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The Corridor

It didn’t take the man long to start walking. He really had no alternative. He couldn’t just sit there in the dark forever. The only question was which direction he should take, and that didn’t require much deliberation since there was no way to tell which direction was the right one. After deciding that he just had to decide, he started walking. Walking in near total darkness, not knowing who he was or where he was, or how he got there.

He walked cautiously, with his right arm extended and the fingertips of his right hand brushing against the wall to help stabilize him in case he tripped over some unseen obstacle. The wall was smooth, without any cracks or paint blisters or mortar lines. The lack of such imperfections was in itself a deprivation. He wanted to feel an occasional rough patch under his fingertips, because passing it would give him more of a feeling of progress.

As he walked his eyes gradually became acclimated to the darkness, until he could make out the ground and walls of the corridor for about three yards ahead of him. There was no change in the feedback from his other four senses, but they were all intact. He could hear his own footsteps, feel the wall against his fingertips, taste the staleness in his mouth, smell the musty scent of the corridor. Physically he was fine. The blank slate of his memory, the lack even of an identity, was his only injury. What could have done this to him? What trauma could have rendered him almost mindless but still conscious and aware? And where was he? Was this corridor part of a prison? If so, which one? And what crime had he committed? Was it part of a mental hospital? Is that why he couldn’t remember anything – because he was mentally ill? If so, who had him committed? And what about his clothes? He was fully clothed – denim pants, sweatshirt, leather belt, socks, sneakers, underwear. The only thing he didn’t have was a watch. Did his clothes have any significance?

There were no answers. And pondering the questions was bringing him to the brink of panic. So he cleared his mind and focused instead on putting one foot in front of the other.

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How long had he been walking? Without a watch he had no way of knowing, but it seemed like an eternity. Oddly, he didn’t feel tired. His right arm didn’t hurt either, even though he had held it outstretched the whole time. Realizing how strange that was, he lowered it to see if the sudden change in position produced any discomfort. It didn’t.

For the first time since he started walking, the man stopped. Turning to the wall, he made a fist, hesitated for a second, and then punched the wall.

Nothing. He felt the sensation of impact but no pain. He punched the wall again, harder. Still no pain. He tried one more time, this time hitting the wall with all his strength. The outcome was the same – no pain, no injury. He was physically invulnerable! Amazing! He vaguely recalled wishing for just that physical asset once, although he couldn’t remember when. Was it when he was a child? He could recall nothing about his childhood, or any other period of his life. His memory started with the moment he woke up in the corridor. Everything before that was a void.

Contemplating that void terrified him. As if trying to escape it, he started walking again.

When he first heard the child crying, the man thought he was hearing things. After walking for so long and finding no one and hearing nothing except his own footsteps, the sound of another human being seemed like an impossibility. He stopped walking and listened to make sure he was hearing right. Sure enough, somewhere farther down the corridor, in the darkness, a child was crying. It sounded like a girl. Obviously she too was trapped in the corridor. Did she also have amnesia? Was she crying because she was afraid, or because the person – or persons – who trapped them both in this corridor was with her, hurting her? The latter possibility momentarily troubled the man, but then he remembered that he was invulnerable – immune to pain and injury. He had nothing to fear. If anyone could help that child, he could.

For the first time since he woke up in the corridor, the man broke into a run. He clenched his fists as he ran, and envisioned himself confronting whoever it was who had trapped them both in the corridor. He imagined a massive brute with weightlifter arms and a cruel face – the ultimate bully. Well the bully is in for a surprise, the man thought. Namely, my two indestructible fists bashing his head.

But when he reached the child there was no bully in sight. There was only the child herself – a scrawny girl of about ten, with short hair. She was curled up on the floor with her knees drawn up to her chest and her eyes closed. She was barefoot, wearing only pajamas.

“Hey, are you okay?” the man asked.

The girl didn’t respond. He crouched down next to her, and as soon as he did there was a slight but undeniable increase in the amount of light in the corridor, enough for him to see that the girl’s hair was dark colored and that her pajamas had a flower pattern. He could also see that her forearms were bruised.

“Who did that to you? Is he still here?”

Again no response. The girl continued to sob without acknowledging him. The man reached out to stroke her hair but stopped just before his hand made contact. She won’t like it if I touch her, he thought, though how he knew that he didn’t know. Withdrawing his hand, he stood up and looked down the corridor. In the increased light he could see farther, a few extra yards. Like all the miles behind him, those few yards were empty.

“Damn,” the man muttered. He looked down at the girl again. He wished he could comfort her, but again he sensed that nothing he could say or do would make her feel better. The best thing he could do for her was get her moving. Just letting her sob on the floor wasn’t going to accomplish anything.

“Look kid, we have to get moving. We have to find a way out of here. Are you okay to walk?”

