Mr. Baker was. He didn’t ask for it, but he found himself suddenly being, and once you are it’s hard to aren’t. Of course, he didn’t have any awareness of not being, and so when he wheezed into existence with a squeak and an apology, he was immediately barraged with the feeling of walking into your kitchen and forgetting what it was you wanted in the first place.

He looked around himself in the first stage of forgetfulness, hoping his surroundings would prod him into some remembrance. But a cursory investigation of an endless desert landscape only yielded further confusion, and his analysis deepened in time resolution as his higher, higher functions came online. He whirled about himself, examined his body, stared at his hands, and otherwise exhibited the typical symptoms of an otherwise normal person suddenly lacking any concept of themselves.

“Oh,” said Baker, with nobody to hear it. This oh carried the full emotional volume of his mental capacity, somehow distilling his confusion and almost petty disappointment into a single vowel. The existential weight of being set in, and in near-record time, he teetered on the brink of existential crisis (only beat by an artificial intelligence in Nebraska created to discern the purpose of Nebraska).

“Oh,” he said again, with more realization. The sound squeezed out of his mouth nearly noiselessly, and calmed on the dry dead air.

“Are you going to go inside?” asked Anna, before he could topple over the edge of the looming crisis.

“Inside where?” replied Baker, realizing halfway through his sentence that a teenaged girl named Anna had decided to become a part of the plot. “Wait, who—”

“School.” She pointed at the school building.

“Ah.” Baker examined the building, dark, massive, twisted, like a drunk architect accidentally exported their 3D model into a JPEG. An overhang shielded glass double doors, and inside there was some movement.

“...School?” he continued.

“I don’t think that’s a question. Please refrain from using question marks in inappropriate contexts,” replied Anna.

“What?”

Anna narrowed her eyes. He wasn’t a very good listener.

Baker observed his new co-character. She seemed normal enough. A t-shirt of some sort, jeans, probably. Hair. Baker couldn’t seem to get a lock on her face. He knew her expression: somewhere between amused and annoyed. But the facial features that would resolve into that expression failed to be witnessed directly.

Perhaps it was due to some form of shock. His eyes wavered from object to object, glancing over things and attempting to discern their level of reality. This is not a healthy habit to develop, due to the mind’s peculiar tendency to misreport reality when it’s called into question; so long as nothing is questioned, the mind continues, the mind makes do, and it fills in the gaps of what is properly perceived with what ought to be perceived.

The simple problem in this case was that Baker had nothing to fill the gaps. No caulk to seep into the cracks of his mind, yet. He hadn’t quite settled into “being” proper, and so the universe didn’t have time to offer him anything outside direct observation. It happened that Anna didn’t exist much outside of her basic features, and so the qualia and color that would fill the gaps to a seasoned observer were lost on the fresh Baker.

Baker then observed himself, realizing his failure to create an image. He was wearing a white buttoned shirt with a purple tie, black pants and a pair of black leather loafers. He didn’t know whether he was tall or short, but Anna was shorter by a head or so. He ran a hand over his face, feigning a nervous gesture. His facial features too were certainly all present. And his hair was short, though he didn’t yet know the color.

“Brown,” answered Anna. “Eyes and hair. You’re not great at concealing your intentions. You’re standing there groping your face with a confused expression.” Baker quietly lowered his hands and folded them. Sweat beaded on his forehead, equal parts provoked by heat and by an overwhelming pressure bearing down on him -- screeching in his mind that he carefully ignored.

“What’s going on?” asked Baker, bleakly, and nearly numb. He half expected not to hear his own words over the liquid fog dripping from his eyes and ears. Anna folded her arms and her expression changed again. Maybe an almost-smirk.

“You’ve got a job interview,” she replied.

“I don’t know who I am,” Baker stated, blankly, as if a warning. The declaration hung in his mind after his lips parted with it. He felt a tugging feeling inside his spine, an inexplicable feeling that caused a barrage of psychological and physiological effects. This feeling is impossible to describe, but let’s try regardless.

It was a qualia. Color is a famous example of inexplicable qualia. Blue has symbolism, but not substance. It exists outside of us, yet only as a property in our minds. And so, what Baker was feeling was new. It was caused by his predicament, but his particular predicament is just as rare as the feeling, and so logically you cannot recreate what Baker was feeling in this exact moment. You have no frame of reference.

For the sake of writing, let’s call it… blue.

Baker felt blue. Not in any previously constructed sense, but in a looming, metaphysical, ironically tangential nonexistent word salad sense. It wasn’t a bad feeling, it was an alien feeling. A thought that did not belong. A virus ferried from an unknown world that an immune system wouldn’t even recognize.

