I Measured It

I am not a dramatic person. The next night I brought a tape measure from home, and before I started my shift I measured the seventh floor hallway, door to fire exit, and wrote the number on my hand. Forty-one meters. I cleaned the rest of the building. I tried not to think about it. At the end of my shift, just before seven, I measured it again. Forty-two meters and a little over. One meter longer in one night. I stood there with the tape measure in my hand and the cheap fluorescent lights buzzing and I did the only thing my tired brain could manage, which was the arithmetic. A meter a night. Thirty meters a month. And the hallway was not getting longer at the fire exit end. It was getting longer in the middle, growing new wall, new doors, doors I did not have keys for.