The Cracks in the Labyrinth

Chapter 5 (Part 1)

Four, five, six...

The numbers above the elevator door lit up as it rose. It is heading up, right? Adam sighed and leaned back against the mirror behind him. Then why do I feel like I'm going down a never-ending pit? He scoffed at himself. Morbid much?

The door opened, and he stepped out into a hallway that looked like his but different, like a reflection. This isn't my floor. When he realized his mistake, the elevator was already gone.

Not wanting to wait for it to come back, Adam took the stairs. A few more steps, and it's over. At the end of the hallway, instead of the floor number on the wall, he saw a small graffiti of the numbers six and nine performing oral sex on each other.

On the lower floor, someone had locked the door to the apartment corridor. Even though the paint above the door frame had faded over time, Adam could still make out traces of a number 'one' followed by another blurred digit. I guess that means I'm on the twelfth, eleventh, or tenth floor. Did the elevator take him all the way to the top? Damn it! Now he would have to go five stories down to get to his apartment.

"Sure. Why not?" Adam said to himself, too tired to complain about this cursed night any longer.

Back on the spiral staircase, a sickening sound coming from downstairs stopped Adam in his tracks. It wasn't a human cry, but the unmistakable howl of an animal in pain.

He walked down the stairs in silence, listening. Unlike the previous floor, the door to the apartment corridor was wide open. The first thing Adam noticed was the long shadow of someone beating a dog.

"What good are you if you don't do what I say?"

Adam was taken aback. The voice coming from the hall was uneven, sometimes high-pitched, and at others rough. A quick glance revealed that the voice belonged to a teen. No. Not a teen. A child in a middle school uniform. Twelve years old, maybe. It was hard to tell.

"Hey! You're killing him," Adam said.

There was no way he would let someone mistreat an animal in front of him. Adam never had many friends growing up. There were many neighbors and classmates to go to the Arcades with, swap trading cards, or watch cartoons after school. But genuine friends? Not one. In fact, he didn't have a steady group of friends until college when he met Ernest.

For a long stretch of his childhood and teenage years, Adam's best friend walked on all fours, had a long tail and snowy-white fur. His dog, a Jack Russell Terrier, called Dante, slept on Adam's bed and always welcomed him home, wagging his tail, regardless of poor school grades or hand-me-down clothes.

They both loved spending their afternoons on the couch, while Adam played video games, almost as much as they both hated those firecrackers and cherry bombs (colloquially called the 'matasuegras' and 'tumbarranchos') the neighbors lit every December.

Back then, Adam's hatred only extended to the Christmas exploding fireworks that, as his grandma used to say, "scare the bejesus out of people." Later on, he would hate Christmas altogether.

On a New Year's Eve, startled by a tumbarrancho, too old to run as fast as he once did and too blind to see the van speeding towards him, Dante died a slow and painful death after being run over, soaked in blood with a few broken bones piercing his side.

Dante's horrible groans of pain made Adam swear he'd never own a pet again. Sure, he now had fish. However, they didn't cuddle with him on the couch or raise an ear every time someone said, "Pizza." To him, they were almost part of the decoration.

Adam could never forget the copper smell of Dante's blood, nor the feeling of his fur wet with red against his fingers, much less those howls of anguish so similar to the ones he heard now.

"Keep walking, you asshole," the boy in the middle school uniform said.

Besides the indigo, gabardine pants, and the light blue shirt, Adam noticed the boy was wearing a Cardenales de Lara cap, something unusual for someone living in Caracas, where supporting the local baseball team was almost required by law.

Adam thought about it for a second. He'd heard about that boy before. The kid went by a nickname he couldn't remember on the spot, the name of a cartoon character or something like it.

"Are you done beating him?"

"Not your problem."

The boy would not hear reason. Adam knew his type. Those eyes had seen the abyss of human misery, and the abyss had stared back at him.

"You're right, dude," Adam said. "But if you kill it, you will no longer have a dog, right?"

The kid scratched his chin, weighing his options.

"I can do whatever I want. He's mine." The boy kicked the dog. "I saved him from his previous owner."

The dog, a stocky Rottweiler as black as petroleum, was tied so close to a gate that his front legs didn't reach the floor; his bluish tongue hung to one side in a weird angle. He was suffocating.

"After he dies, who will you boss around then?"

Adam drew closer, aware that the dog was running out of time.

"He's a faggot. I ordered him to attack the crazy old man in the parking lot, and he came back with his tail between his legs."

"Crazy old man?"

"The fucking hobo that's been messing with my business."

Was that 'crazy old man' the person spying on me in the parking lot? Adam wondered. Wait! Perhaps whoever tried to run me over with his car assumed I was that homeless guy. It didn't justify the insane driver trying to kill him, but at least it made some sense. Who knew how many neighbors had that vagrant attacked?

The Rottweiler whimpered, desperate to reach the floor with his front legs. That sound made Adam turn his attention back to the dog.

"Look, at least—"

As Adam moved to grab the leash, the beast jerked its head toward his hand, clamping his jaws and splashing thick saliva on him. If years of boxing training hadn't sharpened his reflexes, Adam wouldn't have been able to count to five again using his right-hand fingers.

The boy roared with laughter, pleased.

"Well, there's still hope," he said, loosening the dog's leash. "He might not be a faggot, after all."

Adam backed away, his heart beating wildly. What did he expect? Animals are loyal to their masters, even if they're beaten. And yet, disappointment crept into his thoughts as he headed downstairs. The boy's laughter and the dog's barking still echoed in the staircase when he reached his floor. The number eight above the door that led to his corridor reminded him of the infinity symbol.

Adam took a deep breath, walked over to his apartment, and found his door ajar. He couldn't believe his eyes once he looked inside.

To be continued...