I’d been dreaming about something – I don’t remember what it was, but it must have been a nightmare because I woke up with this sense of utter dread washing over me. After he left, I called work to let them know I’d be out tomorrow as well, and then decided to turn in early to make up for lost sleep. The super was cool about it, since I guess he had experience with this sort of thing, and even said that he was glad to help, that the hospitals work us residents too hard. I mean, what could I say to that? I agreed with him, informed him that I would be taking a break from work as well, and apologized for wasting his time. The super gave me a sympathetic look after he told me this story, and asked whether I had been working particularly long hours recently, or perhaps also felt trapped by my work schedule. She stayed until her lease was up and then left without incident. After that, there had been no more complaints. The young woman eventually became hysterical, on the verge of moving out, but at his suggestion took a leave of absence from the hospital instead. She had claimed that the wall sometimes extended an inch or more past the frame of the doorway, but whenever he came to investigate nothing was out of the ordinary. While I gaped at him, he explained that the previous tenant – a young woman who had also worked at the hospital – had complained to him about something similar. However, when the super saw how upset I was he actually asked me outright whether or not the walls seemed to be moving on their own. As you can imagine, I got pretty agitated, even frantic. The super arrived less than half an hour later, but in the time it took for me to answer the door and escort him back to my room, everything had gone back to normal. I even looked to be sure – everything looked perfectly ordinary from my bathroom. Even if I was wrong, though, the fact remained that there was a strange space where my bathroom was clearly supposed to be. The area ended at a cinderblock wall roughly where my hallway turned, and although I was blocked from seeing how far the room extended to the left, I got the impression that it was big, maybe bigger than my entire apartment. Then, while waiting for him to arrive, I shined a flashlight into that sliver of space. Next, I called the super and asked him to come by. I called out of work for the first time in almost a year, saying that a pipe had burst in my apartment and that I needed to let the repairmen in to fix it. The need for a rational explanation, however, coupled with a morbid sense of curiosity, kept me from bolting out the front door. Get the hell out of there and worry about the details later. However, when I got home the next morning the door was back to normal, and I was tired enough to not even care.Įverything was ordinary the next day, too.Ĭonfused and more than a little disturbed, I initially thought to just leave. With work coming up in half an hour I really just wanted to get some coffee and get out of there, so I decided to call the super after I got off. All of the explanations seemed plausible. ![]() I’d slept through an earthquake, during which my room got displaced a couple of inches from the hall. This disjunction had been there this whole time, and I had been too busy or too tired to notice. The building was old, settling, and this was just the result of natural wall tensions easing. I stared at that sliver of drywall for a few minutes, dumbfounded, while my mind tried to come up with some rational explanations. An inch more and I’d have been able to see insulation and wiring. It was as though the contractor had miscalculated when he built the place, slightly displacing the doorway from the hall. ![]() It looked like the doorway had shifted even farther left, far enough that I could see a half-inch of the hallway wall sticking out beyond the door frame. Nothing unusual happened for a couple of days, but on Thursday morning I was going out for another long shift when the door opened even wider. When I got home thirty hours later, exhausted and desperate for sleep, the door was pushing against the dresser same as always. I shrugged, chalked it up to some fluke of the apartment walls, and proceeded down the hall to shower before heading into work.
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