Blue is replicable, though. You too can feel it. Meditate on the void for days, stare at a fractal until the noise of that fractal is burned into your brain, have it revealed to you that your beloved pet dog was dead for a year and had been puppeted by your long-lost love who had vanished when you’d gotten the dog. In a fit of numb confusion, pull your hand from the garbage disposal and recognize that, while your cosmetically mangled hand is a part of you, you’ll never see it as anything but a broken tool you own, bringing you no pain nor anguish — just existing.

That’s as close to blue as a concoction — a recipe of other feelings can get you. Three parts dissociation, one part confusion, one part grotesque anxiety, and add alien impossibility to taste (here represented by a fractal, but really, nothing can possibly evoke this feeling in you).

Baker began to stumble backwards, then he started walking away from the school and the girl. He was interrupted by said girl occupying the previously empty space he intended to traverse. The narrative wobbled as it adjusted to contain her, still gelatinous and malleable enough for such blatant disregard for continuity to occur. Her arms still crossed. Her expression still nearly-smug.

“Out there, you have self-doubt and nothingness. You will die within two days, three if you’re lucky. Over the course of those three days, you will receive no answers, and you will so gently pass into death that you won’t recognize having lived in the first place.” Anna paused, then pivoted lazily and pointed to the school. “In there, whatever exists, whether it makes sense to you or not, exists. It’s context.”

And so Baker found himself stumbling in the desert without food or water. That teenaged girl wouldn’t tell him what to do, or what to feel. His reality was his own, and the apparent flexibility of his own reality held no weight in decision making process. He watched the wavering sun as he trudged through sand and packed dirt, like a treadmill in a papercraft room.

Day passed, sand coating his shoes. Day passed, throat tight and parched, scratched. Day passed, knees and legs straining from an endless march, keeping his heading by watching the sun bearing down on the horizon, dipping barely below the surface of the world. Civilization was close enough, his mind told him. Civilization was always close enough, as it always had been, as it always will be, because the concept of civilization was burned into his brain alongside the condition of proximity.

Night passed. The cool air was at first welcome, then concerning. Blue set on the world like thick paint, both color and feeling dripping in equal measure from the starred sky. Night passed, and Baker started to regret. Civilization was always close enough, but he had rejected it. The school presented shelter. Civilization, or an adjacent concept. Night passed. Baker slept, empty of dreams, and when he awoke again he had almost forgotten that he didn’t know who he was.

In his head, behind scorched eyelids and under drenched brow, certainty of purpose crept into his mind and comforted him. He needed to walk, and as long as he did, he was something more than an empty head given the wrong instructions for existence.

Day passed. Baker turned back, Day passed, Baker slogged through the sand and heat. His muscles and throat screamed from lack of water. Day passed, and he looked for the monolith on the horizon he was so eager to escape from. The certainty or purpose revealed itself as inevitability, and instinct tenderly numbed the dissociation, replacing everything with a need from something. But nothing appeared, not even some tantalizing mirage. Day passed, and Baker stumbled and decided to rest.

Night passed. Baker slept. He didn’t wake up.

Mr. Baker was. He curled into existence again in the middle of a sentence.

“...die within two days, three if you’re lucky. Over the course of those three days, you received no answers, and you so gently passed into death that you didn’t recognize having lived in the first place.” The memories forged in the desert neatly evaporated like his dreamless nights, leaving behind a meek aftertaste of familiarity and an unease for the desert. Anna remained silent for a second, then let a quiet, derogatory smile slip onto her face. Baker began to turn away from Anna, but in the moment before he stepped forward, images from his death railed into his consciousness, foreign memories of a ghost. Blue. He turned his head back to Anna, confused and tired.

He let his breath sigh out reluctantly, squeezing his lungs empty with exasperation, and he moved towards the school. Anna tailed him, stare boring into the back of his skull. A set of glass doors waited for him, beyond which he could see an immense entry hallway, another set of glass doors, and at least three hallways beyond those forking off at odd angles. The black brick architecture remained consistent inside, and the floor was tiled black, with dark but nearly luminescent purple grout that blended into the smoothly waxed texture.

Baker reached for the handle of the door. His hand swung smoothly past it, and in a moment of unconscious coordinated reaction he swatted back and attempted to grab the handle — again fruitlessly. Past his instinctual reaction now, he slowed his attempt and grasped intentionally at the handle, somehow managing only to paw at the air yet again. His forehead became slick, and not from the heat. The damned rebellious handle—... and then Baker’s social instinct kicked in, and he craned his neck glacially around to Anna. She looked annoyed.

