Decision Paralysis

Percival and Johannes had been friends ever since that night at university when Percival had failed the Ivory Society's hazing ritual and Johannes had fished him, soaking wet and freezing cold, out of the campus lake at three in the early morning of a brisk September day. They hadn't recognized him then as the black haired rake that had always stuck to the back of the class, but after drying him off and buying him a hot coffee, it had turned out that they were working towards the same degree and were very much visiting the same classes.

He'd always been soft around the edges, crying easily at academic failure, getting his heart broken by women left and right, and crashing at Johannes' dorm room in between classes when he was once again debating whether psychology really was the right choice for him, what he was really doing with his life. A plight that was quite funny in retrospect, considering that he was the one with the prestigious employment with the human resources department of a fortune 500 company now, and Johannes was the one crashing on his couch.

He had made it in more ways than one since then. Percy was making connections left and right, was being invited out to business dinners and flown to conferences, was attending seminars and shaking hands with the great ones. The two of them had lost touch for a year, roundabout, before Johannes had called him up to ask him for the favor of sleeping under his roof, and in that time, they had the impression, he had been taught mostly how to squeeze blood out of stones. They hardly recognized him now, in his brand new suits and his well-groomed nails, and they saw in him, more and more, that he was shaping the softness they'd always valued about him into an elegant knife. There was a way about him, now, about the way he spoke of others, that was charming on the surface, empathetic, kind; that, once viewed in just a bit of a different light, glinted in a way so deeply utilitarian that it made Johannes squirm. They had to wonder, deeply, whether this was what it meant to come out of university and assimilate into the corporate world.

They had never learned the things that Percival was learning now—how to make friends with people one despised simply because they were useful, how to climb the social ladder, and how to view others as having just a bit less agency, less interiority than oneself. Johannes had always figured that studying the mind was the best inoculation against that sort of thinking that there was on this planet, and that nobody with a psychology degree could possibly speak about others as mindless cattle the way that Percival was starting to speak about the employees he was ostensibly responsible for, but Johannes had apparently figured wrong.

It was during one of those rants of Percival was speaking animatedly, hands and all, about the ingratitude of an employee, a single mother with an immigration background employed in his HR squadron who hadn't been able to work the hours that she was supposed to work because her baby had been sick, all over coffee and croissants, all in the softest, most empathetic tones Percival could muster, that Johannes decided that, frankly, they were in need of their own four walls if they didn't want to add on to their assault charges. Which meant, in conclusion, that they were in need of a job.

And so it came that Johannes found themself on the way to the very first job that had even deigned to invite them out to an interview after, most likely, Googling them and finding the as of yet undropped charges of battery and assault. They did not, however, find themself on their motorbike as usual, considering that the streets were clogged with mid-day traffic, and it wouldn't do them well anyways to arrive at a therapist's office looking like a biker. A cab was out of the question too, as it was much more money than Percival was willing to give, and so he had instead told them to simply take the metro, along with all the other broke people. Fair enough.

Really, there was only one issue with the entire plan: Johannes had, in their entire thirty-something years, not set foot into a metro station even once. Immediately, they were overwhelmed, standing there at the entrance of the beast in the suit they had rented with most of the money they had left with its too-short sleeves and legs, feeling the roar of the masses rush by, pumping like blood through concrete valves. Here was another entrance, over there another, each flowing with people, and in between shops, kiosks, the smell of food and urine, between shoulders and cigarettes, between music blaring from phones and calls taken on speaker, Johannes found themself rooted to the spot and immediately disoriented, nay, lost.

With the clock ticking down mercilessly to their first and perhaps only chance at a job, though, they simply didn't have time for things like 'apprehension' or even 'fear'. Resolute, they started to pick their way through the station, taking a wrong turn at first, then another, turned around and around until they stood, squinting at a map towards the side while a panhandler was trying to talk them out of money they no longer really had. Between the noise and the smells and the dizzy disorientation, in the end, they pushed ten dollars towards him and asked him which way their station was, and he pointed them in what, Johannes could only hope, was a more correct direction than they ever could have picked out on their own.

Through the unbearable stench of plastic clothing and cheap deodorant, they pushed their way through the crowd, though Johannes found that, the more they walked with their chin up, the more people simply gave them the right of way. Over the heads of the crowd, they kept their eyes locked onto the target that the man they'd given ten dollars to had pointed out to them: a dangerously dinky-looking elevator tucked into a corner of the outside of a supermarket, which once upon a time was likely shiny and chrome.

