There is a hole in the wall of my kitchen that extends further than the total width or rather depth of the wall. I’ve checked on it from both sides now, stepping out into the thin fenced-in alley of dandelions, weathered scrap and an old tire full of stale rainwater nestled between my apartment and the austere stucco surface of my neighbor’s home. It’s not easy to get in there, the alley being pad-locked by my landlord. I had to scale the fence. I have never met the landlord or even know their name so I do not feel comfortable asking for assistance in this matter. On the seventh of each month I set my rent in my mailbox in a manila envelope in the form of a money order just as the move-in document left pinned to the refrigerator door requested. It’s picked up at some point that same day, month after month, and that’s always worked just fine for me. My previous landlord was overly familiar and often stopped by to gossip and peck at my snacks, inviting opportunities for small abuses I could never correct or even call attention to, which all built up in me a deep resentment that had no healthy outlet. When I stood out in the alley and looked upon the kitchen hole it looked exactly as it did from within: black as obsidian, with no sign of the other side, as if it was a well of endless darkness and not a traditional lapse in architecture. It should be seventeen inches side to side, but when I reached into it the first time to verify, I found it stretched further than the wingspan of my outstretched arm. No air nor sun touched my skin. Just a chill wind and a solitary nail rusted and bent into a lowercase r, as if it had two heads.
I have begun to dream, every other night or so, of crawling into the hole. In my dreams the hole curves upwards and ascends into my attic, leading to a dining table covered in fine silver. It is lit by thin candles and there is a place set for me at the head. I can taste the insulation on my tongue like flat soda left to warm in a minivan but the taste swiftly sours and I get sick to my gut the way you only can in dreams, the way that goes beyond the stomach and its tidal motions, becoming a knot you have no recourse to untie. A man is there with me at the other side of the table. A contractor. His hands are dry and calloused and much larger than my own. They look like leather catching mitts aping at the cutlery to try and slice apart a solitary bratwurst, casing seared black over a fire I cannot see, the juices of the sausage spraying out in acidic parabolas and burning holes in the tablecloth. He tells me there is no way to finance the expedition necessary to map the full square footage of the hole. Its roots run too deep. Any attempt will surely draw the attention of the landlord, who would have no choice but to raise the cost of rent accordingly, and with my credit history the risks of that knowledge far outweigh the benefits. I feel some sausage juice land on my own hands and it brands me with a mark like an unfinished circle. When I awake each morning I find his invoices on my coffee table already signed and dated for tomorrow.
There is roadwork happening each morning to rip up the asphalt on the road but something is coming out of the mud and delaying the project well into the coming spring. It sounds like children laughing about something they know isn’t funny, that cruel hollow laugh that kids can access without trying, a social performance built upon the animal urge to disorient an outcast. The workers leave shortly after the sound emerges from the broken ground, leaving their tools and vehicles in unsecured piles and parking lots that seem to invite a theft that never comes. I have been meaning to ask one of them when the chemical sensation has evaporated up beyond earshot if they would survey the hole or help me patch it up despite knowing in the marrow of my bones the clear and present danger that would come if we commit to boarding up one side or the other. It would stop the airflow, redirect the circulation somewhere deep inside itself, below the rigid mantle of the earth. It would do something to the spirit of the darkness I dare not invite further into the world.
I have been meaning to attend a local gallery show. I enjoy cultural activities and gatherings of many kinds but when I step outside my door to take part in the grand commotion of civilization, I see that hole replicate itself as if it follows me around town. Sometimes the hole does not even take a physical shape and yet I can feel the coolness of it, the implication of the boundary line forming in the middle of a surface. I’ve come upon it on subway windows and stairways and even fallen through it once or twice, a limb or two at a time. As I pull myself out of it, no one seems to look me in the eye.
I’ve begun to wonder if the world I walk through day by day is all a trick of the hole.
