At that time, she almost looked like a young woman. Her cheeks were flushed with rouge. Her hair, bleached blonde, glowed golden in the sunlight. Her nails, one-inch long and immaculate, gleamed cucumber green or tomato red. The bright colours worked to distract me from the folds of her neck and the wrinkles that lined her mouth.
But I also remember tears tracing those lines, one clean furrow down each cheek. Tears that dripped down her neck and onto the silver crucifix at her throat, just catching the hallway light, despite the darkness of my room.
She’d been humming that day, when she walked out into the field with a rifle on her shoulder. She didn’t know that I could see her from my bedroom window on the second-storey or that I watched her lift the barrel to old Aria’s head.
And so I had the ending to my myth. Enter Theseus: not a brute, but a sympathizer. He holds the Minotaur’s muzzle in one hand, his sword in the other. He whispers soft comforts in the monster’s ear. A tear slips down his cheek. Then Theseus sheathes his sword between the Minotaur’s eyes.
A little older, I asked my Grandmother if my myth was true. “I suppose it might be,” she said, her voice breaking. “Now isn’t that sad?”
• 7 •
I HAVE NEVER OWNED A HORSE, but I remember my Grandmother teaching me that an unshod hoof on asphalt leads to lameness. Linoleum is no different, I’m sure.
So, upon finding a hoofprint in the drywall dust, I have some mixed feelings.
My first thought is that the poor animal probably has a limp, wandering this maze unshod. My second thought is, of course, there is no monster in this maze.
I might have missed the mark, pressed into a fine layer of drywall dust, had my Stetson not landed squarely on top of it. Only when I bend to pick up the hat up do I see that in the dust lies a hoofprint. A hoofprint.
I imagine a horse, like the one my Grandmother used to have—an old half-blind mare. Indoors. In an office building. Some intern’s idea of a practical joke. I imagine the horse wearing a party hat.
We did that once, my Grandmother and I. Placed a party hat on Aria’s head when she turned thirty-six. My Grandmother gave Aria two helpings of oats, and we sang Happy Birthday in the stable.
Of course, I’m disillusioned about this maze being anything akin to an office building. Something else, then. A drywall maze constructed for a horse, maybe, with a pile of oats at the far end as incentive.
And that would make me … what? A fly accidentally caught in the web? I shake my head.
Unbidden, I’m reminded of my Grandmother comforting a little boy trembling at the horrors he’d witnessed in a corn maze: “There is one real monster in any maze. Only one creature that can find its way around.”
I take a step back and give myself a pep talk: I’ve spent time around animals, it should be easy enough to tell what this belongs to. After all, monsters don’t exist.
I lean in and examine the hoofprint.
The imprint in the dust is split into two distinct, disconnected halves. It’s large, maybe ten inches across. Not a horse, then. Cow, maybe. Or deer? I’ve seen them wander into city streets before, though I don’t know what their hooves look like.
I’ve never seen one wander into a building, but who knows where this complex is located. Maybe it’s some abandoned insane asylum tucked away in the middle of the woods. Or maybe it’s not abandoned and I’m in a padded cell right now. That would explain some things.
I return to my lab rat hypothesis. Perhaps I’m one of many specimens. A cross-species test, then. Various mammals, wandering down white halls. Does a human in its constructed, but ‘natural’ environment snap before an animal removed from nature?
Or maybe: grudge match, man versus moose. Two enter the labyrinth, only one leaves!
Perhaps I’ve been abducted by aliens and this is an interstellar Noah’s ark.
I shake my head again. I can think through this. A hoofprint does not an alien abduction make.
Fact number one: there is an animal in here with me. How it got here is irrelevant, unless it leads me to an exit. The animal was probably chewing on a red string when my shouting startled it. With all the racket I made, I’m not surprised the beast ran. It escaped through this hole.
Fact number two: someone else made this hole. That someone is, maybe, the person who unravelled the other mitten. That someone is, probably, the person who took my clothes. And if they did make this hole and they did leave their thread here then what does that mean? Is the exit nearby? Or did they give up?
I decided to follow them.
