41. By A Stairs’ Breadth
One night, when I was about 16 years old, I’d finally decided to get off my computer and go to bed, around 2 am if memory serves me correctly. At that time my family and I lived in a decently-sized two-story house. The staircase to the second floor was pretty basic: head up a few steps, turn on a landing halfway up, traverse the remaining few steps, and at the top you’re only a couple of footfalls from my bedroom door.
Someone please explain to me, then, how I got lost on this staircase. Sure, it was dark, but even then you’d have to be a special kind of stupid to not know how to walk up these stairs after you’ve already done it a thousand times before. Just keep one hand on the railing and you don’t need to use your eyes. I swear that as soon as I reached the landing, I spent ten minutes just…continually walking upwards.
Realistically it only takes someone five to seven seconds to walk up these stairs, three if they’re running or skipping steps. I realized I’d been walking for much longer than that and stopped. At that moment, my blood ran cold. I’d walked up those stairs in pitch-black darkness so many times before, but even with my hand on the railing I was getting nowhere, just endlessly walking upwards.
My skin crawled. If my brother hadn’t turned on the upstairs hallway light, I’m not sure I would’ve made it to my bedroom. The guy blinked sleepily at me and asked me if I was okay, and all I could say was, “I legitimately have no idea.” I told him the next day what had happened and he told me that the reason he’d come out of his room in the first place was that he’d heard footsteps on the stairs “for several minutes.”
What in the world, man? What was that? I wasn’t so tired that I just mindlessly walked up and down the stairs for a while. I was completely awake, and not once did it suddenly feel like I’d turned around to walk back downstairs at any time. I still get chills thinking about it.