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I should run, he thought, milliseconds too late. The enormous brick plummeted down on top of him like-… Well. Goes without saying.
It crushed him. He died. Badly.
At least, he assumed he had.
With a gasp and a racing pulse, he awoke on the floor of the next Room. Sticky linoleum and stale air. Sickly white fluorescent lighting. The taste of metal on his tongue.
He peeled himself from the tile and tested his limbs. Nothing broken, as far as he could tell. The scrapes on his elbow from a previous fall were mysteriously absent. And hadn’t he lost a shoe several Rooms back? Hadn’t his beard been longer? What happened to the tear in his shirt?
Regardless, he could stand. He could walk.
What was this, the fifth time this had happened? A misstep over a bottomless chasm. A winding hallway that constricted around him. A doorless train car that had flooded with water. All quick, none permanent.
Surely, there had been more, but the Rooms and Doors were beginning to blur together. He had long since stopped counting those.
What did definitive numbers mean in the face of infinity?
What did near-death experiences mean when this Place wouldn’t let him die?
A movement caught his eye, a flutter under the tiles and a drop in air pressure.
I should move, he thought, milliseconds too late. The floor beneath him opened up and swallowed him whole.