Next to the clock is a clockwise spiral scratched on the wall in red crayon. Eyeball it and breathe uneasy. I never use red to mark the slips. The loops are too close and tight. Dig out my sliver of charcoal and etch a black triangle around the spiral. Flinch as the air around me crackles. The overhead squawks. Heavy disembodied sigh from the brink then a fragged well past giving a fuck male voice calls a code yellow on another unit.
Time to get busy.
Keep moving through the first set of magnetically sealed fire doors. Take the machine’s pulse by sound and smell and visible light plus the unseen vibrations beyond the spectrum. Listen for the pink and brown noise in the lower megahertz. Total silence is rare on the unit never feels right. Silence at the Fort feels hot.
Fragile.
Like gas expanding too slow too fast. Like some thing or some body is about to blow. Third set of double doors you hear furious screeching. Demonic male voice that devolves to gibberish piglike snorting semi coherent fuck you bitch stupid hoe sorry cracker ass cunt to sobbing I aint crazy nah huh yall got me fucked up nah yall sorry motherfuckers crazy all yall best reckonize you bout to get fired uh huh now what yeh best let me go cuz I’m fixin to clown for real then crash boom of naked human body throwing self into wall. I can feel the tremors from a hundred feet. Followed by pale thunder of bony fists and bare feet thumping metal door. Noise and chaos and the buzz of impending violence feels like home.
Regulate the breathing and remember the agreements.
The air on this side of the Fort is recycled chemical with a faraway underbelly barnacle of putrid. The funk seeps into your clothes and skin and nasal passages and stays with you long after you’ve clocked out. Never one singular smell or not one I can identify but the brightest flowers today are mildew and manstink with notes of fetid nutsack and menstrual blood. Murky cheese and rotavirus and rotting feet. Black mold and fear.
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