and the black rocks had settled back onto the ground. Oddly enough, if I hadn’t made it through the door in time, I might have tried to return to the tower. I know it’s insane, but…

…maybe that’s how temptation works…

Instead of leading into the interior of the rock, the door opened into a brightly lit road tunnel covered with glowing white tiles. Red signs hung from the ceiling, flashing rapidly with the warning ‘DO NOT STOP’. In all that light, it was difficult to see how far the tunnel stretched. Sooner or later, I would find out anyway. The white line running through the center of the asphalt became my guide, and so I began walking along it.

Very soon, I would face a nightmarish revelation concerning not only me, but far more people — perhaps even every one of you reading this story now and feeling safe because your first instinctive thought is:

“Oh come on, all of this is just fiction.”

A few meters further down, there was the first emergency exit. I expected to see the green door with the ‘running man’ sign, but instead there was a dark window. I didn’t pay attention until I passed right in front of it, and behind the thick glass a room appeared. More precisely, it was an old office washed in yellow fluorescent light. I was startled by the sight of a middle-aged man and stepped away from the window. I watched him take off his jacket and tie, grab a chair, and begin to furiously smash it against a translucent glass door. He continued relentlessly, even though his action seemed to have absolutely no effect.

I didn’t know how I was supposed to react to something like that. I was certain he was far more real than the reporter on the CRT TV. And maybe he needed help.

Just as I moved closer to the glass again, a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea hit me. I pressed myself against the wall to avoid collapsing, and the unpleasant symptoms subsided quickly. It seemed I had almost violated some rule I didn’t even know about, so I avoided approaching again. I left the man alone with his unknown fate.

I left the others too.

There were more such windows. Many of them. And I was passing them quickly. I tried to run, but my ankle was hurting a lot. So I kept my pace steady and my gaze fixed forward. Neither of the two was easy as soon as I started crying…

Not a day goes by without me wondering how many of those trapped people were as lucky as I was. The middle-aged man in the office with the yellow light, the girl lying exhausted on the tartan track of an empty stadium, the pregnant woman wandering through a supermarket filled with black ‘products’, did any of them ever manage to escape their private nightmare?

I had lost all sense of time, though it had never seemed useful there anyway. But I do remember that the red signs above my head had been replaced with the warning ‘DO NOT WATCH’. Sure, I obeyed, but only until I reached the last few meters of the tunnel, where the exit began to take shape through the intense light. Only then did I turn my gaze toward the last window.

I saw the entrance to a steel pedestrian bridge crossing over a dark river, set within a nighttime landscape. The metal beams and perforated arches formed a long, industrial cage. Hanging from one of the arches was a weathered banner bearing the word “Yarkon”, with several black birds(probably crows) perched upon it.

Otherwise, the bridge was completely deserted, like a trap waiting for a specific passerby. Then, I was met with a very familiar sound, and an equally familiar presence.

I would say that, after everything I had been through, the way I was rescued felt more like an ironic joke than a surprise.

The meowing echoed through the tunnel walls in a deep tone, but gradually returned to normal. The animal was sitting on its hind legs and watched me impassively as I limped toward it, then collapsed beside it, on the cobblestone passageway in front of my house. There was no tunnel behind me anymore. Everything was as normal as I remembered it. The large cat with the orange-brown fur and the short tail, the badass of the neighborhood’s felines, lay down too and immediately began grooming itself.

We were not the only creatures in the passageway. A flock of crows was perched on the wires above. It had been a long time since I had seen so many of them in my neighborhood. Just as I found myself wondering how unusually quiet they were, all of them burst into loud cawing at once. A deafening burst of cawing that made my ears hurt, but it didn’t cause the slightest discomfort or curiosity in the cat, who continued his grooming. And then, as abruptly as they had started, the crows fell silent and flew away together. I looked at the cat, then at the street. Two cars passed by, and a child on a bicycle. I cannot describe in words the relief I felt at seeing real people again. Noisy, real people.

The ‘slip’ of my return to what we all know as reality happened without any real loss of time. It was still midday, just as it had been when I twisted my ankle, setting off to my private nightmare instead of the pharmacy. And only then did I remember that I still had my money and my keys in my pocket…

* * * *

Buildings, corridors, roads, stations, stadiums, parks, all of them turn into uncanny dead zones in the absence of people. I had already heard the term ‘liminal space’ before but I had no idea how possible it was to slip unwillingly into its most distorted version.
I know I’m not the only one who has experienced something like this. But that does not ease my mind. Is there anyone in a position to assure me that it won’t happen again? My therapist? A paranormal researcher? If I am an unreliable narrator to you, I will be the same to anyone else…

Later that evening I watched the news. The same shit keeps happening in the world, nothing ever changes. Of course, no meteor shower had threatened our planet. And as for Stavros Ioannidis, the REAL reporter, he obviously had nothing to do with my experience. I watched him on the news reporting live amid rocket fragments in Tel Aviv. His remarkable composure made me feel an inappropriate curiosity about what his own liminal space might look like…

Now I avoid walking in front of buildings under construction, thinking I’ll see myself staring down at me from the edge of some floor.

I threw away a white sweater I found in my wardrobe.

I don’t watch the news anymore.

But I still make sure to feed the stray cats that come to visit me.

If I have to draw a final conclusion from all of this, I suppose reality itself is the worst nightmare, which means there is no need for a ‘back room’ of consciousness to threaten our existence. In any case, if any of you ever slip out of ‘normal’ reality, the only advice I can give is this:

Do not allow your liminal space to play with your mind. You have no idea how deep it will dig, giving form to whatever it finds hidden there.

And if you can pray that you have caught a cat’s attention, please, do that too.

Credit: Eleni Mistrioti

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