It was with an enormous sigh of relief that they finally stepped foot into it, onto the patterned metal of its floor, and watched their own reflection do the same in the back wall of the elevator, sandwiched between two metal walls as they hit the button to go down. Johannes was busy regarding their fingertips after the uncomfortable discovery that said button was somehow greasy when a second pair of feet hustled to make it into the elevator before the glass doors closed. They shot up a covet glance to the sight of a young woman, somewhere around their age, with a head full of dark curls and pink overalls thrown over a striped shirt, one of the straps undone. When she noticed them staring, she shot them a look over her shoulder that immediately made them straighten up and get their eyes straight in front of them, a look so full of distrust through her dark lashes that Johannes immediately felt that they had earned it somehow, albeit she was nothing but a stranger.

With both their pairs of eyes on it, the glass doors of the elevator slid shut, and with a hum, the world outside slid softly upwards. Floor after floor passed them by, through a rush of people and concrete. Above the elevator door, the car indicator counted down, from floor three, down to two, down to one, and then

With both their pairs of eyes on it, the glass doors of the elevator slid shut, and with a hum, the world outside slid softly upwards. Floor after floor passed them by, through a rush of people and concrete. Above the elevator door, the car indicator counted down, from floor three, down to two, down to one, and then

With both their pairs of eyes on it, the glass doors of the elevator slid shut, and with a hum, the world outside slid softly upwards. Floor after floor passed them by, through a rush of people and concrete. Above the elevator door, the car indicator counted down, from floor three, down to two, down to one, and then

"Wait," Johannes said, and the woman in the elevator with them exclaimed "now hang on a fucking second!"

Floor three, down to two, down to one, and then—

In a sudden, violent déjà-vu, Johannes recalled right then and there the man they'd seen at that gay bar late that night, climbing the stairs over and over in a Sisyphean cycle, a sight that had then rocked them to the core, but had, until just about now, been buried under the sweet shroud of forgetting that the psyche uses to protect itself, buried under thick denial, under 'well, and even if it did happen, what were they even going to do about it'? A question that Johannes had, this entire time, never expected or hoped to be quite as relevant as it was in that very, very moment, as the elevator counted from three, down to two, to—the woman hitting the side of her fist against the door opening button, a wild, no, downright disturbed look on her face, her curls hanging untamed over her bright green eyes.

Her fist connected hard. The elevator shook, nearly rattling them both off their feet, and then it stopped. And did not move again.

"Oh, what the fuck," the woman gasped. "Seriously?"

"Oh God," Johannes said, "now we're stuck," and in a wholly different way than they had been stuck just a moment ago. Leaving themself no time for that anxious spiral, they picked themself off the ground, a hand to the cold mirror wall behind them to push off of as they went straight for the emergency call button and held it down.

To the sound of absolutely nothing, of no one.

"Are you pressing it right?" the woman demanded to know as she leaned close. "Let me do that."

"I am pressing it right," Johannes protested, though they took their finger off the button to let her have a turn; to very much the same effect.

"Shit," she cussed.

"Let me try that again," they insisted, but she shook her head, a hand to her hair.

"You think you're gonna press it better than me?," she huffed. "We're fucked." Her voice had an odd quality to it, they only realized then, something slightly strained, slightly scratchy, like she was speaking at the top of her head voice.

Before Johannes could however think about that further, the elevator started again—

                  slowly,

                                     softly,

                                                      and

                                     in entirely

                   the wrong

direction,

moving somehow both

horizontally

and also

back.

It wasn't anything that they could prove though or put any finer point to, clinging on to the handrails as they were, because they realized that they could no longer see outside. Johannes was unsure of when exactly that had happened, perhaps when them and the stranger were both busy bickering over how to correctly press a button, denying, in that moment, that what was happening to them was truly happening and that there was no way to call for help, but there was nothing beyond the glass doors now except a pitch darkness.

The woman, who spent a moment simply staring out at the darkness with Johannes, suddenly started to hammer her flat hand against the floor selection buttons randomly. "Come on, come on," she pressed out under her breath through gritted teeth, "we know what's going on, you can let us out now. Spell broken, it's no longer funny."

They stared at her, aghast. "What do you mean, we know what is going on?" Johannes asked, a noose of fear tightening around their throat at the thought of being trapped with a madwoman in whatever this was. "And when was this ever funny?"

