Stairway
Kristina Durkin
You can’t see the end of the line.
It’s always the curved shape of a hook, no matter how far you get up the mountain. I can’t tell how many people are here, but I know it must be a lot, all winding up the steep hill like ants. And no marble or gold-plated steps either. Just the dusty dirt that covers the shoes I left with.
And the stench of other people around me—ahead and behind. You’d think it would at least smell nice. No, just sweat and skin and sweet, pungent grass. It makes me nostalgic. I can’t remember anything about the other place up here, but now there’s a little white chapel, gold bell and everything, and kids running around in the back. I hold a blade of soft grass, put it up to my mouth and recoil as its betraying, bitter taste touches my tongue. The warmth of friendly laughter rings out next to me. I turn.
The horizon is nothing but fog, a sheen reflecting the sun overhead. It never moves, and I can’t feel it. It’s like living on a movie set.
One foot in front of the other. A woman several people ahead of me is pregnant. When I first realized it, in the way she labored with every step, holding a protruding belly, I took a sharp breath inward. But then I caught her face—just the slightest profile of it when we’d started another turning climb. Her young face was restful and content. She was smiling. She looked like my mother when she was reading.
Now I see her. My mother's lips are tilted up, and she’s cradling a newborn. She whispers a soft prayer: “Now I lay me down to sleep / I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” It’s the same one says with me as I drift off to sleep every night.
I experience the same sense of safety I felt then, like a shroud of light surrounding me. Even the monotony of the climb settles comfortably in the back of my mind. I feel connected to the mountain, to the people in the line. I’m glad the young mother is safe with us here, beyond the pain of that other life. She deserves what’s at the top of the mountain, and no amount of time will make the reward any less sweet.
The ground underneath us should be worn down. I imagine millions—billions—of people marching up the same path we walk on now, time and time again in a thousand different eras. Yet the grass still sticks up in places. It isn’t lush; instead, clumps are scattered across the rocky hillside. Resilience lets it peek through the rocks in the terrain, desperately trying to reach the still sun. I wonder if they ever grow or if they’re stagnant in this strange place as well.
No one person looks similar to the next: a hodge-podge of humans from every walk of life. Many are old, but many aren’t. There are a few children marching along too, like we’re waiting in line at an ice cream truck at the park. I feel sorry for them. Do they know the holy pilgrimage they’re on? Is there the same sense of peace I feel within my own heart in the hearts of these people? Or is this just another wait for them, like any other they may have experienced back in the old world? For food, for amusement, for help. Everything that had lined us up had led to this: the final communion. The last wait. It doesn’t matter what they think. I know. I know.
Suddenly I wonder how long I’d been waiting here. I try to think back to my earliest memory, and it feels like solving an impossible math equation. I remember walking. I remember the pregnant mother. I don’t remember shock, only acceptance.
When did I leave that other world? It isn’t important up here, where there’s no wind or exertion. There’s no sign of the mountain reaching a plateau any time soon. I look down at my hands. The skin is wrinkled, but not heavily. They look sturdy enough, and there are calluses on the fingers and palms from hard work I don’t recall. It must've made a difference in the end. I’m here now.
A flurry of sensations come to me at once. The strong incense they burn at the end of prayer. The stinging bleach scent of my cleaning supplies and the feeling of hardwood underneath my knees. Shouting—harsh and familiar, demanding and cruel. I can’t hear the words, but I know the heavy feeling that curdles in my stomach when she speaks them. I never look her in the eyes when the words slap my face, and neither does she when her husband speaks the same words to her.
“Stop,” I whisper to no one, shaking my head to silence the barrage of memories. Nobody in line makes a motion outside of the slow march upwards. This is supposed to be a place of peace and contentment. That life is behind me now, and the further I walk, the further away I am from that sourness.
Yes, I will let go of those feelings. Those burdens. Even now, the memories are starting to fade again, like I’m waking up from a nightmare. The still sun and the unmoving patches of grass feel so far removed from anything from the old world. The bad one. I’m sure someone is out there looking after me, cleansing me from the evils of a tainted life. I’m safe at last.
