NEW SHORT STORY - A PASSAGEWAY WITH NO EXIT - PUBLISHED

 

Neil Randall is delighted to announce that literary journal Alice Says Go Fuck Yourself has published his short story A Passageway with No Exit. The story is particularly close to the author’s heart as it was the first thing he wrote following his self-imposed exile to the former Yugoslavia.

     Very much inspired by the first apartment he rented in Belgrade (on the fifth- and top-floor, yet the elevator only went to the third-floor, with no heating in the bedroom, and plumbing so fragile it struggled to handle even the most innocent and unimposing of turds), it’s the story of a young architect from Belgrade who wakes up one morning to find that the stairwell has been mysteriously removed from outside her apartment, leaving her stranded in what now appears to be a totally deserted building.

     Here’s a taster from the opening pages: 

When Jelena left for work one morning, she found that the stairwell in her apartment building had been cordoned off with plastic tape, and that the stairs themselves, from the fifth-floor all the way down to the lift on the third-floor, had been removed completely.

      “What?”

      The sight before her was impossible to both believe and assimilate. The gap where the stairs had previously been situated looked like a CGI special effect. That, or a bizarre vision trick. But no matter how many times she rubbed her eyes, looked and looked again, the same empty space and dangerous, unsettling fall below, an unlikely manmade chasm, was there in front of her.

     None of which made any sense.

     Being an architect, Jelena had not only studied the plans but visited the sites of many construction projects. She knew the time factor involved in both designing new buildings and remodelling existing structures. The logistical, not to mention manpower considerations essential to removing what was in effect two sets of concrete stairs simply wasn’t achievable in such a short period of time – overnight, in a matter of hours.

      How long Jelena stood staring into this relative abyss, she couldn’t have said. When she finally returned to her senses, her first thought was to shout for help.

      “Is anybody down there? I’ve been left stranded up here all on my own.”  

      But nobody came to her aid. Nobody rushed to the bottom of the stairwell on the ground-floor. No doors opened in any of the apartments, either, indicating that the building was deserted, that the other residents had been evacuated from their homes.

      Returning to her own apartment, she opened the balcony doors and looked out over the other part of the building. To her growing alarm, she saw that all the blinds from the windows of the apartment directly opposite had been removed, offering a clear view into each empty room. There was no furniture inside or pictures on the walls. No sign of domestic life whatsoever. 

 

If you like what you’ve read so far, you can read the story in full here (scroll to Page 37 of the magazine/Page 47 of the PDF ).

 

And if you’d like to know more about Neil’s published novels, you can visit his amazon page here.