text: I’m not sure how I got here nor when because I think I’ve always been here. I recall no beginning but I’m just now getting used to the brightness so maybe this is new. Everything seems to have a constant glow so that no shadow is ever cast. The hallway I notice myself walking in is made of small white bath tiles that clack and echo with each step I take. I come across two branching halls, both perpendicular to the first. Down the right hall I see nothing but the infinitely stretching bright tiles and from the left hall faint whispers of arguing can be heard. I choose the left hall and the voices grow louder as I continue. When the volume seems to approach its apex I reach the end of the hall where a room full of people shouting meets me. They all look too busy arguing over something to notice me enter so I spend time analyzing the room. The room is different from the halls in that it doesn’t contain a ceiling and the walls are much higher. The sky above is perfectly blue without a sun while still looking and feeling like noontime. Listening now to the people, they are arguing about religion or something of the sort. Someone calls out, “When will they arrive to save us?” and another, “We can’t wait forever.” A man walks out to the front of the room and everyone quiets down. He bleakly looks at the crowd of people before him and begins, “My people. Our wait has gone on for far too long and I feel I must say-” his eyes meet mine for a second and he wakes from his sorrowful slump. “My people, I must say that our God has arrived.” The audience follows his gaze back to me and they all uproariously cheer. They surrounded me as they had to the preacher who was now making his way to me through the crowd. Upon doing so he grabbed my hand and raised it high in the air. “They will free us from this hell of infinite corridors and hallways,” he exclaims loudly to the crowd. Unsure of what the preacher was talking about and not wanting to upset the audience, I decided to follow what they were saying. The preacher shouts, “As I had said so long ago, God would appear to us and set us free.” The crowd cheers. I’m not sure how I would manage that for them but the preacher continues. “My prophecy spoke of a soul who would arrive and then climb the slick walls with their bare hands and let down the clouds to lift us out.” The crowd's cheering reaches an unbearable holler as the realization of what I would have to attempt settles. I look behind me to the wall that looks to stand around twenty-five feet high. The cries from the people froze me still, facing the wall. I wouldn’t dare turn around and have to face the disappointment and anger of such a mob so I stick my palms to the wall and push downwards as if I expected any sort of a lift. My hands slide down the wall producing a light squeak that I’m sure the people heard. Their cheering quiets a little and I can feel their eyes piercing the back of my head. I step closer to the wall as if to get farther from them and raise my hands to try again, this time I point my fingernails into the mortar between the tiles to try and get some footing but as I push downwards again the tile chips one of my nails causing my finger to bleed. I don’t take notice of it though because the silence of the expecting crowd behind me is far worse than any pain I’d have to endure trying to please them. In my peripheral vision, the preacher is smiling ear to ear at me but his eyes carry an intense anger that I fear might just be a fraction of the anger of the room watching me ruin their prophecy. My face is now pushed against the wall stained red from the blood oozing out of my fingers. I punch at the wall to try and chip away room to grip but, as the room’s silence turns back into the angry shouting I had heard upon my first arrival, I start biting at the wall as well. My bloodied fingers and mouth both smash at the wall as a pathetic attempt to break it away. To my surprise, however, I began to rise higher. I whip my hand higher up into the wall causing chips of tile and mortar to fall into my hair. My face is stuck against the wall like the piercing eyes of the crowd had pinned me to it. I slowly pull myself another arm’s length up, my arms shaking the whole while. My feet feel like they are being pulled down by tons of weight so I kick my shoes off. I hear them hit the floor after only a second and the crowd roars louder. Their screaming is so loud it physically aches me; if there was anything I most needed now it would be a way to silence them. My fingernails have all been cut off and my fingers are bloodied and sliced up so I rip off a tile from the wall and stab it into the mortar. The tile managed to break through the concrete and stick but it also sliced my palm in the process. I lifted my foot up to the gap left by the removed tile and slowly lifted myself higher. The ledge doesn’t seem so far away now so I quickly rip the tile back out of the wall and jump up from my footing. My foot slips off the gap and my mangle of fingers is only inches away from the top. I swiftly lift the tile up and hook it over the top of the wall and quickly grab the peak. I hoist myself up all the way then just lie there. Through the ringing in my ears and the pulsing of my head, I can make out the cheering of the crowd beneath me. I stand up shaking and still grasping the broken tile and look down at my bloody trail on the wall and them jumping and hollering. I throw the tile back down and it shatters by my fallen shoes. “Now, lend down the clouds for us to get out of here!” shouts the preacher. I look up at the once-clear sky and see it full of clouds. Perhaps I am the God spoken of in their prophecy I think. How else could I have scaled that wall and the skies filled with clouds at my arrival? Of course, I’m God, what other explanation could there be. Their ovation sounds like an angel’s symphony just for me. I look back up to the clouds wisping gracefully in the sky and reach for them. On the tip of my toes, I strain to reach the heavens smiling a wide half-toothed smile. My hand is almost to the clouds but they move away as if repelled by my hand revealing the bright sun I’d once thought was gone. My vision was now blinded by the light but I kept trying in some vain attempt to reach the clouds. I leap with all my might to reach the skies but at the peak of my jump, as the clouds conceal the sun again, I realize the fate I’ve befallen. The crowd’s cheering I had thought I’d once heard was then revealed to be screams.