Nothing prepares me for the wretched sound that rips the air in front of me, piercing our trance-like march. My whole body shudders involuntarily at the noise: a wailing scream. It’s full of an anguish I can’t understand. Immediately my eyes are drawn to the huddled figure of a woman—the pregnant woman—ahead of me by a short stretch. What happened to her to be curled and gnarled as she was on the ground? She’s holding her head, her hands like claws as they clutch her skull, straining her dark brown hair.
All eyes are on her. I don’t remember anything like this happening before. I can make out her spot in line just ahead of me, a missing link in the chain, and all the while, we never stop the march. I don’t even know why I don’t stop. Even the shock of the woman’s cry didn’t stop me from keeping up with the stream of people. It’s like my feet are twitching up the side of the mountain. But I know I could stop at any point.
She’s reaching out now, hand extended to the gap in the ever-moving line. She crawls forward, inching towards the space that had held her, the space that’s closing ever so slightly.
And then it passes; the space consumed as if it never existed. The young woman lets out another unanswered wail as more people continue moving forward. She reaches out again to the rushing river before her, and her hand brushes against the shoe of a thin older man who doesn’t look down. She sinks further into the ground, stringy hair covering her face.
I’m mere feet away from her now, my mind racing. Up until now, there has been only one path in that purgatorial plane. After facing so many hardships, so many impossible, unending, unfair decisions, made by me, made to me, made for me, I thought I had found sanctuary in that endless line.
I feel sorry for the poor woman. I tell myself I feel so terrible for her. I take another step towards her curled-up figure. It’s a deeply uncomfortable thing to look at, so I keep my eyes trained forward. A soft noise comes from where she is, and the realization that she’s crying makes me blush.
I’m almost next to her now. My heart is pounding. I’m anticipating something. I’m making a decision. Someone needs to help her. Look at her, she needs help. Why is no one helping her? Why am I the one who needs to help her? I’m going to help her. I really am. I’ll—what? Step out of line? Comfort her? Risk losing salvation for the both of us? Surely this is a test. Unpleasant thoughts come whispering from a dark force, making me choose incorrectly—choose selfishly. It makes a biblical sort of sense. Then why do I keep moving forward, step by step, next to that temptation beside us? Why don’t I stop?
And why should I? What good can I do, really, besides give her empty words of reassurance? And why did she leave the damn line in the first place, and hurt all our chances of freedom? Maybe she was lost from the very start. Listening to her now, it’s hard to believe anything can relieve her.
I can’t see her, but I know she’s right next to me. Five more steps and I’ll be past her.
My heart jumps from the shock of skin against my bare ankle. It isn’t a tight hold. Her hand is warm and wet with tears, but the suddenness of it turns my head and tugs my eyes down to the source.
There’s no hurt in her eyes as my feet take another step forward. Her arm moves with me, but she stays there, immobilized. Her face is reddened and tear-streaked and full of sorrow. She looks defeated.
Pity and panic flood my chest like oil and water. I tell myself there’s nothing I can do for her. I want her to know how sorry I am. I need her to know and to forgive me. I just stare at her for a moment, dumbfounded and slow to move on the next step. The person behind me, whom I’d never seen, is a breath away from walking into me.
My palms and armpits are sweaty as we look into each other’s eyes. I hate myself and I hate the mountain and the line and the woman. But more than anything, I yearn for my mother’s softly singing voice. On the next step, her limp hand falls away from my leg, and her head hangs forward, eyes no longer piercing into me.
I look forward. I never see her again. My heart hangs heavier with every step.
A spark of indignation leaps within me and invites a wave of vague memories and feelings. I paid my tithes to the collection basket. I kept to my principles even when I was shown no mercy from those around me. I’m a good person. And I’m still here, which must mean something. Under that ghostly sun and on that lifeless ground.
Another familiar sense comes to me: doubt. No clear answer presents itself to me but the feeling of overwhelming shame. I walk on.
It’s always the curved shape of a hook, no matter how far you get up the mountain. I can’t tell how many people are here, but I know it must be a lot, all winding up the steep hill like ants. And no marble or gold-plated steps either. Just the dusty dirt that covers the shoes I left with.