The girl’s sobbing subsided. Finally she looked up at him. She had a gaunt face with large eyes. It was still too dark in the corridor for him to tell what color they were. On her right cheek was another bruise.

“Here. Take my hand.”

The girl shrank from the man’s offered hand. For a moment he thought she was going to start bawling again, but instead she raised herself up on one arm and, without taking his hand, slowly, clumsily stood up.

“That’s right,” the man said encouragingly. He pointed down the corridor. “Is that the right way?” He knew that she didn’t know the answer but he had to give it a shot.

Sniveling and looking down at her feet, the girl said nothing.

“Well we may as well go that way. Come on.”

The man started walking again, but the girl didn’t move. She just stood there looking down at her feet.

“Well come on. Do you want to get out of here or not?”

Slowly and stiffly, barely lifting her feet, the girl started walking. It finally occurred to the man that she might have other injuries besides her bruised arm and cheek. He lifted up the back of her pajama top, just a few inches. The girl flinched again. Sure enough, there were belt marks across her lower back. He grabbed the waistband of her pajama bottoms and lowered them, again just a few inches. There were more belt marks across the upper part of her butt. Obviously there were even more further down. Someone had really let her have it.

He felt sorry for her, but still – they had to get moving. They had to find a way out of the corridor. He considered carrying her, but couldn’t see how he could do so without causing here even more pain. No – she was going to have to walk.

“Look, I’m sorry you’re hurt,” the man told her. “But we have to get going. And the faster we move, the faster we’ll find a way out of here. Okay?”

And that’s when she said it. With her head still down and her arms crossed protectively in front of her chest, she said “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck.”

This cryptic remark startled the man. He actually took a step back from her.

“What did you say?” he asked, even though he had heard her perfectly.

No answer.

“Well?” The man was sure he had heard those words before. But where?

The girl remained silent.

“All right. Since you obviously can talk, who are you? How did you get here?”

But apparently the girl was through speaking, at least for the time being. The man felt a sudden surge of anger. What was the meaning of that weird remark? And why wouldn’t she answer his questions.

No, he told himself. Stop it. What’s the matter with you? The kid is in pain and obviously traumatized. Of course she’s going to behave oddly. As for her refusal to answer your questions, for all she knows you might be one of the people who brought her here. She has no reason to think of you as a rescuer.

The man felt compelled to apologize, but he knew it would be pointless. The girl had no way of knowing what he was apologizing for. So all he said was “Forget it. Come on. Let’s go.”

He started walking again. The girl hesitated, but after a moment fell in step behind him.

Their progress down the corridor was slow and halting. Growing weaker with each passing hour, the girl frequently dropped to her knees and curled up on the floor to rest, sometimes covering her head with her hands.

After each of these rest periods, as soon as she was back on her feet, the girl, still looking down, would say “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck.” And with each repetition of that strange quote, the man lost more and more of his compassion.

Maybe she looks down like that all the time because she’s muttering things about me under her breath, he thought when she curled up on the ground for the sixth time. Maybe she’s making fun of me.

This time he felt no remorse for being suspicious of her. A hateful thought occurred to him: I bet a crack on the butt would make her move faster. Just one good crack. Sure it would hurt her, but not as much as being carried would.

And then the girl said it again, from the floor this time.

“It were better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck.”

That clinched it. The man reached down and unbuckled his belt. Yes, one good crack. For her own good. For both their good. He whipped his belt off and, grasping the buckle end and the leather end in one fist, raised it into the air. But before he could bring it down there was a loud clicking sound, and suddenly a door opened in the darkness and a ray of light fell into the corridor. The man stared, open mouthed. The half open wooden door, about ten yards away, marked the end of the corridor. Their journey was over.

“We made it,” the man said to himself. “We made it.”

The girl slowly got up off the floor and, with a blank expression on her face, approached the door. When she entered the ray of light the man saw that her hair was red, and her flower-patterned pajamas pink, and bloodstained. Without touching the door, the girl slipped past it and into the light on the other side.

Despite his invulnerability, the man held back, wondering what dangers might be there. He waited and listened.

At first there was silence. Then the man heard what sounded like a woman’s voice coming from a television or a radio. There were no cries for help from the girl or any other indication that the ultra bully he had imagined so many hours earlier was with her. Tentatively, the man approached the door and peered inside.

On the other side of the door was a small bedroom, decorated in a manner suitable for a preadolescent girl. There was a bed with a wooden headboard. The sheets and pillow case were both pink and flower-patterned, like the girl’s pajamas. Three stuffed animals – a bear, a rabbit, and a giraffe – were propped up against the pillow. The walls were covered with teen idol pinups. There was a wooden dresser with a CD player and a stack of CDs’ on it, a child-sized rocking chair, and, in one corner, a television on a metal stand. The television was tuned to a news program. An Asian anchorwoman was reporting the day’s news stories.

