two

He slipped in and out of waking, lying on the floor, watching the lazy fan in the ceiling, constantly moving, but going nowhere at all. There was no sense of time in the small, dark room; only the lights of the city and the waning darkness of the sky. He was sprawled out on the floor, hands grasping at nothing, mouth hanging open as if to capture some minute amount of stardust or dew, whichever came first. It was cold; the window was shut. Aside from the hands and minor twitching, he did not move for hours. His mind was clear, and he thought of nothing in its infinite nothingness.
The moon rose and sank. Clouds passed by. Stars yielded and succumbed, their energy slipping into the vast expanses of space and through his nostrils. He inhaled deep; the air was dry and thin. Time yielded nothing, and nothing yielded the time.
The night passed slowly. And then the sun exploded into the sky, shattering the midnight skies.
He sat up, shivering in the morning cold. He was hungry. He huddled into a corner, waiting for something to happen. An eerie stillness hung on the air; the sounds of the city had temporarily ceased for the time being. He looked around and whispered to himself, failing to form coherency, but filling the silence with emptiness. He looked at his toes and wiggled them. He stretched his legs and looked up at the ceiling fan; it had wound to a stop. He wiped his face with his hands, trying to pull off some unseen masking, but failing.
He could feel the walls closing in, and the voices were asking him his name, his identity. He was a nothing, and someone wanted him to be a something, even if that something were a faceless name. He couldn’t decide on an identity, though. He had no idea who he was, or what he wanted from anything. He didn’t know anything.
He felt the need to escape. He crawled to the singular panel against the wall and turned a knob. The door slipped open, and the light of the rising sun engulfed his face full force.

Maura sat at her box, wading through the thousands of negatives that sat inside. Her mind wandered, and she merely looked through them to busy her idle hands. There was no work today; the photo lab didn’t need her. She was in her pajamas, and the streaming light played patterns through the splotched dirty window against the fading yellow photographs. She closed the shoebox and set it back underneath the makeshift end table. She was alone now in the room, with only her thoughts and the heat echoing around her. She looked out the window towards the rising sun, and closed her eyes as the warmth pervaded her body. It felt good, better than the cold of the night before.
She sat there for hours, meditating on the warmth, and feeling oddly refreshed. It was mid-morning before she finally stood up and strode from her room to shower.

He flew into the dark cool corridor, breaking from his room and slamming into the smooth concrete wall. Light spilled from the room and into the hallway and he shut the door quickly. The heat following him quickly dissipated off; he wiped the sweat from under his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. He looked up and down the corridor; nothing moved. The smell of stale and immobility invaded his nose, hinting at the inactivity that had cursed the building for years. He looked down at his bare feet. The dust that covered the floor was thick, broken only by a few footprints from long or recently ago. He rolled up his long sleeves and stood where he was, at a loss of what to do next. He turned and began to walk one way and decided against it, turning instead and taking a few steps down the other way. He trailed his hand along the wall, leaving behind him a trail in the dust. Doorways passed, maybe scores, maybe hundreds. The numbers and any form of identification on them were all but faded, and as he walked farther and farther away from the hole he called home, the floor grew colder and colder. Eventually he reached a lonely door in the wall, with a barred window. The sunlight was prevented by a series of boards that had been tacked up from the outside. He turned the knob and pushed, but the door didn’t budge; he was stuck. The glass was cracked and the blood on the shards were dry, as if someone had tried to smash through and push the boards, but there was no sign of victim or life aside from a few spatters and shards on the floor.
He turned around and began to make his way back, trailing his other hand against his inbound tracks, bloody footsteps in his wake. Forgetting which door was his, and satisfying an innate curiosity, he turned all of the knobs, trying to find the one that was his, or one that held at the least some interest.

The water had rained on her for half an hour, and she had not moved; only closed her eyes and felt the cool irregular beat of a million drops on her back and neck. Everything was okay in the shower. The universe stopped for a moment and let her recover, clearing away the sins and worries and comforts and fortunes of the day, and everything was new again when she stepped out. She wiped the fog from the windows with her hand, and sat against the wall, tired but rejuvenated. She tilted her head back against the wall and opened her mouth, feeling the swirling flurry of mist slip in and out of her throat and nose. Her eyes slipped closed and she lost herself in the lack of a moment, feeling nothing at all. For a few seconds, she didn’t exist in the universe; nothing had happened, nothing was going to happen, and nothing was happening. She wasn’t, and for those few seconds, it was okay.
And then her eyes opened, and she was back in reality.

He turned the knob, and the door opened. He stepped back into his room and stood beneath the fan, waiting for something to happen. The fan had begun to twirl endlessly again and he looked up and followed it with his eyes, progressing eternally towards a point in space without lines. He reached out to touch it, and for a moment, it lingered just within grasp, but slipped out from his touch. He stood staring at it for a moment longer, and then sat on the floor. His eyes closed and he let himself fall against the warm linoleum. He saw no need to get up, and he found no desire to either.

