The Walls In Here
Kevin stepped off the elevator, unsure where he was. A sign on a chrome stand pointed “New Arrivals,” down the hall. Obsidian walls were bathed in recessed, gold overhead lighting, so pristine they resembled giant black mirrors. Strange that, unlike the metal sign standing solo, he did not see himself reflected in those walls. Even Kevin’s footsteps were inaudible, muffled by charcoal carpeting with a disconcerting pattern that suggested movement, as if the floor was smoldering.
The hallway ended in three adjacent doors at ninety-degree angles to each other. They had no visible handles or hinges, just thin frames to indicate their presence. As Kevin stopped in front of them, a coin-sized LED embedded in the frame of the middle door lit, a beacon amidst the muted lighting, and the mirror-like obsidian door slid open like something out of Star Wars, minus the characteristic “swish” sound effect.
Kevin stepped into a room containing only scattered pairs of silver-framed black leather chairs with cushioned seats and low backs. The room called to mind a 1980s doctor’s office waiting room, although it was missing several features: no windows, television, magazine table, or even reception desk. Only a single black door opposite the one through which he had entered. The walls in here were not black mirrors, though; they were a lighter gray than the carpet, painted with a strange swirling design that called to mind billowing smoke.
“Have a seat, Kevin Ciro Connors,” said a robotic, ethereal, female voice, a voice straight out of a sci fi movie or streaming show. Kevin imagined a beautiful but terrible automaton.
“How do you know my name?” He asked, startled by the use of his full name.
“Have a seat. You will be called when it’s time.”
As he sat, he looked around, trying to get his bearings. The ceiling, like the walls and floor, roiled as well, white cumulous clouds swelling into cumulonimbus thunderstorms, exploding into nimbostratus sheets of steel gray that stretched across the ceiling, pulling apart, contracting back into the original cotton ball clouds that repeated the cycle.
His stomach flipped in time with the undulating clouds, so Kevin fixed his gaze on the closed door across the room, trying to ignore the impression of movement. How did he get here? His pockets were empty. No phone to help. The only thing he could remember was riding in the elevator, although now he wasn’t even sure if he had been ascending or descending.
Think, Kevin, think. Before the elevator, you were… where? The lobby of this building? On a sidewalk, a city street? A fancy building like this, it had to be in a city, right?
Wait, that’s it, the city! He remembered downtown Atlanta, an early November day, the day the election results in Georgia and Arizona were officially called. It was 2020 all over. People cried stolen election again. Crowds took to the streets. Kevin had hopped in his car and headed for downtown Atlanta. Unlike January 6, when he had been smart enough not to enter the Capitol with the others, when he quickly got the hell out of D.C., this time he joined the throng protesting in the streets, chanting, marching, threatening. Images rushed into his mind: National Guard troops, taunts, thrown rocks and bottles, tear gas, a burning in his chest, surging crowds, falling to the ground, and feet, so many feet. He hadn’t had an exit plan this time, and it cost him. He remembered being stomped, kicked, and crushed by the horde of feet. Bodies fell around and on top of him. A scream caught in his closing throat but never made it out because of the burning. So much burning. Then blackness.
Then… the elevator. No lobby, no security station, no personal belongings. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
His eyes refocused on the still door in this macabre room. Panic rose in him, acid from his sour stomach invading his esophagus. Kevin stood up.
“Hello? Help, I think I might be dying, or dead, or…”
“Kevin Ciro Connors, it is time,” the calm yet eerie voice said.
The door at the far side of the room opened and LEDs lit a path from his seat to a single chair inside another featureless room. Kevin followed it, still panicked, but thinking this was the only way to save his life, if that was even possible. The door slid closed behind him, and a soft bluish glow, its origins imperceptible, bathed the room. Everything was lacquered black in here, no smoky walls or floor, no roiling clouds overhead. Just sleek walls and crisp corners.
“Hello?” He said again. “Is someone there?”
“Sit.” This voice was different: matronly yet still metallic, commanding, emotionless, deadly. He was reminded of the chrome lady stormtrooper from the recent Star Wars movies, Captain Phasma, a character who spooked his younger self, who had apparently embedded herself in his psyche.
He complied.
Suddenly images appeared on the wall in front of him, no apparent projector, no screen. A pretty blond woman cradled a baby on an ugly orange sofa, something straight out of the 1960s or 70s, as a plain man looked on lovingly. She cooed at the baby, appeared to sing to it. There was no sound, just grainy images, like poorly shot home movies. The scene cross-faded and the couple appeared at a graduation ceremony, tears in their eyes as they watched a girl, probably their daughter, accept her diploma. The scene changed, and the couple had aged significantly. The woman was standing in a hospital room holding a different baby, her husband smiling next to her, and, in the bed, an exhausted looking woman who resembled the graduate from the previous scene. Another edit and the couple, older still, but by fewer years this time, were standing in the entryway of a modern house, speaking to a young man, now hugging him. There was luggage by the door. The young man turned to face the camera. Kevin recognized him: Wheeler, one of his college classmates. On screen Wheeler picked up his suitcases and exited, leaving what had to be his grandparents behind, tears in their eyes, proud smiles on their faces. The picture froze on their image.
“That was Ethel and Myron Johnson, maternal grandparents of Michael Wheeler.”
Before he could speak, a new film appeared. It was Kevin and his closest college buddies at a pool party next to a crowded beach. Spring Break, 2020. The pandemic year, when he and his friends called bullshit on the masks and shutdowns. Kevin watched rapidly edited scenes of bars, pool parties, beach parties, and a scene on a boat. The Booze Cruise. Beer bottles in hand, Kevin and his friends all proceeded from the boat’s bar up a flight of metal steps, emerging on an open deck, joining a crowd of other partiers, blissfully drunk or high.
