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You Missed Your ExitPeople step onto the escalator without hesitation.
They don’t look up. They don’t look down.
They ride like this is the point.
Like they chose it.
People get off, too.
Quickly.
Casually.
Most step off by the second landing. Almost everyone is gone by the time the numbers start to repeat.
No one rides it all the way.
Not that he’s seen.
He’s always wondered what happens if you do.
Not obsession.
Just— a question that never let go.
Today, he steps on with purpose.
Not an accident. Not opportunity.
He wants to see.The first few floors are familiar.
Comforting, even.
Classrooms with doors propped open. Stores lit too brightly for how empty they are. A voice calling a name.
His name.
He feels it more than hears it— the shape of it pressing against his ears.
He doesn’t turn.
Not yet.
He’ll look later.
There’s time.
“Level Four.”
“Level Five.”
The signs still make sense.
He passes a landing.He could step off.
He considers it—not seriously, just to prove he could. His foot shifts slightly. Then settles.Not yet.By LEVEL 7, something changes.
The space opens. Wider hallways. Dimmer lights.
And beyond the rail— the airport. The ocean. The highway he takes to get here, which he hadn’t remembered until now.
The last few people step off. No hesitation.
A sign flickers past:
YOU MISSED YOUR EXIT
He glances back.
LEVEL 7.
Scare tactic.
“Deters trespassing,” he thinks.He’s not trespassing. Still fine.
He faces forward.It’s colder now. The cameras feel closer. They follow him—not mechanically, but attentively. Like they’ve been waiting for him to notice.He grips the handrail. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t give.He hears the mechanical noises of the cameras shifting— their necks angled downward, their unblinking eyes boring into the back of his head.More floors pass.
Or something like floors.
The signs are still there— but slower to process.
He recognizes the letters.
They just… don’t hold.
Like trying to recall a song you almost know.He hears someone step on behind him.
Or maybe they’ve always been there.
“You’re supposed to get off earlier,” the voice says.
He doesn’t turn.
“Most people do.”
He nods.
He knows.
That’s why he’s still on the escalator.Another landing passes.
Closer than before. Or maybe just harder to reach.
He could step off.
He thinks about it longer this time.
Measures the distance. Times the rhythm.
Not impossible.
Just— not ideal.
He stays.Below him, everything flattens.
The earlier floors lose detail. Lose meaning.
They look simple now. Obvious.
Like he would never choose them again.Above him— less.
Less light. Less sound.
Less structure.
“Less” stops being accurate.
There is nothing.The escalator speeds up.
Or maybe he’s only noticing it now.
Landings come faster.
Disappear faster.
Each one harder to reach than the last.“You can get off whenever you want,” the voice says.
He nods.
Of course he can.
He watches another landing pass.
Too fast.
Too far.
Not this one.Darkness settles in.
No signs. No voices.
Just the steady mechanical rhythm beneath his feet— matching his pulse now. Guiding it.He looks down.
Nothing.
Not distant. Not blurred.
Gone.He looks up.
More of it.He tightens his grip on the rail.
Just to steady himself. Just for a second.He stays on the escalator.
He tells himself he’s still choosing to.

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Hot NothingEvery morning I go to the gas station off route 24.I don’t remember deciding to.I don’t remember needing anything.It just happens.And if it doesn’t, something will be off. I’m sure enough of that that I’ve never been foolish enough to risk it.The cup of coffee is already poured for me when I get there.As usual.I have no idea who pours it. There is no cashier. No price. Just fluorescent white lights buzzing and spottily stocked shelves stretching out towards infinity.I put the cup of coffee to my lips and drink.It’s not bitter.Not sweet.Not hot or cold.It’s like drinking a cup of room temperature.The only reason I know I’m drinking anything is that the coffee is disappearing from the cup.“That’s weird. I don’t remember the coffee tasting like this,” I think, and keep drinking.Maybe the coffee is just weak.But I drink it black. At its weakest, it should still taste like something, right?I drink again.Did it always taste like this, though?I didn’t remember it tasting like this, but I couldn’t remember ever noticing what it tasted like.Maybe this is what it’s supposed to taste like.I’m probably just tired, so I drink more coffee.Walking to my car, I feel weird.I feel the brief soreness of my shoulders releasing. My heart is normally racing after this much coffee, but it doesn’t start to panic until I realize the calm is an unusual change. I’m not mentally combing through to-do lists — jumping from one open tab to another in my brain.