The animal—whatever it is—is unimportant. I shake my head and grin at my foolishness. I test the word, “Minotaur.” I laugh. What an absurd word. These empty halls are really getting to me. “Minotaur,” I say again, louder.
Whatever roams these halls with me is no monster and it’s certainly no threat. In fact, I feel sorry for it. Yes, I do. Poor beast, walking these hard floors unshod.
Even if it does find a way out, it may have to be put down. The horseshoe was not invented until several centuries into the A.D., but glue predates the Bible. The Greeks made glue from bull skins and damaged hooves.
A maze is no place for a Minotaur.
• 8 •
IN MY HASTE TO CHASE THE FLEEING STRING and the distraction of the hoofprint, I’ve failed to notice odd similarities between this hole in the wall and the one I smashed one floor down. Looking at it closer, it’s damn near identical.
For instance, just above the hole sits a ceiling tile that’s askew—I’d swear it’s in the same spot I climbed up. There’s even a smaller hole kicked into the drywall—a foothold, exactly like the one I’d made, for someone to clamber up with. It seems someone had the same idea I did—blaze your own trail instead following the one laid out.
I’m halfway up the wall when I realize that there’s no actual reason to believe that this other person, whoever they are, went this way. Maybe they climbed down instead of up. Maybe they, like me, were weirded out after realizing that the ceiling panels double as floor tiles, and decided to break through a wall instead of climbing anywhere.
I hunker down in front of the ruined wall and give myself a mental kick. If only I hadn’t destroyed the drywall in my fit of frustration, I might get some clue based on which side the dust had fallen. I might have even found a trail to follow. Now, of course, the dust I stirred up coats everything, and my footprints mangle any evidence the other might have left behind.
So should I head up? Up and out, only to find another series of doppelgänger corridors? Or should I carry on? Perhaps there’s another trail I can follow….
I walk through the shards of drywall, disturbing dust in my wake, to examine the hoofprint again. Maybe the other person decided not to climb when this cow, or whatever it is, wandered over. Maybe they followed the animal instead.
I search for more hoofprints. My rampage unsettled new dust and drywall fragments, so I can only make out one or two. The rest, if there are any more, have been obscured.
One important detail differs from the spot where I climbed up, however—a third corridor. I’d Kool-Aid Manned my way through a couple hallways before finally climbing through the ceiling and the place I’d climbed up had been completely straight. This hole, on the other hand, was clearly broken at an intersection—stepping through it, I can travel left, right, or straight ahead.
I suppose I could go up, too … but something holds me back.
It’s the hoofprints. The two that are visible clearly point towards the corridor straight ahead. So do I head up, in the hope that my Italian friend went that way, or do I follow the poor cow stuck in this maze?
I opt for the latter. If any other human being is stuck in here with me, they’re just as lost as I am. I’ll take animal instincts over human uncertainty any day.
A dozen steps down this new hallway, which I’m playfully calling the ‘Minotaur’s corridor,’ I check myself. What do I do if I catch up with the cow? Eat it? No, I’m not hungry
—and besides, I have no tools with which to butcher it and no fire with which to cook it. Can one ride a cow? Maybe I should just follow it. Are cows dangerous? Do they bite?
Maybe, if I meet the beast, I’d be better off avoiding it. When I escape—when I’m finally out—I’ll phone animal services to come collect it. Right after I phone the city and have them condemn this madhouse.
Yes, that’s the plan. I walk down the Minotaur’s corridor and check my broken watch. It’s twenty minutes to something. I walk for a time and take note when the minute hand again sweeps past the four. Two more hours pass and still I walk down the Minotaur’s corridor.
I haven’t yet seen a hallway like this one. No branching paths interrupt it at all and it seems to stretch on forever. Should I turn back?
No. Different is what I wanted. It’s what I hoped for. With any luck, this path will take me up and out of whatever maze I’ve wound up in. There’s nothing to be afraid of here—no monsters in this maze.
