The Stairwell
A staircase between two floors. Not long — twelve steps, maybe fifteen. The kind you wouldn't notice if your legs worked. The walls are close. There's a handrail, aluminum, hospital-grade. The steps are carpeted but worn in the center from years of the same feet in the same path. From the bottom, you can hear the upstairs: muffled footsteps, a kitchen timer, the ordinary sounds of someone else's life happening one floor away. It sounds close. It is close. Twelve steps.