She stepped onto the bottom step, breathing in the warm dirty city air. A man passed by, and then two. A crowd of chattering school girls. A waiter, late for work. She strolled down the street towards the park, but she had no direction or goal. She just walked, and soon passed the park, and veered away. She walked and looked up at the dirty blue sky, and the urban grey that framed it. She tripped onto a curb; a passing taxi honked, and a man shouted obscenities at her. A man in a green jacket passed, dragged along by a shopping cart full of tin cans. He tipped an imaginary dirty hat to her, and she instinctively curtsied.
She found herself in a large quiet alley, a stripped car sitting on cinderblocks against the wall behind her. She was standing in front of a boarded up door, a faded eviction notice pinned to it, “CONDEMNED” sprayed slanderously across the rotting wooden boards.
Once upon a time, people had lived here, but now all that remained were ghosts.
She tried to pry the planks off, but despite their age, they would not budge or break. She took a rag from her handbag and wrapped it around her hand, punching through the minor square of glass that was visible. The glass shattered with a meager tinkle, and fragments flew inward. Shards still left in the pane tore through the fabric and cut her hand; crimson stained the glass and her hand. She cursed and dropped the cloth, wiping her cut hand against the wall, across the various fading flyers and advertisements pasted across the stenciled “POST NO BILLS”.
She couldn’t fit her hand through the pane, and even if she could, there was nothing she could’ve done. She saw no point in doing what she had just done, but something had compelled her to do so. She sucked on her wound and thought about what she had just done, and found no logical explanation for it. She stood for a moment, and then made her way around the building to the barred window she had visited the previous evening. She stood up on her toes and tapped the glass, but there was no response. She sat on the curb and watched the cars pass, waiting for him, waiting for the universe, waiting for everything to catch up.

He walked across the floor, ignoring the wincing pain in his feet. The blood had dried; his tracks remained engrained on the faded surface of the floor. He slipped the latch and opened the window, feeling the warm afternoon air float through the gap and into his face. He saw Maura sitting on the curbside, and waited for her to turn. She felt his eyes, and she stood up and walked to the window, pulling herself up by the sill.
“Hi.”
She smiled and brushed the hair from her face.
“Where were you?”
“I was walking around.”
“In your room?”
He shook his head. “I left my room. Up and down the halls; the door at the end is locked. So I came back.”
“Is it hot in there?”
He nodded. “Did you wait long?”
“Not long.”
“Why’d you come?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t have anything better to do. What are you doing in there still?”
“I don’t have anything to do.”
“Come outside. It’s a nice day.” She looked up at the dirty sky.
“I can’t. I think I’m trapped here.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. The door’s stuck shut.”
Boards. Eviction notice. Condemned. Shattered glass. Blood. “Boarded?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll be back. Go wait by the door.”
She looked up and down the street, and ran towards a shop under construction. A man in a hardhat was sitting, eating a sandwich; lunch was in full swing. She asked for a crowbar in temporary exchange for her handbag, and ran to pry the boards off the door. After some time and effort, they came off with a dry thud, landing in the sand gravel with a cloud of dust. She swapped the crowbar for her handbag and stood at the door. She stood, waiting, the eviction notice staring her in the face with bold red letters. She called out through the hole, and waited. The knob rattled and he stepped through the entry way, standing in the shadow of the building on the doorstep in what seemed to her to be pajamas. He squinted against the post-midday sun.
“It’s bright.”
She nodded and beckoned for him to step out. He took a reluctant step, and another, and another until he was standing in the dirt a few feet from her. She stuck out her hand again.
“Hi again. I’m Maura, and this is the rest of me.”
He shook her hand. “Hi. I’m no one and this is the rest of me.”
She laughed. He tilted his head, confused. She shook her head and smiled, batting the hair from her eyes.
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
He looked down at his feet. The blood had begun to run again, and only now did she notice the footprints. She looked around him and into the hallway. Then she looked down at his feet too.
“Your feet. They’re bleeding.”
He nodded, and sat on the step, stretching his legs out. She winced and sat next to him.
“So I guess walking’s out of the question?”
He shrugged and examined his feet. She stood up and stepped quietly into the dusty hallway, leaving him to tend to his wounds. She followed his footprints into his room and stood inside, beneath the spinning fan, entranced by it. He stepped quietly behind her and she jumped, whirling around, ready to beat him with her handbag before realizing who it was.
“You scared me!”
“You’re in my room.”
She twirled around and examined the corners. “It’s so...empty...”
He nodded and followed her as she walked around.
“Where do you sleep?”
He pointed to the floor.
“I sleep on the floor too. It’s more comfortable. Do you have a mattress? Pillow?” She looked around. “Do you have any furniture at all?”
He shook his head. “This is where I was born.”
She stopped and turned.
“What do you mean?”
He began to speak, but she stopped him.
“Sit down first. It’s always easier when you sit down.”
He sat and began to speak:
“This is where I was born. I don’t know of anywhere else but here. I don’t have any memories beyond yesterday. I don’t have a name, I don’t have a friend, I don’t have parents, I don’t have anything. I’ve never left this room until today, and you’re the first person I’ve ever talked to. I don’t know anything about the world outside of this little room of mine. This is my womb, and I’m afraid to leave it. I’ve seen the people out there, and frankly, they scare me.”
“Do I scare you?”
He shook his head. “No.”
They sat quietly, examining each other, truly meeting each other for the first time. His stomach growled loudly, and she laughed. He looked surprised.
“Are you hungry?”
“I think so.”
She handed him another bag of popcorn, and he ate it quickly. She managed to grab a few kernels for herself and threw them in the air, catching it in her mouth. She missed a lot; he laughed and emulated her, succeeding more than she did. She pulled out two sodas, and they drank together, sitting in the lonely empty room with a fan above their heads. The sun sank and the light of day dimmed. She gathered the trash into her bag and they sat on opposite sides of the rooms, facing each other. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip and sighed heavily. The setting sun echoed in the room, and she glanced lazily at her watch as the fan spun round.
“You need a name.”
He nodded quietly and finished the soda. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. What would you like it to be?”
He shrugged. “Surprise me.”
She thought for awhile, and finished her soda, too.
“I think your name should be”