This is… nice. Good.I practically hurt my neck looking up at the sky, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Always assuming I’ll be late, I arrive places embarrassingly early. Always assuming I let someone down, I apologize when other people wrong me. I come to hate the sound of my name because it means someone needs something.For the first time, nothing was being asked of me. I felt like a piece of fruit floating in a gelatin mold.The lights from the freezers in the store are inviting.I have never understood moths more.I open the freezer door — empty shelves — and watch the cold smoke billow out, embracing me.The glass begins to frost over, intricate and opaque.I should close it. I’m wasting power. Money. Time.But it looks so nice. Good.Hypnotized by the visual ballet of the freezer, I spill coffee on myself. It feels nice. Warm, somehow.But the coffee wasn’t hot. It wasn’t anything. Why would it be warm now?Isn’t that what happens when people freeze? It hurts at first, and then they go numb, and then right before they die they feel warm. Like the body’s way of convincing you to give up.I had always thought that being numb meant there was no pain.
I was wrong.
It meant there was no warning.I have to leave. I break into a cold sweat. I know if I don’t leave now, I’ll never leave. I move to run but it feels like I’m wearing concrete boots.I should panic.I want to panic.I can’t.I move at an astronaut’s pace.I have to keep reminding myself the warmth is a trick.I try to think of the moths.They don’t pull away.The light is the last thing they touch.

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Apology #2929844AAA, the All Apology Archive, was established to avoid the pesky arguments that would follow whether someone had or hadn’t apologized. Since apologies are so important and so rare to find, especially sincere ones, the government felt it would be best to archive the apologies given and received by the citizens in town to keep people from arguing about what did or didn’t happen.Mya had worked at the All Apology Archive for decades. She loved the clinical organization of the building. The file cabinets were gleaming, the lobby was spotless, and there was a quiet, polite, and impersonal energy that permeated the entirety of AAA. Personal lives viewed through the lens of professionalism. Mya appreciated that kind of compartmentalization. The word brought an image of her in a tiny apartment set up in a plastic container in a building full of tiny plastic container apartments. The thought of the apartment containers clicking together – separately – comforted her.Tuesday started off normally enough: she scanned in with hundreds of other AAA workers, walked to her cubicle, and got to work. Mya opened her computer so she could start to appropriately sort the apologies into the following categories: accepted, not accepted, not seen, not ready to deliver, and revisions. The “revisions” apologies went to the revision room, where a select group of workers were directed to reword rude or unclear apologies to make them a bit more palatable. That was a newer department - before their inception, the amount of apologies that had to be written to apologize for rude apologies became unruly. AAA did not just archive apologies, but also determined when to deliver them.Mya, who normally finds peace in her work life in the same way nuns find peace in prayer, felt her lungs compress, as though gripped by a giant. The apology she had opened to sort had been addressed to her. She had never seen it before.Apology #2929844To: Mya MendezApology Issued: I am truly sorry for the time of yours that I wasted. I was scared and didn’t let myself tell you everything you needed to hear. If I wasn’t so scared, you might be living an entirely different life by now. You always said “better to stay safe than say sorry,” but I just allowed that to live in the shadows of what I could be.From: ____Her blood ran cold. She rarely spoke to anyone inside or outside of AAA, but here was her language, right there in black and white. That was not supposed to be able to happen. Anyone filing an apology would have to write their name unless they had the bypass code, which is only available by workers at AAA. She thought through the catalogue of coworkers. Despite being there for over forty years, she had no real friends. No one did. There were no corporate picnics or bonding activities. It flirted with the line of unprofessional, and there was no space for unprofessional in the AAA, where compartmentalization is key. Blurring lines is the opposite of what they stood for.Mya had no idea who could have done this. She wasn’t supposed to receive this apology at all. Apologies intended for anyone in AAA would be filed through a coworker - never them. But here was Mya, face to face with this impossibility. She didn’t know who to go to. Ironically, the administrative level of the All Apologies Archive was pretty unforgiving. Staying off the radar had always been how she lived her life, and she wasn’t about to change that now when a paycheck was involved.She checked the metadata.
