Sarah on the Stairs
She had always counted the stairs going down, but never going up. There were fourteen of them going that way, if you didn’t count the floor that you started on, or the one you ended at. But she had broken both of her rules this time, starting from the ground, and counting as she headed to the second floor. It was an obsessive compulsive disaster.
The stairs she passed on the way up were in the thousands now, soon to reach five digits. The part of her mind that was doing the actual counting was no longer communicating in words, but simply blurting out a vague droning noise with each step. Or was it chanting? It was comforting to her, like a children’s song where the words are in a foreign language.
Either way, the endless, rhythmic voice coming from somewhere in her left brain that seemed to be vaguely number like, along with a sense that some part of her mind knew the exact number.
The railing under her hand was still the same poorly varnished pine tube that it had always been. It was held up by cheap brass brackets coming out of the wall She had been sliding her right hand along it for so long it was a wonder that her palm wasn’t rubbed raw.
The good, old, neutral, reliable hallway carpet was long gone. The transition from fabric to polished wood had taken ten steps, and lasted for five hundred more. Then ten steps had transformed the wood into linoleum, then ten to Lucite, ten to silver, twenty to platinum, five to gold, one hundred to granite (that had been interesting), two to diamond, three to coal, twenty seven to chalk (in a variety of colors), and finally just six to become what it was she was currently walking on, which was gray, slightly spongy and warm to the touch of her bare feet. It was also covered in stiff bristling hairs that tickled her soles. It was much better than the icy-cold metals had been.
These fleshy steps were, like all the others, certainly no place to take a rest. But as tired as she was, she was certain she would reach the second floor soon. When she looked up to the top of the stairwell there was always a light at the end. It didn’t seem so far away now, or maybe it never had, and it felt comforting to keep moving towards it.
I like this story. It’s on the strange side, but interesting. It reminds me of being a little girl and taking music theory classes. After class, all the other kids would thunder up the stairs, but I would try to walk as silently as possible.