And the stench of other people around me—ahead and behind. You’d think it would at least smell nice. No, just sweat and skin and sweet, pungent grass. It makes me nostalgic. I can’t remember anything about the other place up here, but now there’s a little white chapel, gold bell and everything, and kids running around in the back. I hold a blade of soft grass, put it up to my mouth and recoil as its betraying, bitter taste touches my tongue. The warmth of friendly laughter rings out next to me. I turn.
The horizon is nothing but fog, a sheen reflecting the sun overhead. It never moves, and I can’t feel it. It’s like living on a movie set.
One foot in front of the other. A woman several people ahead of me is pregnant. When I first realized it, in the way she labored with every step, holding a protruding belly, I took a sharp breath inward. But then I caught her face—just the slightest profile of it when we’d started another turning climb. Her young face was restful and content. She was smiling. She looked like my mother when she was reading.
Now I see her. My mother's lips are tilted up, and she’s cradling a newborn. She whispers a soft prayer: “Now I lay me down to sleep / I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” It’s the same one says with me as I drift off to sleep every night.
I experience the same sense of safety I felt then, like a shroud of light surrounding me. Even the monotony of the climb settles comfortably in the back of my mind. I feel connected to the mountain, to the people in the line. I’m glad the young mother is safe with us here, beyond the pain of that other life. She deserves what’s at the top of the mountain, and no amount of time will make the reward any less sweet.
The ground underneath us should be worn down. I imagine millions—billions—of people marching up the same path we walk on now, time and time again in a thousand different eras. Yet the grass still sticks up in places. It isn’t lush; instead, clumps are scattered across the rocky hillside. Resilience lets it peek through the rocks in the terrain, desperately trying to reach the still sun. I wonder if they ever grow or if they’re stagnant in this strange place as well.
No one person looks similar to the next: a hodge-podge of humans from every walk of life. Many are old, but many aren’t. There are a few children marching along too, like we’re waiting in line at an ice cream truck at the park. I feel sorry for them. Do they know the holy pilgrimage they’re on? Is there the same sense of peace I feel within my own heart in the hearts of these people? Or is this just another wait for them, like any other they may have experienced back in the old world? For food, for amusement, for help. Everything that had lined us up had led to this: the final communion. The last wait. It doesn’t matter what they think. I know. I know.
Suddenly I wonder how long I’d been waiting here. I try to think back to my earliest memory, and it feels like solving an impossible math equation. I remember walking. I remember the pregnant mother. I don’t remember shock, only acceptance.
When did I leave that other world? It isn’t important up here, where there’s no wind or exertion. There’s no sign of the mountain reaching a plateau any time soon. I look down at my hands. The skin is wrinkled, but not heavily. They look sturdy enough, and there are calluses on the fingers and palms from hard work I don’t recall. It must've made a difference in the end. I’m here now.
A flurry of sensations come to me at once. The strong incense they burn at the end of prayer. The stinging bleach scent of my cleaning supplies and the feeling of hardwood underneath my knees. Shouting—harsh and familiar, demanding and cruel. I can’t hear the words, but I know the heavy feeling that curdles in my stomach when she speaks them. I never look her in the eyes when the words slap my face, and neither does she when her husband speaks the same words to her.
“Stop,” I whisper to no one, shaking my head to silence the barrage of memories. Nobody in line makes a motion outside of the slow march upwards. This is supposed to be a place of peace and contentment. That life is behind me now, and the further I walk, the further away I am from that sourness.
Yes, I will let go of those feelings. Those burdens. Even now, the memories are starting to fade again, like I’m waking up from a nightmare. The still sun and the unmoving patches of grass feel so far removed from anything from the old world. The bad one. I’m sure someone is out there looking after me, cleansing me from the evils of a tainted life. I’m safe at last.
