Down the Rabbit Hole

He felt the penny drop—the truth of the matter suddenly glaringly obvious. He got it now. It was about him, his lack of presence. And he could fix that! Shouldn’t that get him out of here? Because once he was free he was going straight to Macy to tell her he understood at last.

She had left behind an enormous void within him. He wasn’t the sentimental sort, so he wasn’t getting mawkish on himself, but as things had progressed he had felt somehow less alone in the world. Safer. Like everything had a point. It wasn’t that the rest of his life was bad. His job was great, his friends were top notch, and numerous, but there was something about Macy that had completed the puzzle. She fit, and with her he’d felt whole.

And then he’d blown it.

She’d tried to warn him, but he hadn’t listened to her. Thinking back on it he recalled multiple conversations about his phone use. Most of them joking—he’d thought—but some of them serious. Heartfelt.

Why hadn’t he paid more attention?

Why hadn’t he realized that if she left him, he’d be heartbroken—even in the face of an apparent psychotic break?

The elevator doors opened with a clamor of hinges and electronics. He pushed himself off the wall and stepped inside. Just for the hell of it he pressed all the buttons again, but was not surprised when he ended up back on 5. The doors eased open, and he was back in the sterile world of non-glowing, non-throbbing, non-dinging cubicles.

Just outside of the elevator alcove he stopped and listened. Still silent. He glanced left, the route he believed went to his cubicle, then right, and nearly jumped out of his skin at the appearance of the elusive red-haired guy. The one he’d seen just before spotting Brian.

Impossibly tall and stooped with self-consciousness, he was thin, with a hangdog look to go with his past-due haircut and indoorsy complexion. He was older than Jeremy by probably ten years, and his eyes looked faded.

He addressed Jeremy with a dead gaze. “Hey.”

Jeremy looked up—way up—and held out a hand. Between the giant Mrs. Hartz and now this guy, he wondered if he’d accidentally ingested something that said Drink Me on it. Or was it the Eat Me that had made Alice small?

“It’s you!” Jeremy beamed. “I’ve been looking for you. Did you hear me calling earlier?”

“Yeah.” The red-haired guy glanced down, then offered his hand. It felt like a collection of popsicle sticks in Jeremy’s.

“I’m Jeremy Abbott.”

“Kyle.”

“Listen, I’m glad to meet you. Do you mind answering some questions? What is this place? Do you know? Have you been here long? Have you got any idea how we get out?”

Kyle nodded his shaggy head. “Yeah, so, we got, uh, sent here by stuff we did, you know?”

Jeremy raised his brows. Kyle seemed to think that was enough information. “Sent here? By who? What stuff? How do we find out? Is this some kind of purgatory?”

Kyle took a deep breath and let it out, as if fatigued by the questions. “Yeah, so, I’m not sure? But it seems like somebody, maybe some kind of witch or alien? Or maybe God? Sent us here.” His arms flopped up and down in a bizarre expression of ignorance. “Yeah, so we need to work on ourselves, fix stuff, and then we can go home.”

Jeremy’s heartbeat accelerated. “So we’re not dead?”

Kyle gave an incredulous look. “No, we’re not dead.”

Jeremy had no idea how much he’d feared the opposite answer until he got this one. Muscles he didn’t know he’d tensed let go and relaxed. “Okay, good. So we did stuff we need to fix. I think I figured out what I did. So how do we get out once we know?”

“Yeah, so, um, I know I need to get better with girls? Uh, women. Stupid,” he muttered to himself. “And I know ’cause I’m here. This is some stupid dating app, where we are, and we can only get out when we get dates.”

Jeremy held out his hands. “Hold on. You’re saying this here is an app?” He spread his arms out to encompass the room. Why wasn’t it dinging and flashing and whirring like the apps upstairs? “The whole floor?”