Short Story: To Just Move

Short Story: To Just Move

You know that feeling when you feel like you’re seeing and experiencing something you feel like you’ve already seen and experienced? Yes, that feeling. That is exactly how I felt.

The corridor seemed endless, stretching, yawning along with my old tired self… Felt like an old man in the mornings. No wonder, my parents would whisper to each other during breakfasts early in the morning as I lay squished face-wise on the pillow. ‘No wonder he looks like a scarecrow,’ Mum would utter while slicing a crispy loaf of bread ever so noisily. Something that annoyed the bloody hell out of me. ‘He just went to bed an hour ago. He’s been reading all night.’

Not that she was to be accused of slander and over-exaggeration. I did read throughout the night and sometimes even during early morning hours, and as I’d hear an alarm clock go off somewhere afar, I’d throw my paperback or anthology volume or whatever I was reading – I’d throw it minutely like a thief would throw a stolen item upon getting caught red-handed.

The corridor seemed never-ending. And I was almost sure it looked like a vein, when seen from above, floating. Like a blood vessel actually. Why do they make such long, narrow corridors? I’d sometimes wonder. And really, it was a peculiar question to think on. Did they imagine stickmen and stickwomen to enroll and take up a major in Linguistics? Well apparently it had crossed their mind, for it was impossible for a slightly overweight (God forbid obese!) person to pass through this long, narrow corridor without a) rubbing him- or herself first in that oily stuff that wrestlers tend to put on, and b) struggle and scream all the way through, like a chubby ball of a baby fighting his tight way out of a really, really narrow womb.

The image disturbed me so I let go of the thought, and it fluttered away gladly in a wink.

Professor _____’s office hours began at nine. It was now getting closer to ten, and I was getting awfully bored and irritated and sleepy and hungry. And then came the cleaning lady, wiping along through the narrow infiniteness of the corridor.

Skinny bitch.

She came over to where I was sitting on a deteriorating ancient wooden chair with my pregnant backpack in my lap. She seemed angry. Pissed, to be more accurate. She kept mopping and over-watering the scratched colourless floor as if it had gone into near-death dehydration and she was trying to resuscitate it.

‘Move!’ she shrieked – at me, I figured, for I was the only one around – and abruptly I stood up. She obviously wanted to mop the floor part underneath the chair. I watched as I moved aside, and she sure didn’t.

Move – that little four-lettered word echoed repetitively in little sharp screams in my head, and for a moment there I felt like Mrs. Moore in the Marabar Caves.

For the first time ever I seemed to see – to understand – the true meaning of the word. It told me to just move, go, leave. do something – to not, wait – to not, keep, waiting, round. I picked up my backpack and ran out through the corridor.

This time the bitchy narrowness of it could not stop me.