Floating Staircase

by Ronald Malfi

It has been said that nature does not know extinction. In effect, it knows only change: nothing ever truly disappears, for there is always something—some part, some particle, some formidable semblance—left behind. You can boil water into vapor, but it hasn’t disappeared. Curiosity killed the cat, but condensation brought it back.

There exists no creation and, consequently, no destruction—there exists only transformation.

Age brings with it a certain Kryptonite that drains our faith like vampires,

sleepless exhaustion.

an Old West—style saloon, complete with swinging doors and a hitching post, called Tequila Mockingbird.

It has been said that nature does not know extinction—that once you’ve existed, all parts of you, whether they’ve dispersed or remained together, will always be. Thick dust may hide the relics of human history, but it cannot erase the memory.

Elijah’s body had never been found. The Westlake Police Department had sent a scuba unit into the lake but did not find Elijah. According to the chief of police, the lake was deep during the summer months, and with all the rain they had been having, the sediment at the bottom was churned up, making visibility difficult. They continued to dredge the lake all evening and well into the following morning, but they never

found the boy. They never found the boy.

Police deduced that the boy had fallen off the staircase and struck his head on one of the stairs, knocking himself unconscious and ultimately drowning. DNA proved the blood on the stair was, in fact, his. The scream Nancy Stein allegedly heard had most likely been Elijah as he fell off the staircase before he struck his head on the step. And just like that the case was closed.

When you withdraw from the world, you find that the world withdraws from you, too. Then all that’s left is the Grayness, the Void, and this is where you remain. Like a cancerous cell. Like a cut of tissue, diseased, in a Petri dish. You glance down and there it is: this gaping gray hole in the center of your being. And as you stand there and stare into it, all you see is yourself staring back.

When you withdraw from the world, you find that you were never really there—that you were never really in the world—because nature does not know extinction, and if you no longer exist, that must mean you never existed in the first place.

“Quite often fiction is the best reality; cruelties are so much easier to swallow when they’re dressed up and capering about like circus clowns.”

“Ghosts are no different than anything else in this grand universe. Why shouldn’t they exist? Are they not the spirit, the part that gives the body life? So that spirit must reside somewhere after the person has died. Every schoolchild is taught the old scientific adage—that matter cannot be created or destroyed, correct?”

“It’s true. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. So why should the soul be exempt from such laws of the universe?”

“Nature does not know extinction. It knows only change. Metamorphosis. It knows that when life is snuffed out and the soul vacates the body, it must, by definition, go somewhere. And if you don’t believe in God or a god or in heaven and hell, then where do souls go?”

We have been taught by popular culture that ghosts are restless beasts, hungry for vindication and revenge on those who have wronged them. But was this all just nonsense? I couldn’t help but replay Althea’s words over and over in my head—I like to think that maybe she realized how lonely I was that summer. How much I needed a friend.

To be a great writer, you got to upend every little stone and look underneath each one, almost like a detective would. You got to examine all the possibilities. No matter how much you want to force characters to behave one way, you got to let them do what comes natural.”