Nothing prepares me for the wretched sound that rips the air in front of me, piercing our trance-like march. My whole body shudders involuntarily at the noise: a wailing scream. It’s full of an anguish I can’t understand. Immediately my eyes are drawn to the huddled figure of a woman—the pregnant woman—ahead of me by a short stretch. What happened to her to be curled and gnarled as she was on the ground? She’s holding her head, her hands like claws as they clutch her skull, straining her dark brown hair.
All eyes are on her. I don’t remember anything like this happening before. I can make out her spot in line just ahead of me, a missing link in the chain, and all the while, we never stop the march. I don’t even know why I don’t stop. Even the shock of the woman’s cry didn’t stop me from keeping up with the stream of people. It’s like my feet are twitching up the side of the mountain. But I know I could stop at any point.
She’s reaching out now, hand extended to the gap in the ever-moving line. She crawls forward, inching towards the space that had held her, the space that’s closing ever so slightly.
And then it passes; the space consumed as if it never existed. The young woman lets out another unanswered wail as more people continue moving forward. She reaches out again to the rushing river before her, and her hand brushes against the shoe of a thin older man who doesn’t look down. She sinks further into the ground, stringy hair covering her face.
I’m mere feet away from her now, my mind racing. Up until now, there has been only one path in that purgatorial plane. After facing so many hardships, so many impossible, unending, unfair decisions, made by me, made to me, made for me, I thought I had found sanctuary in that endless line.
I feel sorry for the poor woman. I tell myself I feel so terrible for her. I take another step towards her curled-up figure. It’s a deeply uncomfortable thing to look at, so I keep my eyes trained forward. A soft noise comes from where she is, and the realization that she’s crying makes me blush.
I’m almost next to her now. My heart is pounding. I’m anticipating something. I’m making a decision. Someone needs to help her. Look at her, she needs help. Why is no one helping her? Why am I the one who needs to help her? I’m going to help her. I really am. I’ll—what? Step out of line? Comfort her? Risk losing salvation for the both of us? Surely this is a test. Unpleasant thoughts come whispering from a dark force, making me choose incorrectly—choose selfishly. It makes a biblical sort of sense. Then why do I keep moving forward, step by step, next to that temptation beside us? Why don’t I stop?
And why should I? What good can I do, really, besides give her empty words of reassurance? And why did she leave the damn line in the first place, and hurt all our chances of freedom? Maybe she was lost from the very start. Listening to her now, it’s hard to believe anything can relieve her.
I can’t see her, but I know she’s right next to me. Five more steps and I’ll be past her.
My heart jumps from the shock of skin against my bare ankle. It isn’t a tight hold. Her hand is warm and wet with tears, but the suddenness of it turns my head and tugs my eyes down to the source.
There’s no hurt in her eyes as my feet take another step forward. Her arm moves with me, but she stays there, immobilized. Her face is reddened and tear-streaked and full of sorrow. She looks defeated.
Pity and panic flood my chest like oil and water. I tell myself there’s nothing I can do for her. I want her to know how sorry I am. I need her to know and to forgive me. I just stare at her for a moment, dumbfounded and slow to move on the next step. The person behind me, whom I’d never seen, is a breath away from walking into me.
My palms and armpits are sweaty as we look into each other’s eyes. I hate myself and I hate the mountain and the line and the woman. But more than anything, I yearn for my mother’s softly singing voice. On the next step, her limp hand falls away from my leg, and her head hangs forward, eyes no longer piercing into me.
I look forward. I never see her again. My heart hangs heavier with every step.
A spark of indignation leaps within me and invites a wave of vague memories and feelings. I paid my tithes to the collection basket. I kept to my principles even when I was shown no mercy from those around me. I’m a good person. And I’m still here, which must mean something. Under that ghostly sun and on that lifeless ground.
Another familiar sense comes to me: doubt. No clear answer presents itself to me but the feeling of overwhelming shame. I walk on.
* * *
I don’t know how much time passes, the further we move from the woman. She seems like a distant image now, fading with every passing second. A blade of grass in the rocky cliffside. Yet it stings me to my core, those bloodshot eyes that stared up at me. They don’t escape my memory like the others had.