Impatiently, she tried to wave them off, her light brown face scrunched in annoyance. "Don't even fucking worry about it. It's just going in the wrong direction! You know that, I know that, right?"

"Ah—"

"Humor me," she urged them, turning to them with an intensity to it that made them flinch. "Say it. It's going the wrong way."

"Well, it is going in the wrong direction! First it repeated floors, then it went dark outside, and now we are going—oh, I don't know, perpendicularly to something!"

"Yes!" she exclaimed with a wild grin, throwing her hands out. "Yes, we're both aware! We can stop now!"

They both turned their heads towards the darkness, but the darkness did not stop.

The woman nigh immediately lost her temper. "Oh, you piece of crap!" she barked, kicking her be-sneakered foot against the metal of the elevator wall, but instead of the elevator reacting like one would have thought it to react, which was not at all, the speaker crackled.

Johannes and the woman both whirled around at once, all but pouncing for it.

"Hello?" Johannes called into it.

The speaker crackled again.

"Hello, can you hear us?"

A whispering came through the crackle, a murmur like a voice far away, choked out by static, but human, definitely human, and the excitement of the prospect of being heard, of being helped made Johannes bounce in place.

"If you can understand us, we are stuck! The elevator—" they looked to their fellow passenger, suddenly at a loss for words.

"It stopped," she lied. "Get us out of here."

Johannes wanted to protest that anyone saving them would need to know what was happening, that it was never a good idea to lie to first responders, but again the words got stuck in their mouth, because really, what were they going to say? What was a way to put the situation that didn't sound utterly insane, would be put off as nothing but a prank call? And still, the elevator moved, the only indication of it their inner sense of balance, and still the darkness hung outside.

The voice from the speaker came again, louder now, but not any less unclear.

"What?" the woman asked.

"Repeat that?" Johannes asked.

They both leaned in closer, very close to the speaker, both their ears pressed against the wall in a way that they could hear the rumbling, the machinery of the elevator.

"I said," the speaker whispered, "behind you."

Something touched Johannes' back.

Never in their life had they whirled around this fast, never had they scrambled like this, their heart pounding in their ears, nearly stumbling over their fellow passenger as they came face to face with their own reflection, their own face staring back at them, their own wide blue eyes, their rented ill-fitting suit, and their hand, stretched out beyond the boundaries of where it should be, out through the cold metal of the mirror and into the cabin of the elevator. It was a sight so wrong, so utterly against everything that they knew about the very nature of light, that Johannes could feel something inside them bend.

It was that snap inside them, that feeling of something twisting, that they would later blame for what they were about to do; which was to pull their fist back and slug their mirror image straight in the jaw, to the aghast shriek of their fellow passenger, her face twisting equally into a scream in the mirror.

"Did you just fucking hit yourself?" she gasped behind them, protesting even as mirror-Johannes staggered backwards. There had been no metal that met Johannes' fist, no splinters of glass that they had half expected, though another part of them, a bent part, said that no, of course there wouldn't be a mirror, of course that wasn't how it worked.

They shook out their fist, shocked at themself despite themself, turning to look at her. "Well, how else were you expecting me to react?"

She just shook her head, sending her curls bouncing, the bags under her eyes somehow darker in the dim light. "We need to get the fuck out of here. Guess I'll waste one."

Blinking, Johannes watched her dig through the pockets of her pink overall. "Excuse me? Waste one what?"

"It's called a don't fucking worry about it," she grumbled, pushing her hands deeper into her pockets, as her expression changed. "Where the hell is this thing?"

Her head whipped up. Johannes followed her eyes. While their own mirror image was holding their jaw now, hers was staring right at her, holding up a small lime green device that was glowing in the light with a taunting grin.

"Terrible day," the woman on their side of the mirror hissed. "Terrible, terrible fucking day."

"I believe," Johannes smiled tensely, "that you owe me an explanation. As much of one as you can fit into a short time, at least, and enough of one to help me understand how to get out of this. Because, frankly, I am losing it."

"That thing," she said, pointing, "needs to go against the cause of this bullshit so it can fix this. It's probably the elevator that's corrupted, so we should put it against one of the walls."

Although twinging at the choice of the word 'corrupted', imagining a thousand things this could mean, from being trapped in a computer simulation to the existence of demons, Johannes felt, at that point, that they didn't have very much of a choice to make a fuss about it, nor to kick and scream about the unfairness of this happening to them, on their way to their first job interview, on a day when they were already emotionally troubled, nervous, disturbed, and confused.

