You’re Late

You’ve entered your apartment a thousand times now. You put the key in the lock, shove your shoulder into the door, and hear it creak. Your apartment always creaks when you enter. You don’t walk over and turn on the lights. You’ve never walked over and turned on the lights. You know the exact distance from your front door to the kitchen counter, the spot where the carpeting is slightly spongy because a floorboard broke last winter, and the place where your coffee table waits to catch your shin.

Tonight, when you push your shoulder into your door, it slides open. You don’t have to force it. There is no creaking.

You stand frozen in your doorway. Everything smells different in your apartment. It doesn’t smell like your apartment. Where is your lavender? What happened to the Chinese food you ate last night? This has the scent of wood and maybe… cleaner? It smells like a doctor’s office.

You should turn on your lights. You should double-check which door you came through. You should be doing a lot of different things that you would normally do, but you are not doing them. You’re too tired. The stairs felt like they took longer to climb today. You are already past the entryway.

Your door clicks shut behind you.

You try to find your light switch by feel. You can’t. Your fingers slide along the wall, but there is no indentation. You start feeling around more frantically, trying to locate your switch. Something is off about this wall. Your apartment has a light switch, and beside it a patch of wall you touched up after damaging it while painting. You can’t find that either.

You begin to hyperventilate. Your apartment has started to smell more strongly of those unknown chemicals. Something is also making a noise you can barely hear. It’s coming from further inside your apartment, from the area where your bedroom should be.

You take a step in. The carpet is thicker than it should be. You hear your foot land heavily, as if you are walking in snow.

“Is anybody there?”

Why are you speaking out loud? This isn’t your apartment, and you just exposed yourself. You’re sure whoever lives here will hear you and get angry. There are probably items they could use to defend themselves. But nothing happens. You can still hear that humming noise. It almost sounds like it’s pulsing.

Your door is behind you, and you should get out of here. Locate it, open it, and go back into the hallway. Walk downstairs. You’ve just realized you’re on the wrong floor. Maybe you went up one too many flights. Whatever caused your brain to misfire when you entered this building, your instincts are now on overdrive.

For some reason, you continue to walk toward that sound. You’ve taken four steps into what you believe to be your apartment. You can’t see anything except a sliver of light seeping under a door.

You have no doors inside your apartment.

You reach for the knob and grab it. It’s colder than it should be for the middle of summer. You open the door without thinking. You’re so curious about why you have this door, why your apartment is so wrong, why it has this chemical smell.

You push it open.

A bright white light pours out from nowhere. Your eyes can’t comprehend how high the ceiling goes. There are shelves climbing toward the roof, holding hundreds upon hundreds of glass jars. You step inside, and the door shuts behind you. There is no door anymore. The wall is solid.

You examine one of the jars near you. It’s about the size of your fist. When you lean in to see what’s inside, you see a woman looking back at you. She looks exactly like you. She presses her hands to the glass, and you feel your own hands copy the motion.

You trip on one of the shelving units and knock a jar over. You catch it before it hits the ground. Now you are inspecting the jar in front of you. You realize the figure inside is also reaching out to touch the glass. It’s you. That’s your scar from when you fell off your bike as a kid. Your crooked nose. Even the beauty mark on your jawline.

When she opens her mouth, you know what she is going to say. No sound escapes her lips, but you can feel the words imprint themselves in your mind: You’re late.

You let go of the jar, and it lands on the ground without a sound, as if dropping onto velvet. You drift toward a shelf holding much bigger jars. You don’t want to look, but you do. These jars contain your life stages. You’re looking at yourself as a child. At your teenage self. At thirty-year-old you. At the far end of the room, there is an open jar.

The low hum swells, growing louder, vibrating in your teeth. You finally understand what this room is. All the yous that are not you are kept here. Maybe the version of you who died falling off that bike. Maybe the versions from all the life decisions you never made. And you are standing right in front of that empty jar, waiting to be placed inside.

You turn and run to find the door. There is no door. Just rows upon rows of jars filled with different versions of people who may or may not resemble you.

You climb onto the edge of the open jar and dive inside. The liquid smells like that chemical from your “apartment.” You sink further and further down, looking up at yourself standing outside the jar. Suddenly, it hits you: you are the one inside. You press your hands against the glass, and your outside self mirrors the motion. The lid slides over you. You lose consciousness as the room goes pitch black.

You’re back on your floor, looking up at your ceiling. You are home. You just have to believe it was all a dream. You must have gotten blackout drunk, and that’s how you’ll explain it. You walk to your bathroom and turn on the light.

There is no scar over your left brow. Where it used to be, there is now an imprint of pressure, as if something had been pressing hard into your skin. You feel someone touching the place where your scar should be.

You’re safe at home. Everything will be fine, you reassure yourself. But when you close your eyes, you still see those rows of jars. You’re waiting for that day to happen again, the day you walk up the wrong staircase and enter a door that isn’t yours.

When you open your eyes, you realize you do have the scar. Did you imagine checking for it earlier?

Your apartment has nothing unusual about it. When you look out the window, you notice that the building across from you has a light on. Someone is standing in the window on the fifth story. It looks like you, but you’re pretty sure it’s not.

You pull your curtains closed. You’re not sleeping tonight. There is that humming sound again, but it’s only in your mind. You’ll wake up tomorrow and live your normal life. You’ll go to work, walk up your stairs to your door, and hope it feels normal. Hope everything stays normal.

Tonight, you’re sitting very still in your bed. You’re not moving, hoping you won’t feel that lid closing over your head, your hands pressing against the glass.

The voice telling you you’re late.