I am sitting in the kitchen and staring at the hole and it is growing in diameter and depth, though I will never know how far it goes. I should lean into the reality of it, accept it as a given, and crawl inside to gather meaningful observations.
Outside the sky is screaming and it has begun to rain. It is the fourteenth of the month, a week after my rent was due.
As I dwell upon the issue of the hole I hear a knocking on the door. On the other side, visible through the window, there is a man with an orange cap and reflective sunglasses with those awful sporty diagonal lenses smiling and chewing gum. He enters without knocking and steps confidently into the kitchen, putting his hands in his pockets as he stares directly at the hole. He says the landlord sent him. He asks me if I’ve thrown anything into the hole. Anything important. I tell him I dropped a set of keys down there the first day I recognized the hole for what it was. He asks me what the keys opened and I’m suddenly embarrassed, even a little angry, because I can’t remember. I lie and say it’s for my mother’s house, only to remember that was the gospel truth. I was supposed to do a wellness check on her two weeks ago. She hasn’t called me to say one thing or the other but I was supposed to check in anyway, either way, every few months or so as part of our arrangement. She’s more than capable of caring for herself, even in her advancing age, but she gets so focused on her reading she can forget to. In these prolonged fits of literary mania, she doesn’t eat or sleep at normal levels, just reads and paces from room to room most hours of the day. I think it’s why she’s always been gravitated to mysteries. They give her an excuse to pace, her true passion bore visibly into the threadbare hallway carpet.
The man with the sunglasses coughs and says that I should board up the hole, air flow be damned, and stay at a hotel for a few days to avoid risk of further contamination. I ask him when and where the hole began and he chews loudly for a while before leaving the way he came. I don’t want to go to a hotel, but the way he emphasized a while gave me room for pause, so I move my things into the local Marriott and use the room phone to call and check in on my mother. She doesn’t pick up after several spaced attempts, so I lay in the queen sized bed, above the sheets, and try to forget my own uncertainty.
Sadly, there is no forgetting by choice. That mercy is not for mortal men to give themselves. I remember I was supposed to board up the hole before I left for good and I didn’t. I’d abdicated my own role in all this. The hole might grow forever if I fall asleep and focus only on tomorrow’s problems.
I cough up something black from the pit of my lungs. It stains my hands and the sheets of the bed and doesn’t wash out. It smears on everything. I know that I should worry, but for some reason I feel lighter, like a nameless ancient burden has at last been lifted from my bones.
I drive back, late into the night now. The streets are empty and the lights are dull and softly flickering. On the radio, a local station plays the sound of ocean water crashing against the shore. Ebb and flow, push and pull. It lulls me to the point where I miss my turn a handful of times, but no one is counting the minutes. No one is holding me to a schedule anymore.
Where my apartment was earlier that evening lay a mountainous pile of ash and at its center an old stone well, tall and snaking, curtains of moss growing on uneven stones. There are no signs of my furniture but my neighbor’s homes are all intact. I walk up to the edge of the well and hear my footsteps echo deep below into the hidden waters of the world. I know that if I let myself fall into those waters, I would learn so many things. I make a wish with a commemorative coin I got on a ferry ride as a boy by flattening out a spare quarter of my mother’s in a special machine. It has a fish on the front with a wry smile on its face and on the back was the ferry and it said around the rim “the light is waiting on the other side.” The coin had been missing for years and now there it was, atop the ash. Waiting for rediscovery.
By the light of the moon I see the coin hit the surface of the water and make a brief yet perfect circle in the ripples. For a moment everything feels connected. It is a glorious rush, filling my veins with an all-encompassing lightness. I leave my car behind as now I can float from rooftop to rooftop, the city below me, the moon and stars above like two concentric plates spinning on an axis. It feels as though nothing has ever gone wrong. I stay up until dawn telling people at Denny’s about the hole. It’s right there by the deep fryer. It followed us in. The world is always here with us, all threaded together, and a foot is a mile and a fathom at the velocities of light.
John Chrostek 