What they did next, they would later be able to justify to themself much more readily than the punch they had thrown at their mirror image. It was simply the logical thing to do. They charged, vaulting over the hand railing in front of the elevator mirror, and jumped straight in.

It was not logical enough, apparently, not to catch the two mirror images entirely off-guard. The mirror woman yelped voicelessly as Johannes barreled for her, grabbing her by the front of her overalls to yank her close, reaching, already, for the chip. Mirror Johannes kicked for them, but Johannes was fast enough to grab their leg as it connected and yank them off balance by it. As the not-them landed hard, they turned, already, to yank the chip from the mirror woman's hand and slap it against the elevator wall.

Through where they came, what was now a mirror as well, they saw their fellow passenger's mouth move, her arms wave, but no sound came through to them. In fact, they realized suddenly, the entire world was silent. And what they also realized was that it had begun moving again, though not correctly, no. It was moving again in that same sickening direction, though somehow mirrored now.

The mirror woman grabbed for their wrist, her nails short but sharp. Mirror Johannes grabbed for their leg, pulling them off their feet. It was in that split second that Johannes realized that there wasn't a chance that it was the elevator that was corrupted, whatever it was that that meant. No, they'd witnessed this before. They had witnessed it, they were the connecting force, the binding link. It wasn't the elevator that was wrong, it was them.

In a last ditch attempt, falling to the floor as they were, they pressed the chip against their own wrist. A shock went through them, white-hot, electric, like they'd stuck a fork into an outlet, and Johannes collapsed to the ground.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," the woman in the elevator whispered as she stepped in closer to them, bending down briefly to pick the microchip off the ground. "There is something deeply fucking wrong with you."

They were on the correct side again. Johannes whirled around—behind them, their mirror image moved in perfect sync. Their head snapped back to the woman to bite something back at her insult, but at the look on her face, they realized that it hadn't been an insult at all, no, more so something said in awe.

They also realized that the elevator had stopped again, but that the world, outside, had returned. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like they were safe.

"I mean," they said to her timidly, but cut themself off immediately with a yelp of pain as the motion made their jaw feel like somebody had, well, punched them. Johannes rubbed it, sullen. "It worked, didn't it?"

"It absolutely did!" she exclaimed. "Was this seriously your first time seeing something like this?"

"Well, no," Johannes gingerly picked themself off the ground, "it was my second."

"And you went in swinging!" she laughed, clapping them on the shoulder.

Johannes wasn't quite sure how to take her joy. "Does this happen to you often?" Before she could answer, however, their eyes widened. "Oh no, my interview." They tried to hurry out the door, now pointing to what looked now, blessedly, like the floor of the metro they were trying to get to, but she clung to their arm.

"Wait, wait, stop! Job interview? Do you need a job?"

"Well, hopefully not anymore after today!" they huffed, though Johannes didn't shake her off. She was much smaller than them, and they were afraid they would hurt her.

"I'll hire you," she grinned. "Work for me."

"Work for you in what field?" they scowled at her. "I am a psychologist!"

"Bullshit, psychologist, you're a fucking beast! Come on, you saw the havoc that this bullshit can wreak on people! At least let me pitch—"

With a sudden howl, the elevator moved again and Johannes and the woman both screamed out as they clung to each other.

But it only, softly, regularly, moved up to the second floor and opened its doors to the face of a confused old lady. Johannes, though, found themself panting with anxiety.

"Oh, no," they said, "no no no. I am never doing this again. I am going to take the escalator now, thank you."

"Wait," she caught herself again, "hey, at least take my card!" She hastily dug one out of her pocket and shoved it at them, a small rectangular piece of cardboard, with a layout that, without even having read the words, looked entirely handmade, perhaps in PowerPoint.

"Have a good day," they shook their head, stalking out of the elevator and past the old lady, who was now impatiently pressing the button to go up. "I am going to go to my interview now. Let's never speak again."

"Call me!" she shouted after them, and it was only ten minutes later that Johannes realized that they were still clutching her card.

As they sat down in a metro seat, finally, finally, their shoulder against the cold window of the car, sweaty and rumpled, nerves frayed and shiny shoes scuffed, wrist aching with something indescribable, Johannes couldn't help but stare down at it. Marion Somoza Fuente, it read in bold letters. Reality fixer, techno witch. Underneath that, there were an email address and a phone number. And to the right of it, a crudely drawn picture of a cat.