• 9 •
I WHILED AWAY HOURS on my Grandmother’s front porch. I picked slivers of flaking, blue paint from her railing. I pulled the legs from daddy-long-legs and dropped their bodies between the boards. I used my pocket knife to carve new swear words into hidden corners whenever I overheard them from my grandfather’s closed-door phone calls.
It was on that porch that my Grandmother taught me what the meaning of life is not.
I perched on her wicker rocking chair in the shade while she hunched over her still. I’d had to claim the threadbare floral-print cushion from the neighbour’s farm cat, and now I pumped my legs as if on a swing set. The rocking chair bucked like I imagined Aria must have, in her youth.
“A life without direction is meaningless,” my Grandmother said.
The neighbour’s cat watched my chair from the front lawn, its tail stiff and thick as a toilet scrubber. I heard dogs barking in the distance and the cat’s ears twitched towards the sound, but otherwise it didn’t move.
“Take your father,” she said. “A writer. Murder mysteries and tencent thrillers, and after putting himself through law school. Bloody waste, if you ask me.”
My Grandmother sucked on her teeth, her sound of disapproval. “And don’t say bloody,” she added. “That’s a grown-up word.”
“Like shit,” I said.
“And don’t say shit.”
“What about ‘piece of shit’?”
“Only if it’s lying on the ground.”
I would have nodded but I was busy clinging to the rocking chair, wondering if I could make it tip over from the sheer force of my body motion. I craned my neck to see how close I was to the railing, thought about being thrown over the side and dive-bombing the cat.
“Dad says I can’t read his books yet.”
“That’s right,” my Grandmother said.
“Because they’re adult books.”
“Because they’re shit.”
She slowly turned up the heat on the Coleman stove, and the homemade distillery bubbled to life. The smell of sour beer and burning plastic permeated the porch.
“Stop rocking,” Grandmother said. “That’s an antique. Now give us a swig.”
My Grandmother handed me a thimble of moonshine to sample. My grandfather was no help in her brewing—he’d drink a whole mason jar of anything, then shrug noncommittally—so I was her laboratory rat whenever she tried to create something new. If I didn’t make a face then she knew that it was still too sweet and would let it bubble for a while longer.
On this occasion, my Grandmother smiled at my sour face, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening into crevasses. She turned the heat back down.
“What’s the direction of your life?” I asked her, bored now that I wasn’t moving. The cat had run from the lawn.
“At the moment, it’s to not screw up this cider.”
“I think mine is to watch TV.”
My Grandmother chuckled, a dry sound from the back of her throat. “See if your cartoons are on. Tell your gramps to fetch me some bottles.”
“I could get you some bottles.” I enjoyed the trek into the cellar, which was normally off limits. Grandpa kept a shotgun down there, and a stuffed moose head he said came from Wetaskiwin, and that’s where my Grandmother hid her rhubarb preserve.
My Grandmother studied me for a moment. “All right,” she said, as she pulled the cord with the cellar key up and over her head. She placed it in my eager palm. “Go on then. Mind the steep steps and don’t bring too many at once like last time, or you’re sweeping up the glass.”
• 10 •
THE MINOTAUR’S CORRIDOR BEGINS TO CURVE. At first, the change is so subtle that I don’t notice. But soon, the walls and floors have become so concave that the change is undeniable. It’s not just the shape that’s changing, either—there’s a subtle shift to the colour. Are these walls a little less eggshell, a little more pearl? Beige, perhaps? I swear they’re getting darker.
Soon the floor is shaped like a sluice. It feels like a pipe—like water might start flowing between my toes at any minute, seeping through my miserably worn shoes.
At that thought, I notice the incline. I’ve been moving upward, little by little. This is the first time any corridor has offered me a change in elevation, and giddiness overwhelms me as I wonder if I might not, finally, have found the ramp out of this hell-hole.
I pause for a moment and wrap my scarf around the bloodied knuckles of my right hand. It’s a late gesture—they’ve been dust-caked and throbbing for some hours now and I have no water to clean the wound with—but I feel better with my makeshift bandage in place, even if I only have enough cloth to wrap one hand.
