The stairwell spirals down into the darkness. Well, not spiral, really, but there is no term that describes a rectangular shaped stairwell in a multi-story building. It didn’t matter, though. There was already a name for it. It was called The Nothing, and it had been named a few generations back, long before I was born. I come to stare into The Nothing quite often. There isn’t much else to do and it wasn’t forbidden. In fact, the Elders encouraged it, likely to instill a sense of dread. People fear the dark. It’s not that it’s darkness, but that you don’t know what could be hiding inside of it. After all, there isn’t anything threatening about an absence of light.

Back in “The Day”, people would venture down into The Nothing to see how far they could get. At some point they decided that it would be smart to remove the doors so that the light could shine into The Nothing, at least until it couldn’t. Few people had been down to the Last Door, but I went at least once or twice a month. There was a thrill that ran through me like a shiver as I would look down at the Last Door and the impenetrable darkness just beyond. Our Elders tell tales of the Doormen who had taken the Last Door off of it’s hinges.

The final pin falls, the Doormen laugh.
Ping, ping, ping, then into The Nothing.
Then it makes no sound. Did it stop?
The Doormen reset their steely resolve.
One step, two. The Nothing remains silent.
Two step, three. Doorman Pellis vanishes.
Doorman Stev reaches out to grab nothing.
The beginning of The Nothing is found.
Do not venture past the Last Door.
The 28th is the End of Our World.

The Elders made it sound ominous and scary, but nobody knew what was beyond The Nothing. There was nothing to indicate what was different. Every once in a while, some idiot would head down there, drunk on Roofberry Wine, and his friends would dare them. A few times it was proven that touching the 3rd step down from the 28th floor caused people to literally vanish. They didn’t fall. They’d just blink out. I wasn’t eager to discover the truth of it, so I stayed on the 29th, looking down. That was satisfaction enough for me.