In no time at all something feels different to me for the first time I can remember. I try to pin it down like a wriggling insect. Something changed, and for a moment I’m filled with unrestrained excitement. Something must be near. Something I’ve been waiting for all this time in the old world and up the mountain. I look up at a slight angle to the people in front of me, and I’m filled with jealousy at even the slightest lead ahead of me—they’ll be reaching whatever is up there before I will.
And I realize what feels different in that moment from the thousands, millions, billions of moments I had spent up here. The angle of the bodies ahead of me has shifted. We had reached the peak of the mountain, and it would finally be time to rejoice. Yet, nobody moves faster than the speed we had been going all this time, and I almost trip over the shoes of the man in front of me.
Around the hill, and the line evens out now. We’re each in front of the other with no one above or below eye level.
Around the hill, and finally I’ll taste paradise. Finally I’ll be rewarded for all the hardships I faced in the bad world. I understand now why my mind had been filled with memories to feel relief as sweet as this.
I realize how little vision I had when all I saw were the heads in front of me, the sloping hill, and the cloudless sky. Like a veil being lifted, everything is revealed to me at once: the outlines of a million mountains misted by still fog. Behemoths that jut out into the sky on all sides of me. I can’t see the base of any of them. The world spins as I look from one to the other in a kaleidoscope of jagged peaks.
I’m still searching for something, for that relief. For the arms of safety. My eyes scan for some kind of answer. The mountains reach further than I’m able to comprehend.
My first thought is they look like bugs: little dots inching up and down the dirt hills. I don’t believe it at first. My mind rejects the idea, but there’s nothing else it can be. They’re people. Climbing up and up the colossal mountain in time with the steps I’m making that very moment.
And there are others sprinkled about—patches of grass protruding out of the rocky terrain. Fallen? Given up? I can’t tell, but in the far distance I can see the outline of someone pulling another person off the ground and back into the line.
Around the hill, and the heads in front of me begin to dip. It’s minuscule at first. And then all at once, as the mountain declines. We are going down.
In no time at all something feels different to me for the first time I can remember. I try to pin it down like a wriggling insect. Something changed, and for a moment I’m filled with unrestrained excitement. Something must be near. Something I’ve been waiting for all this time in the old world and up the mountain. I look up at a slight angle to the people in front of me, and I’m filled with jealousy at even the slightest lead ahead of me—they’ll be reaching whatever is up there before I will.
And I realize what feels different in that moment from the thousands, millions, billions of moments I had spent up here. The angle of the bodies ahead of me has shifted. We had reached the peak of the mountain, and it would finally be time to rejoice. Yet, nobody moves faster than the speed we had been going all this time, and I almost trip over the shoes of the man in front of me.
Around the hill, and the line evens out now. We’re each in front of the other with no one above or below eye level.
Around the hill, and finally I’ll taste paradise. Finally I’ll be rewarded for all the hardships I faced in the bad world. I understand now why my mind had been filled with memories to feel relief as sweet as this.
I realize how little vision I had when all I saw were the heads in front of me, the sloping hill, and the cloudless sky. Like a veil being lifted, everything is revealed to me at once: the outlines of a million mountains misted by still fog. Behemoths that jut out into the sky on all sides of me. I can’t see the base of any of them. The world spins as I look from one to the other in a kaleidoscope of jagged peaks.
I’m still searching for something, for that relief. For the arms of safety. My eyes scan for some kind of answer. The mountains reach further than I’m able to comprehend.
My first thought is they look like bugs: little dots inching up and down the dirt hills. I don’t believe it at first. My mind rejects the idea, but there’s nothing else it can be. They’re people. Climbing up and up the colossal mountain in time with the steps I’m making that very moment.
And there are others sprinkled about—patches of grass protruding out of the rocky terrain. Fallen? Given up? I can’t tell, but in the far distance I can see the outline of someone pulling another person off the ground and back into the line.
Around the hill, and the heads in front of me begin to dip. It’s minuscule at first. And then all at once, as the mountain declines. We are going down.
Kristina Durkin is a copywriter for a living and a fiction writer in her spare time. She lives in Georgia and spends her days creating and consuming strange and whimsical stories of all types.