Filed by: M. Mendez
Status: Not Ready to DeliverShe didn’t remember doing this. At all.She checked the timestamp.
3.30.2608
10:33 AMShe blinked hard and checked the lower corner of her computer screen. March 30th, 2608 10:34 AM.“You might be living an entirely different life right now.” The words blurred into each other and the room began to spin. That office door she didn’t knock on. That phone call she was too afraid to answer. How different could her life be right now? She felt like she was drowning in regret.Why would this apology be slated to be seen later? How many apologies are being mishandled? How many lives are getting derailed because the government decided who can and can’t handle feelings? A middle man for feelings. A manufacturer of regret.She stared at the screensaver on her monitor; a changing placid nature scene with the words “AAA - Keeping Society Polite at All Apologies Archive.” The archive didn’t keep people polite, it kept them scared and separate. The archive put everyone in tiny plastic compartments - clear enough to see each other through, soft enough not to fatally hurt yourself on, but suffocating enough to feel like you’re dying from the inside out. The numbness wasn’t peace, it was death.For the first time in her adult life, Mya had feelings she didn’t want to file. She didn’t want them revised. She wanted them to be felt with the same burning intensity that she felt them in her chest. So, for once in her life, she acted.The Fire Department’s official statement was that this was arson. According to reports, the revision room is where the fire began. Bright orange tongues lapping at the file cabinets, a mature palate that consumed Accepted, Not Accepted, Not Seen categories with the passion of a starving foodie.Charred pieces of paper—each scrawled with sorry—whispered past Mya’s ears, finally delivered at the right moment.

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Present“I never listened to my mother, but maybe she was right. Maybe education wasn’t the best career to get into.”
Jeff thought this as he walked from his car toward the entrance of H.S. 223.
To be fair, Jeff was barely “in” education. Per diem subbing—day-to-day, no benefits, no expectations. Career was a strong word. This was just something he could point to dramatically when his mother asked, again, what he planned on doing with his life. This conversation had been coming up more frequently since she started charging him rent.Like the car he bought with every intention of fixing, everything he started stalled out. College and job applications half-finished. Emails unanswered. Tabs left open—promises he swore he’d return to.He gave himself a onceover in the lobby mirror. He wiped the remaining Pop-Tart crumbs from his shirt and mouth and ran a hand through his greasy hair. “Good enough,” he muttered to himself. If he had a work email, that’s how he would sign them. “Good Enough, Jeff.”The security guard looked up at Jeff. She was small - older, several inches shorter than Jeff - but something about her made him unconsciously straighten up. She looked like she was about to get him in trouble and hit him with a wooden spoon. He felt a pang of jealousy seeing this woman who has such a clear purpose in life. One that aligns with her so well.“Morning,” Jeff said, trying to sound casual, but the shakiness in his voice betrayed him.From behind the thickest glasses Jeff had ever seen, she watched him. Silently. Like a surveillance camera.Then, suddenly, she flinched - sharp and deliberate.Jeff jumped.She smiled to herself as Jeff tried to play it off, nodding like nothing weird had happened. Adults flinch at each other all the time. He signed in.The pen was already warm. “Ew,” he thought to himself, imagining the hand that had been there.He waited a safe distance from the security guard for his supervisor to appear. He saw the beehive of her hair before he saw the rest of her. She was as stiff and dry as her hair, which Jeff couldn’t help but notice didn’t move when she did.“You’re in room 15,” she said, handing him a folder and looking through him. “Attendance sheet. Key. Schedule.”“Is there a lesson plan, or –” Jeff started, flipping through the folder.“No. They don’t learn from a per diem sub anyway.” She began to walk away while talking to him. “They usually don’t stay long enough for it to matter,” the back of her shellacked head said. Before he could respond, she disappeared into her office.