I move forward, but as the hallway continues to round out, my progress slows. I notice the tile slowly creeping up the sides of the passage, phasing out the drywall. It makes sense, I suppose, though I didn’t know drywall could warp like that. I wonder where this building’s construction team found curved sheets of drywall in the first place.
Now the walls and floors take on a metallic sheen and the gradual smoothening becomes more disorienting than ever. I soon have trouble distinguishing wall from floor. Even the ceiling is eventually encroached on, the tiles creeping up to the light fixtures, which are also concave. Before long, the hallway is smooth from top to bottom.
I look behind me. The corridor, now round as a dime, seems to stretch on forever.
The hallway continues to steepen. I lean my body forward, hug myself close to the floor, and crawl at a thirty-degree angle on my hands and knees. The going is slow, and as the path continues to curve upward, I’m soon sweating with the effort of not sliding backwards. I frog forward, my limbs splayed out for balance. I pause more and more frequently before hauling myself on.
Finally, exhausted, I brace myself inside the cylindrical corridor and rest my head. The floor against my cheek smells of pennies. I lift my head up again, and look afresh at the corridor I occupy. This isn’t linoleum. It’s copper.
A pipe. I’m in a pipeline.
Fear chokes me then, a fear more rational than childhood worries of a monster in a maze. What was this pipe meant to carry? Am I at risk? Is a thousand tons of water or oil or sewage about to come crashing down on me from above?
No matter how intently I listen, however, I hear nothing but my own laboured breaths. No liquid rushing through metal pipes. No machinery belching to life. So I continue on.
At no point does the pipe become too steep for me to keep going, but neither does it become any easier. The climb is arduous, and when the angle is thirty-five degrees or more, I risk sliding back down at the cost of all my progress. I resolve to backtrack to the ruined wall should that happen, maybe follow the askew ceiling tile one floor up. If I slide back down, I’ll give up on the Minotaur’s corridor and the bizarre pipeline it turns into. But in the meantime, I can’t just give up. Not when I’ve at last found something new in this maze.
Eventually, the incline begins to level out. Though still on my
hands and knees, I pick up my pace. The pipe is still perfectly circular, but once again it feels like I’m travelling straight. Then my path begins to dip slightly. Then the decline increases.
Soon I’m bracing myself to keep from falling the other way—tumbling forward into some unknown fate below. I’ve reached the apex of whatever pipeline I just climbed, now it’s time for the descent. I crab-crawl my way forward, feet first.
But if I’m going this way anyway, is a slide really so bad?
I weigh my options for only a moment. Then I tuck my arms to my sides and fall.
• 11 •
THE COPPER CHUTE CURVES SHARPLY TO THE LEFT. The turn sandwiches me against the right-hand side of the pipe, turns me around. Then it whips to the right and I’m thrown against the far wall.
Now I’m sliding on my side, now my stomach. Vomit rises in my throat as I whip round and round. The tube coils like a hose and I tumble down its length.
Too fast. Oh god. I’m falling too fast.
My windbreaker flaps behind me, a loose flag. My hat blows off as I tumble. I’m going to die. Now what kind of hell lets you escape by dying?
But I’m not in hell. I’m in a building, a building used for god only knows, with human-sized copper pipes. Maybe I’m in the world’s biggest garbage chute on my way to the trash compactor. Or maybe I’m in a bizarre recycling plant, about to be crushed into a Coca-Cola bottle. Or—I think back to the hoofprint—a meat processing plant, and there’s a goddamn thresher right below me.
A small, more reasonable part of my mind wonders how a meat plant would expect any ungulate to make the climb I just did. That part is quickly squashed by my panicking body anticipating Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace.
I throw my arms and feet out to slow my descent, but my palms are greased with sweat and can’t find purchase. The soles of my shoes prove too stripped to catch hold. I try again, and succeed—but only for a moment. Then my arms are wrenched back and I continue to plummet.
I starfish out with all limbs, lock my knees and elbows to brace myself against the tube. I rebel against gravity, but the decline is too steep. Again, I slide further down the pipe, now spilling forward, now tumbling headlong. I curve my fingers into claws and scrabble at the copper walls around me.
59 Glass Bridges Page 3