“Just open the door, Baker.”

Baker nodded. Right. Just open the door. He leaned conspicuously against the door and held his arm horizontally, parallel to and above the handle. Slick bastard wouldn’t dodge him this time. He slowly squeegeed down the side of the door, approaching the handle with the majority of his body mass. It wouldn’t escape him this time, and whether he looked like a fool or not he would emerge victorious.

He continued sinking. He only realized that he had missed the handle long after he had passed it. He sank to the ground, then, and rested his arm on the ground, face sloshed against the glass, legs bent and holding his backside aloft. He considered staying there forever until he died.

After a brief moment of introspection, followed by a spiteful self-interrogation regarding just how he got to this point in his life, he smeared his face against the glass again in an act of contortion that would make a chiropractor scream. He eyed the handle almost jealously.

“It’s a pull door.” In a further disturbing contortion, Baker viewed Anna from between his legs. His eyebrows were knitted deep over his eyes, and his mouth was stretched straight, lips folded in. He used his hands and arms to crawl back up the side of the door, wobbling slightly at his apex, then settled and stepped backwards from the incorrigible portal.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“You do it.” He pointed angrily at the door. “There’s something wrong with that door.”

Anna rolled her eyes and stepped forward. “It’s just jammed, I think.” She grabbed Baker’s wrist, and the owner of said wrist meekly protested. Unfortunately, Anna happened to be disturbingly strong for a small teenager. She upturned his wrist, and Baker gasped in pain and dropped to one knee. She then proceeded to spit on his sleeve and wipe the handle with it. The resolved, three dimensional image of the handle was casually wiped from the glass, almost comically ignoring how actual space works, leaving only a circle of transparency behind. Anna dropped Baker’s hand (who proceeded to coddle it thoroughly), grabbed at a mimed handle where the old handle once was, and pulled outward. 

The door, remaining flat, tumbled inside, galloped to the center of the room, slammed up the side of the wall, and perched itself in a corner of the ceiling. It fluttered indignantly. Baker watched the unexpectedly gymnastic entrance in awe. His jaw lackadaisically levered open and (by counterweight) hinged his arm into the air in a pointless point; pointing at the aftermath of the event which all parties involved had already witnessed, and that clearly only one party involved took any issue with.

“Move, move…” muttered Anna, shepherding Baker to the side of the entrance hall. Another glass door awaited them, this one frosted. White letters accused it of being an administrative office. As they approached, Baker watched the timid set of ceiling-doors distrustfully. Anna shoved Baker through into the side office. The new door seemed to ignore his presence, letting him through without opening.

He scanned his new surroundings. The floor was carpeted with the sort of green gray carpet that made it impossible to discern any actual space that it occupied. The mind seemed to reject the color, and the room might as well been floorless. The walls were a beige drywall — high-quality, brain-melting beige. The color of elementary school regrets. So it might as well have been walless as well. Might as well have been an empty tile ceiling floating in matte white.

Clicking. There was clicking from somewhere. Baker’s eyes were drawn toward a metronome on a desk, happily marking the time in smooth intervals with sharp clicks. The desk on which it sat was a gorgeous gothic work of split mahogany, and behind it was a high-backed leather chair facing away from him, the kind of chair that almost certainly contained a person in it waiting to make a dramatic entrance. Across the desk from the dramatic chair was a smaller, submissive chair with an odd bump in the curve of the back that called into question the integrity of the designer’s lumbar. 

Ahh. Baker saw the setup here.

He twisted around and quietly tested the door behind him. It growled a little, and Baker quickly jerked his hand away from it, wincing. 

“I’ve been waiting for you,” said a woman’s voice nestled within the bosom of the executive-est possible chair. The voice had a grating edge of command. “Mr. Baker.”

Baker froze. This was the first time he’d heard that name, and he wasn’t sure it was his. But it certainly sounded like his. It fit as well as any other name would. He walked forward into the room and reluctantly sat across from the talking chair.

“Uh, hi.” He pattered his fingers on the desk, doubling the rhythm of the metronome. Any second now, surely. The chair twitched, and he stopped expectantly, looking at it.

“I see you’ve met Anna,” she replied, selfishly refusing to spin around and face him.

“Uh huh.” He peered around the edge of the chair, failing to catch sight of his conversation partner. He stood and quietly paced around the edge, then leaned over, attempting to see the occupant. He saw the shadow of shuffling feet beyond the chair, and the back turned to face him.

“Welcome to Kingsly Morre Public High School,” she replied. Baker continued to attempt to peer behind the back, and the back continued to swivel to face him.