Jeff stood there a second, letting it sink in.
Then something in his chest lifted.
No lesson plan. No responsibility. No way to fail.
Just a list of names and a clock to run out.
His sweet spot.
The students were already in the room when Jeff walked in. They sat in rows. In total silence.No one spoke. A handful of students looked up at him, briefly, and then back down. Almost as though they were confirming something.He suddenly felt like he had walked into the wrong room, like maybe he should leave. But the exit was so far… and he was already here.“Good morning,” Jeff said, looking around.Silence.“Nice,” he said to himself.He sat at the desk and opened the folder again, checking for something new.There wasn’t.“So…” Jeff started, “it looks like there’s not a lesson plan…”A couple of heads lifted.“No big deal. Less work for you. Just work on … stuff for other classes.” Jeff said, settling into his chair and opening a game on his phone.Silence.“...What stuff?” a student asked.Jeff looked up.The question seemed to fill the room, unavoidable.“You know, like work for other classes. Homework. Projects. Tests.”“We don’t have anything to do,” a boy sitting by the window said.“How?”“This is how all of our classes are,” one boy said.“Subs,” one of the girls said from the back of the room. “New adults. Same day.”Jeff chuckled.Weird joke.Classic.He knew better than to fight it. The sub never won.“Let’s just take attendance,” he said. As he recited the names, something felt off. He knew the order before he looked at the list.He tried to brush it off. The weird energy from the building playing games with his mind. But then the students began to answer before he was finished reading the names.He marked everyone present, easier to say everyone was here than to begin to explain any of this.He was about to turn back to his phone when he felt eyes on him. He looked up to see the entire class watching him. He felt observed. Exposed.They kept watching him. No restless, distracted teenage energy. Just stillness.Jeff glanced at the clock.9:12.“Alright,” he announced, heat creeping up his neck, “just sit tight and use the time you have for… whatever.”No one moved.He sat back down at the desk, wanting nothing more than to be able to turn his attention to the game on his phone.An eternity passed.He checked the clock again.9:12.The chair squeaked as Jeff shifted in it.“Okay,” he said, trying to find his authoritative voice. “This isn’t a trick. You can talk. Do whatever. I’m not –”“What are we supposed to do?” a boy who looked a lot like Jeff when he was younger asked.Jeff felt just like a trout, opening and closing his mouth, waiting for something meaningful to come out.“Just… wait it out,” Jeff said. “It could be worse.”The words landed harder than he meant them to.No one said anything. They just kept staring at him.Waiting.“So,” Jeff started, his friendly facade straining under the weight of his growing frustration. “What happens after this period?”“What do you mean?” one of the boys asked.“Like what’s your next class? Lunch coming up? Gym?”The students looked at each other for the first time since Jeff walked in.“We just go to the next room,” another voice answered.“Then what?”Silence.“Same thing.”Jeff nodded, wondering how much of this was a joke.He looked at the attendance sheet again - the one he knew before he looked at it.“Are the subs new everyday or do you sometimes get the same people?”The boy by the window frowned again. “Sometimes we get the same people,” he said.“You remember them?”Silence. Confused looks.“You?” one of the girls asked.“Right, like I’m here today and you’ll remember me in the future. Anyone like that?”“No,” one of the boys said gently. “You’ve been here before.”Something turned in his stomach.“I just got here. It’s my first day.”Silence so loud the ticking clock felt amplified.9:12.Still.“You always say that,” said one of the girls.Jeff fidgeted with the attendance sheet, suddenly soft to the touch. Like it had been handled too often.“Okay,” Jeff said, louder than he intended.“How long have you guys been in this class?”Silence.“You don’t know?” one of the boys by the front asked. His dark eyes sparkled with suspicion. “You were here when we got here.”