The girl was lying on her side on the bed. Looking down at her, the man realized that this was her bedroom. But what was she doing here? Did she live here all by herself, in this small bedroom at the end of a dark, miles long corridor? If so, why? And where was this place?

On the wall over the dresser there was an oval mirror. The man looked at his reflection and saw himself for the first time since waking up in the corridor. He was a thin man with red hair just like the girl’s, and brown eyes, perhaps forty years old. His face was unremarkable, neither handsome nor homely. It was completely unfamiliar – the face of a stranger.

The anchorwoman’s voice cut through his reverie. “The driver of the minivan fled the scene but was apprehended several blocks away and charged with vehicular manslaughter.”

The man turned away from the mirror and focused on the television. The anchorwoman read the next news story.

“After seven years on death row, convicted child killer Kevin Munroe was executed by lethal injection today. Munroe was convicted of beating his ten-year-old daughter Tabitha to death with a belt over a period of two days in one of the most shocking cases of child abuse in American history. Tabitha Munroe’s murder made national headlines and resulted in federal anti-child abuse legislation.

The man’s photo appeared on the upper right side of the television screen, just over the anchorwoman’s head.

What the hell? he thought.

“Tabitha’s brother says that his father’s long-awaited execution has done nothing to ease the pain of her death.”

The newscast cut from the newsroom to an on the street interview with a heavyset, red bearded man in his twenties. A caption at the bottom of the screen revealed his name: Steven Munroe. As Steven Munroe spoke to the camera a photo of the dead child Tabitha appeared on the upper right side of the screen.

The man gasped. It was a photo of the girl who was lying on the pink-flowered bed a few feet away from him, the girl who had dragged along behind him in the corridor all those hours.

“I’ve waited for this day for so long,” Steven Munroe said, “but the sad truth is my father’s execution didn’t bring Tabitha back. Nothing will bring her back. The only comfort I have is that there are now more laws that protect children. That and the fact that my father is in hell.”

And the moment he read that last word the man was no longer a stranger to himself. He remembered who he was and what he had done with his life. He was Kevin Munroe, grade school misfit turned tough guy cop. He was Madeline Munroe’s husband, who made Madeline’s life so unbearable with his abuse that she not only abandoned him but abandoned her children as well. He was Tabitha and Steven Munroe’s father, who found his children’s innate foolishness and vulnerability so infuriating that he beat them with his belt and hands for the slightest offense. He was Police Officer Munroe, a hero on the street but a criminal at home who, on the rare occasions when a neighbor or teacher cared enough to call the child abuse hotline about his children’s bruises, used his badge and the blue wall of silence to escape justice. And finally, he was Prisoner #891015, a convicted child killer and lethal injection recipient who was mourned in death only by a devoted handful of death penalty opponents.

The newscast switched back to the anchorwoman. “And what is hell, if not spending all eternity living in the moment of your greatest sin?” she asked coolly.

Hell? This was Hell? His daughter’s bedroom, with his pathetic battered daughter curled up on her bed and a creepy anchorwoman blabbing on her television?

Kevin Munroe turned away from the television, his eyes filling with tears. Sure, he thought. Why not? Who needed fire and brimstone and pitchfork wielding demons? Not him. The nightmare he created for his daughter, replayed throughout eternity, would be far more excruciating. And it made perfect sense that Tabitha would be here with him. Poor sniveling defenseless Tabitha, who always managed to bring out the worst in him. Was this really her, or just an image of her – a doppelganger? No doubt she feared him when she was alive. Could she have hated him too – hated him so intensely that she was now damned along with him?

“Well Kevin, you’d better get started,” the anchorwoman said. Then the newscast dissolved into static, and the static shrank into a dot, and the television screen went blank.

No, Kevin Munroe told himself. No, I won’t hit her. Instead I’ll run as far away from this room as I can. I’ll spend eternity in the corridor, in the dark. In Purgatory instead of Hell.

But he couldn’t leave. The doorway he had entered through was gone now. He punched the wall where it used to be, punched it over and over. But the door didn’t reappear, and the wall didn’t break.

“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believeth in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea,” Tabitha quoted, her voice wavering.

Slowly, Kevin Munroe turned away from the wall. He remembered the significance of those words now, and hearing them again cleared the way for his rage. Yes, that was Tabitha there on the bed, all right. Tabitha always had a knack for saying or doing the one thing that would set him off.

This time he wouldn’t have to stop. Not ever.

“Suffer little children,” Tabitha whispered, sobbing now. She removed her pajamas and turned over on her stomach, the way she had so many times before.

For a few seconds, Kevin Munroe surveyed the marks of the fatal beating he had inflicted on her – the welts and bruises that crisscrossed her body from her upper back down to her thighs. Beneath his rage, the voice of compassion spoke one last time. “You can’t do it,” the voice said. “She can’t possibly take any more”.

Kevin Munroe listened. And then, hating himself, and hating her, he brought the belt down.

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