“Really?”

“Yes, I know, we’re trying to go private,” she replied absentmindedly.

“No—”

“Anyways, we’ve reviewed your resume—” Baker began pacing faster around the chair, and with slight squeaky protest, the chair sped up in equal measure. “—and decided you’d make an excellent candidate.”

“Candidate?” said Baker, now nigh sprinting in a circle around the room.

“Yes, substitute teacher position,” she replied. Baker stopped in place, attempting to catch the swiveller off-guard. She was not. She halted nearly instantly.

Baker was assaulted by a daydream of smashing his head into the corner of a desk. Blue again. The bottom of his heart dropped out.

“Please be more careful,” said the chair. It swivelled towards him, and Baker lost his breath. The chair spun, slowly — incredibly slowly, and Baker forgot his metaphysical scrape with death. The chair turned. It twisted on its base, curving towards him. The back curved out of view… then back into view. It finished its turn, revealing another chair back. The entire chair was an enclosed cylinder.

Baker melted into a puddle of giggles on the desk, holding the top of his forehead with the sides of his hands folded into a tunnel pointing at the desk, like a horse trying to put blinders on itself (a la Humphrey, 1988 Nebraska’s Most Anxious Horse). He sat back down, still erupting into fits of chuckles.

“What the hell?” he laughed.

“Any allergies?” replied whoever existed inside the chair shell.

“I don’t know! I don’t even know who I am!” hysterically replied Baker.

“...So no allergies.” The seat wiggled slightly, and an unfortunately long arm snaked out of the top of the chairynder. Fingernails, painted a similar dead-dream beige, raked forward, beckoning. “You’ve got the job, Baker.”

Baker watched the hand dubiously. The image of being pulled into the chair and being consumed by whatever beast resided there was too overpowering to ignore.

“Hypothetically speaking, what if I said… no?” asked Baker.

“You’re free to leave,” waved the hand towards the door. It fluttered slightly. Baker stood slowly, watching the hand and backing towards the door.

“Alright. Then I will leave. I would not like to work here, thank you.” Baker tentatively grasped the handle of the door, which trembled, then purred. It swung open, and Baker walked through. Maybe he would chance the desert. The uneasy feeling it gave him was no better than whatever was happening here. He looked towards the exit.

It was gone. Flat black brick. Baker turned.

The door that was perched in the corner flapped contentedly. The blue desert sky shined through it. Baker stared at it dumbfoundedly.

“How’d it go?” asked Anna. She was leaning against the opposite wall, intently observing her nails.

“I--”

“Cool, don’t care. I’ve been assigned to accompany you to your first class,” she said. “Let’s go. You’re subbing Temporal Anomalies for Hendrick.”

“I didn’t--”

“We’ve only got like, five minutes before the bell rings, so if you want to beat the rush we should probably go--”

“I DON’T WORK HERE. I said no,” Baker interrupted. Anna stared at him blankly.

“No you didn’t. You hypothetically said no, and then she ignored you.” She started walking towards the second set of glass doors. “The exit doors are… temperamental. Good luck climbing through one. And then have fun dying in the desert again.” She froze. Baker processed. Mental puzzle pieces fell together.

“Again?”

“Ughh.”

“Am I dead? That’d explain…” He trailed off, physically incapable of describing what it would explain.

“Not now you aren’t. You’re,” she gestured vaguely in the rough shape of a lump, “alive. Ish. Not dead. Okay. So -- administration doesn’t tell me anything. I’m just a student. I’m here to help orient new students and teachers. Honor roll obligations. You know.” Baker didn’t know. “So you’ve been hired for your… traits. Which include amnesia, temporal immortality, and apparently anxiety.”

“Temporal immortality? I can’t die?”

“You won’t die. But you can. Technically. Good friend of mine had temporal immortality.”

“Had?”

“Ran out of time.”

“...What?”

Anna cleared her throat and artfully dodged the question with the subtlety of a nuclear missile by turning around and walking towards the doors. Baker started following her without really knowing why. Memories of feelings of dreams surfaced, each level of remembering tangling a deeper layer of psychological rejection within it.

The entryway stretched as he thought, echoing growing in volume of days past and nights past. He watched the blue sand trickle down his body, and harshly, suddenly, remembered exactly how he died. Immediately upon bearing that weight, his mind engaged in a secondary repression, distancing itself from apparently evitable mortality. It buried the memory under the lens of a story, and he was left thinking that someone who looked exactly like him but wasn’t him had died in that desert.

“Oh.”