“How long have you been here?” asked the boy who Jeff thought looked like him.Silence.Jeff felt like a trout again. Open, close, silence.He looked at the attendance sheet again. His own handwriting stared back at him. He recognized the pronounced P in “Present” under today’s column. Flipping through the attendance sheets, he saw his pronounced Ps glaring at him from previous columns. They went back weeks.The same names. The same marks.Present. Present. Present.All in his handwriting. All signed in his handwriting. Jeff felt the floor of his stomach drop, something cold taking its place.“That’s not –” he whispered.The bell rang.No one moved.The clock ticked.9:12.A key turned in the door.Jeff - and the thirty sets of eyes with him - looked up.Before noticing the room, the man checked his reflection in the glass, brushing crumbs off of his wrinkled shirt, muttering something approvingly to himself.“Hey,” the man said, looking around. “I’m a sub, they sent me here. I guess you’re done for the day?”Jeff stared at him in silence.At himself.Or close enough to himself.The students returned to their default position: hands folded on their desks, eyes down, total silence.Jeff picked up the folder and handed it to the sub.“Is there a lesson plan?” the man asked Jeff.Jeff hesitated, almost like he was buffering, and automatically answered, “Nope.”Then he walked out of room 15.

• Back To Directory

Attendance RequiredMy attendance at work is still required.The two-lane highway stretches infinitely into the horizon in rolling cartoonish hills. I take Exit 24, a weird name for the only exit on the road.I stop at a 24-hour mart. The coffee is already poured for me on the counter. It tastes like hot nothingness, but it wakes me up anyway.——The school is in the mall today. It moves from time to time, but lately it’s been here, between the looming empty department store with the broken display window and the door grate shuttered shut to protect the half-naked mannequins and the movie theater.I step gingerly onto the escalator, careful to avoid tempting it by getting caught in its tin teeth. I’m taken past directories that confuse more than clarify. The floor numbers are out of order. They move from time to time too.I use my badge to scan in. I go to the faculty lounge. The only room I’m allowed to be in.Someone tells me they will meet with me in five minutes. I don’t remember what it’s for. Or who asked. I wait.
***That was one of the rules. There were lots of rules. No one ever explained them to me, but I somehow knew them all.Don’t talk to anyone first.
Don’t respond to anyone.
Don’t enter a classroom.
Don't be seen engaging.
If possible, don’t be seen. At all.——The students are there. No matter what time I arrive, they’re already there.We – the students and ghosts like me – walk in a constant state of flux. We move mindlessly down hallways until we get to our next stop. We all walk in the same direction.Sometimes they see me. They used to try to say something.Now they don’t. They got used to me walking by. And I got good at walking by.——The cameras are always on. They whirr to life as they follow my movements.I don’t need to look to know they’re watching me.The cameras keep me from entering my classroom.It’s still there. Or a version of it.I didn’t leave the desks like that. They’re too close. The handwriting on the board looks like something I’d write if you don’t look directly at it.The students are there with a woman who looks kind of like me if you don’t look directly at her, either.——I hear my name but it takes me a minute to recognize it. I see a face that looks familiar, but not quite. It’s a younger sibling of a student. He’s a softer, darker version of his brother, with eyes searching for humanity in a fully mechanical world.I try to keep walking but he says my name again and presses his phone against my ear.“Miss, what happened? Where have you been?”I bite my tongue so hard the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth. My eyes lock with the pleading eyes of the phone bearer.“We’re in the West Building theater. Come see us. We miss you.”I’m glad I’m not allowed to speak. I don’t want anyone to hear my voice crack.I make a show of remaining quiet under the unblinking eyes of the cameras. I return the phone to the boy and keep walking.Besides, I probably have a meeting in five minutes.I don’t know when I spend my money. I know I need the job.I can’t afford to be brave. I walk away.

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