The picture pulled in tight on Kevin’s face and slowed down as he saw himself hug none other than Wheeler, who he had forgotten had even been on that trip. Wheeler, who was not even in his primary friend group. Wheeler, who had been there with his own A-list of friends, the two groups combining for parties. After the slow-motion hug, he saw himself open his mouth and cough twice right in Wheeler’s face. The camera froze on the second cough.
How the hell had this footage been captured? Who had been filming them?
“Kevin Ciro Connors, that is you, correct?” Scary stormtrooper lady said.
He cleared his throat. “Yes.”
“What happened to you after that trip?”
“I went home.”
“Where you came down with Covid-19?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what happened to Michael Wheeler?”
Kevin thought for a moment. After spring break, he and his classmates had not returned to school. They finished the semester remotely because of the stupid pandemic, never getting the closure of Senior Week or Commencement. He had lost track of Wheeler, as well as so many other classmates outside his inner circle. The world had gone to shit, it had been difficult to keep up with people you weren’t close to.
“No,” Kevin said.
“In that moment you just saw on screen, you infected Michael with Covid. He returned home and infected his family. His grandparents, Ethel and Myron Johnson, ended up in a hospital on ventilators for weeks. They died without their family by their side, without getting to say goodbye.”
“Holy shit, really?”
The picture on the wall showed the couple from the first film, corpse-like, hooked up to ventilators in a quarantined hospital room.
“Their deaths were a direct result of your actions, Mr. Connors. The evidence is there before you.”
For a split second, he thought scary metallic stormtrooper lady was going to bum rush him from behind the door and cut him down with some crazy lightsaber-like battle stick, and he almost burst out laughing, the laughter of the insane.
“Wait, it’s not my fault, they told us it was OK. The government, Florida — who was it, DeSantis? He invited us there for spring break. Hell, even the president said it was OK.”
“True, and we have rooms for each of them on floors much lower than this one. However, you knew the risks, you saw that people were dying. But you disregarded the facts, willingly, didn’t you? What did you and your friends call that trip?”
“The ‘I Don’t Give A Shit Tour,’” Kevin said. But she already knew that, didn’t she? If she had this video of him, she obviously knew everything else about him. His mind was starting to grasp just what was going on in this room.
“Exactly. The hubris of the young, the perpetually selfish, who think they are invincible, ignoring the wisdom and experience of their elders out of disdain and disrespect.”
Suddenly, Kevin had a thought. “Wait! Who gave me the virus? Shouldn’t they be here too?”
“Stacy Mears will answer for her transgressions when it is her time.”
“Who?”
The screen jumped to life on the wall in front of Kevin and he saw himself kissing a brunette in a hot tub, must have been at one of the hotels. He suddenly remembered that night, his first night of the trip, as the picture pulled closer so he could watch himself slip his hand down her bikini bottom to finger her as she reached beneath his board shorts to fondle him. The action froze on Kevin and Stacy (had he ever known her name?) in mid-kiss.
“Oh shit,” Kevin whispered, swallowing hard, a cartoonish gulp he didn’t think happened in real life, although this hardly seemed like real life.
He understood. Stacy was not here now because it wasn’t her time. It wasn’t Wheeler’s either. It was his, though, because his body had been gassed and trampled at a protest turned violent in Atlanta.
The bluish glow suddenly went blindingly white. Kevin shut his eyes, but the brightness still penetrated his eyelids.
“Kevin Ciro Connors, your blatant disregard for the consequences of your actions caused the premature deaths of two innocents. You are hereby sentenced to two years.”
Two years? Of what, prison? But wait, if he truly was dead, didn’t that mean two years of…hell? Purgatory? Dread descended on him like a weighted curtain drawn across a stage, ending a scene.
Captain Phasma spoke again, her tone merciless and unfeeling. “Please return to the antechamber as we prepare the room.”
“Room?” He could barely get the word out.
“The room where you will serve your time.”
Suddenly, the bright lights extinguished back to a dull glow, LEDs lit the floor again, and Kevin found himself following the path, without his brain consenting, back to the smoky, cloud-covered waiting room, back to the same chrome and black chair. The door had closed behind him, its frame now glowing red, calling to mind embers.
Shit, he was in trouble.
He made to inhale but suddenly his chest felt restricted, tight. He coughed twice, as he had in Wheeler’s face on the Booze Cruise. His eyes watered. His throat felt like it had been shredded by a cheese grater. His breath hitched, and he coughed again, harder, pain shooting up through his newly clogged sinuses and down to his constricted chest, his throat searing.
The red doorframe turned bright white. The door opened. LEDs lit a path into a beige room, a hospital bed fitted with stark white sheets standing in the center, surrounded by machines with tubes and wires and displays, instruments performing a digital symphony, a cacophony guaranteed to drive him insane. A hospital gown was folded neatly at the end of the bed, his name embroidered on a chest patch.
On one side of the bed was the menacing chrome stormtrooper, Captain Phasma, dressed not for a space battle but in a crisp white coat, a vision of pure horror. Something broke in Kevin’s mind, and he made to laugh, coughing violently instead. She held neither a laser blaster nor a crackling electric battle stick.
In her hand was a ventilator mask.
— -
Bio: Erik Johnson is an emerging writer living with his husband and dog in New York City and taking courses at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute. He has written flash fiction, short stories, poetry, and a draft novel. He was accepted to an International Writers’ Residency at the Chateau D’Orquevaux in Orquevaux, France (2024) His writing crosses genres, often containing elements of grief, social justice, LGBTQ+ themes, and situations where light and dark meet in the human experience.
Read more Dystopian Stories on The Yard: Crime Blog
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