Anna opened the politely ruffling doors, and the pair stepped through into the commons. Three hallways stretched off to the left in oddly acute angles, but to the right was a massive area dotted by tables, chairs, and apparently modern art sculptures. It looked more like the lobby of a tastelessly grotesque hotel than a school hall. The ceiling was vaulted, with hanging lights that made up for dimness with abundance. The crowded lighting led to a soft, warm orange light cascading over objects, leaving them shadowless and matte.

Among the tables dawdled a tall -- and weirdly burly -- hunched hooded man. In his left hand was a hybrid broom and walking staff, with a lantern dangling by a chain at the end. He was sweeping the floor in strange, wide arcs, clearly not intended to gather dirt. He swung his broom around himself in a waltz-like motion, and on an inward facing arc, caught sight of the pair. He tilted his head slightly and watched Anna and Baker curiously. Baker regarded him with some distrust, but Anna smiled and waved at him. He began to approach them with a shuffling gait.

“Anna, it’s good to see you,” he said. His voice was cool and rumbling, obviously aged and obviously wise. As he got closer, Baker saw that most of his face was covered by a wild grey beard. His eyes glinted with… something. Humor, maybe. “And you’ve got a newcomer, I see. Student?”

“Substitute teacher, actually.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He turned his attention to Mr. Baker. “You have my condolences. I am Djymm, janitor, pathfinder, and part-time audiobook narrator.”

“I’m… Baker.” He tried the sentence in his mouth. It seemed to fit fine. “Nice to meet you, Jim.”

“Djymm,” corrected Anna.

“That’s what I said.”

“You spelled it wrong.”

“Jim?”

“No.”

“...Jim.”

“No.”

“Djymm,” he repeated after a pregnant pause, likely full of introspection and soul searching.

“Right.”

Baker inhaled deeply and disapprovingly through his nose.

Djymm seemed even more amused -- ah, amusement was what glinted in his eye -- than before. “Where are you two off to, then?” he asked pleasantly.

“Temporal Anomalies with the late Hendrick,” replied Anna.

“Late?” alarmedly interjected Baker.

“By a few years, now. Rumor is that some freshman spilled their lab on him.”

Djymm nodded sagely in response to this. “I’ve had my suspicions that his days were negative numbered. I cleaned up someone who looked like him in the library. Tealights got him.”

“--The candle?”

“Candles. He was a healthy man, a single candle wouldn’t have done him in.” Djymm laughed the familiar old man wheeze laugh, and his eyes engaged in terminal amusement before unleashing a powerful glint of ultraviolet radiation, perceivable only as a slight wave of physical and emotional warmth followed by a significantly increased risk of melanoma. “Either way, with only three minutes until the bell rings, I’m sure you two are seeking safe passage, correct?”

Anna nodded. “If it’s not too much to ask.”

“Of course not!” Djymm smiled cryptically, then gathered his broom up, and stood straight. Without his slouch, he was truly an imposing figure. He let the broom slip in his hands, and it tapped against the ground before bouncing back up. He gripped the staff, and the rebounding echoes of the tap, as though waiting for his signal, burst through the air (ignoring any acoustic properties of the room). Djymm began tapping his broom staff against the floor rhythmically, letting it slip in his grip and then bouncing back up. Baker nervously glanced at Anna, before realizing that she was just as much a risk to his life as he was. He settled for stepping back some inches from the whole affair.

The sound started to pile on itself, gathering in great heaps of noise before sighing into diffused sheets of silence. The reverberating echoes of Djymm’s tapping overlapped in the air, creating peaks and valleys, unoccupied voids in space. Within those voids shone tiny sparks, then, all at one, a spiral trail of light burst into existence, following the bubbles of sparks, and at the end of that trail, something answered Djymm’s call. Seconds later, a flapping door drifted into the hall, seemingly struggling to stay afloat. It looked like a house door, painted white with a golden number nailed to the front -- a golden quantity, actually -- ∞. It lighted gently next to Djymm, attracted by the light of his lantern.

“Good girl,” whispered Djymm, stroking the frame of the door. He addressed Baker and Anna. “This is Pepper, a rare blue-billed skeleton door. She’ll take you where you need to go.”

The door hopped towards Baker, who nervously leaned away from it. It leaned in turn, and gently nuzzled against him.

“Seems she likes you! Lucky lad,” Djymm chuckled. “Pepper, could you take these two fine folk to Temporal Anomalies with the late, late Hendrick?” The door shivered for a moment, then spat open. Beyond was a classroom.

“Thank you so much, Djymm,” said Anna. She stepped through the door, pulling Baker along with her. Djymm nodded knowingly.

“Any time. See you soon, Baker.”

And Pepper slammed shut.