The building was a wele ge of air from the outside world. It had a smell that was actually presentable, and on top of that, there was absolutely no trash on the floors. I nearly slipped on some of that liquid from outside, and I realized that this pce was not perfeot even close.
A woman came running up to me and hugged me, even though we had never seen each other before and we were not friends. She started talking at me in a high wheedling tone, and when she spoke, I smelled the mouthwash that she had put in that m on her breath.
“Hi! This is the building for up and ing influencers, stock traders, and happy children. If you may, please go to the elevators to your left and go up to the tweh floor. Thank you!”
I tried to pull myself away from her, but she hung onto my bad pushed me towards the elevator. I tried to get away from her, tried to move in a way where I would not have to touch her to get her away from me, but it did not work and she stayed right behiil I made it into the elevator. I turned around to face her, and she was smiling her pstic smile, but as the doors closed, she blinked in a very specific way, and she left me in the elevator deg the message she had sent me. I knew a tiny bit of morse code, as my parents had been survivalist freaks, and they had taught me everything I o know in order to survive in the wilderhat was sure to follow. The woman who had showo the elevator had blinked S.O.S in morse code, and I was left to think about her message as I was shuttled to the tweh floor. I khat there was nothing I could really do, but it was fun to imagine what I was theoretically capable of doing. I would push open the elevator doors, run up to the woman and grab her, pulling her out of the building and onto the street. I would then run with her into the forest and hide away there, out of sight, aually, out of mind. I smiled, and then assured myself that it would never happen.
I had reached the tweh floor, and I stepped out into a floor that smelled like a pstic strawberry patch had exploded and washed all over the room. I saw the women first, and then the men. Both groups were jumping around in paroxysms of exuberahe men ughing in a strange way that hurt my ears and caused me to stumble a little bit, but not much. The women were all in a circle jumping up and down and talking with extremely high pitched voices. Certain sylbles were given such attention that they wormed their way into my brain and caused me to stop walking each time they were said. The worst offender was the ‘S’ sound, which was dragged on for such a long time that I thought it would never actually end. I stumbled my way into the ter of the room, and none of the people noticed me, aside from one. He was tall, taller than any of the other people who crowded around each other. It wasn’t even that he articurly tall, the other people were all very short. I assessed the average height of the people in the room, disregarding me and the man, at about five feet and two ihe man pced a hand on my shoulder and a hand on my head, and after waiting for about five seds, pulled away with an expression of genuine surprise on his face. He grabbed me by the shoulders and said extremely quietly, “Leave. Leave the building and go on your way.”
“Where are Audrey and Will? Do you know where they are?”
“They’re probably iy somewhere. If you want, I send out an APB for them.”
“Sure.”
“What do you wao say?”
“Say that Sarah and her friend are looking for Will and Audrey, and say to keep them safe but deliver them right to us. We’ll be outside of building 11219.”
“Of course. Are you Sarah?”
“No, I’m the friend.”
“I feel like I should have known that. Anyway, I’ll send the message, go down the elevator, now.”
I followed his instrus. I walked swiftly past the gregation of people, and again none of them paid any attention to me. I got in the elevator, hit the button to seo the lobby, and waited to be carried down. I was excited to leave, and as I looked at myself in the elevator doors, I did nnize who I was. I khat I was the person staring back at myself, because my sciousness was maed through my eyes, but I could not get myself to believe it. I seemed to be staring at a ghost, someone who was floating through life just because she was required to, not because she really wao. I had no thoughts of suicide, I just saw myself as what I was. A specter wandering through the nds of the living. I walked up to the doors and stared directly at myself, looked at my face all over, and even reached up to touch it. Still, this was not me. It couldn’t have been, because there would have been snition, some aowledgment somewhere inside of me. But there was none. And I didn’t know why. I assumed that my personality and sense of self had been fractured long ago, but I didn’t know how far this was normal and how much of this sensation was pletely unusual, and I resolved that I would never know, because if I asked people if they felt the same way, their eyes would turn purple and bd I would soon be killed foing against what was supposed to happen in everyone’s mind.
I exited the elevathe shocked look from the woman who had escorted me there in the first pce, and walked right outside onto the filthy streets. I saw people, but I tried to ighem in search of Will and Audrey. I did not see them, and I in fact saw no authority who could have been looking for them. I assumed that there was no actual authority in this city, and I would have to wait food and ho citizens to find them on their own. I called out for Sarah, but I found my words pletely drowned out by the wall of people and industry that surrounded me. There were forklifts and backhoes slopping through the street, and I saw them raised via a e to the top of a building and start to tear it down. I wondered why they did not use a wreg ball to destroy the building, as it would have been much faster and much less plicated. This idea was s in my head that I o tell someoh the proper authority, and so I walked over to the e, being careful not to slip and fall on any of the numerous mountains of trash and grime. At certain points I had to squeeze my way between two enormous piles of garbage, the path between which had been hacked out by explorers who could not have spared ara inch just in case the trash had lost its stability and fell down onto them, crushing them in an instant. I felt the wetness and dryness of the world in equal parts, and I was forced to breathe through my teeth so I would not add my vomit to the thousands of other piles of disgusting slime that dotted the streets. I tried to think of the people who had actually thrown up taking the same route as me, and I tried to imagine what they were doing now. I guessed that they were either simply dead, at work, or oreets trying not to die. I thought it was funny that I was going the same path they were, but I could never be in any of the situations they had been because I was from out of town, and I could not have been influenced by this sick city in any way.
The piles of refuse were starting to give way to actual sidewalks, where people could actually walk without fear of trag some kind of viral iion, and I stumbled into the open air and took a big breath, which was a big mistake. I vomited, doing the ohing that I had tried not to do the eime my body had existed in this city. After I was finished, I ughed at myself, because I had tried not to do something with so much effort that I had actually dohe thing after I had made it to safety.
I moved further forwards, trying to find where the e was. It seemed to be like a rainbow, forever getting further away as you moved towards it. As I stood in front of the building that the forklifts were taking down, I actually mao look up and saw the e sitting atop the buildily opposite the demolition site, and I saw my way in. The doors to the building were wide open, and there seemed to be no guard or any obstacle to block my way. I crossed the street, taking careful measures to avoid the dead men that littered the roadway, aered the building.
