You Could Be Here Forever

By Hazar Roshan

Nobody lives on the fourth floor.

Thirteen storeys, five units each, all with four bedrooms. All filled with happy families, I’m sure. Maybe some. Bumbling, beaming, beautiful children, and parents who are proud of the school uniforms they send them out in, every morning. Happy, happy families. Except on the fourth floor. Nobody lives on the fourth floor. 

I know this because I’ve never seen someone get off there, my whole life, except Emma. She’s not around anymore. 

I remember, so often — we live on the third storey — waiting at the foot of the stairs, peering up, holding my breath. The first unit was only six, maybe seven steps ahead of me. I never, ever saw anybody up there, any name on the door, not even a welcome mat. I swear, on my life. 

Then, once, I saw a pair of slippers. 

They were facing me. Grey, blemished, empty, so very empty, at the top of the stairs, the curve of the straps like furrowed brows, glaring at me, as if aching to move. To scream. How dare I intrude? How dare I go, where it cannot? Up or down? Up or down? I wasn’t sure. Where could a pair of empty slippers go?

I admit, I did something I shouldn’t have. 

What would you have done? I think I grabbed it. I panicked, I ran up a few steps, stumbled and stretched my hands out until I was practically crawling on the steps, and grabbed the slippers and ran. I hurried my way back down to the third floor, the slippers slapping against my forearm from how carelessly I was holding them, gingerly, with just two or three fingers in one hand, because I was so afraid of what I was touching. 

Maybe, I thought, maybe, whatever was up there — and it did not belong, for no one lived there — could not come up, or down, if it did not have its slippers anymore. I had trapped it there, I supposed, banished it to the fourth floor forever, where it should have never trespassed in the first place. Doesn’t it know? 

…

At Emma’s funeral, they blacked out the number 4 at every appearance on the void deck. 

We lived in Block 146. Those few days, it was block 1[]6. Even in the lifts, the button for the fourth floor was covered in black tape. It hardly mattered. No one will be up there again, not before they found her, not since, and not after. There will be no after Emma. I don’t know why they pretend otherwise. There was Emma, and now she’s gone, and nothing will ever be the same. There is no road after her. There is only her absence. 

My parents don’t like to talk about it. How unlucky, my parents, that of all the happy, bumbling, beaming, beautiful children in our matured estate, theirs would grow up to be so bitter. When the police came, with their red stretches and blue uniforms and strikingly morbid white masks, I watched, curiously, as they climbed up the stairs to the fourth floor to retrieve her. A neighbour had called, they said. Who? Nobody lives there. Someone from the fifth storey of the opposite block, when looking down from their clothesline, saw a peek of her body, sprawled near the opening of the fourth storey. Of course. It couldn’t have been a neighbour here, otherwise. When the lifts move up, or down, we avert our eyes from the fourth. I’ve been up at the roof, a few times, and each time the lift zipped past the fourth storey, I looked down. I was afraid of seeing a face, just outside the lift doors, staring into it, endlessly, wanting, desperate, trapped, trying to leave. 

Why did Emma do that? Knowing her, something must have called. Maybe she wanted to help. Why did she do it? She’s so, so, sickeningly selfish, sometimes. Did she never think of me? Or our parents? All of us trapped in our house together, inhaling the waste of our home, the stewing, stink of our hatred, of our regret, of our grief, all of us at the dining table, sucking in our breaths and tasting the blood in our mouths, from biting down on all our tongues until someone choked.

“Why did she do it?” Pa would yell, banging his fist on the table, mahjong pieces shuddering and crumbling, “She never think of us, is it? She think we all not stressed is it? Now how? The funeral, the hospital bills- stupid, stupid girl!” 

And Ma would sob, her head in her hands, her elbows shaking from the jump of the table, and I would stand there, my A Level practice papers smoothened out on the old, termite-bitten wood, my pen shaking silently. 

It was in moments like these where I understood, briefly, why she did it. 

…

I thought of going to the fourth floor.

I don’t believe they found her there. They couldn’t have. When we were younger, she was the one who would grab the back of my t-shirt and pull me back down whenever I got close to reaching the top of the stairs. “Didi, no, cannot go there,” she would say, and I would stomp and cry and wail, because I hated, more than anything, being told what to do, especially by her. “Don’t disturb them,” she’d say, and I never understood what she meant, because nobody lived there. It didn’t matter. I always had to listen, anyway, because she’d go back down, and I was always too afraid to do anything without her. 

She placated me, usually, by promising to take me to the top floor, and we’d both get on the lift on our storey and ride it all the way to the top, averting our eyes when we zipped past the fourth. The breeze, up there, would catch my hair in waves. I loved it. That was what I was most happy about. I’d jump around, clapping, like I could catch the air in my stubby little hands and pocket it, while Emma would look ahead, out at the horizon, and the many, many blocks of other families and children, dreaming, I’m sure, of something I didn’t quite know yet we lacked. Ten stories below us, my parents raged. 

Maybe, if I could see, if I could just see what she saw, I might understand. 

…

The number four was no longer blocked out in black tape. 

This is it, I suppose. This was how she did it. 

That day, the lift door opened on our storey, and I was carrying the last of our grocery bags. When I stepped out, she didn’t get out with me. 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to the roof,” she said, and if I had been paying more attention, I would have noticed how nervous she looked. How she kept readjusting her purse on her shoulder, how she wouldn’t stop clutching it. “Just need some fresh air.”

I didn’t say anything. Not even when I noticed, off the corner of my eye, that the lift, when it went up with her, stopped at the fourth floor. Nobody lived there. I was just tired, I was sure. 

She must have pressed the button, by herself. Surely. Like this — I felt my finger inching towards it, my thumb running over the braille under the “4,” really feeling out every curve, every sharp fissure of this cursed number, until, finally, my thumb sank in, and the lift jolted to life. 

Then I heard it. 

A voice, on an intercom that didn’t exist. 

You have chosen the fourth floor, it said, as the lift croaked and grinded, moving up, and up, and up, so quickly that I felt like I was falling. My fingers tensed around the handrails, my knuckles white, sweat pooling around the metal as I watched storey upon storey of lift landings race past the glass of the lift doors. You cannot come out until you are ready. You can be here forever, if you are not ready. 

My face felt like it was melting off. I closed my eyes to stop them from rattling out of my head. What? What did it say? I’m not ready? For what? 

I slammed my hand against the emergency bell, waiting for the shriek of the siren. Instead, the voice on the intercom spoke again. “You are not ready. You could be here forever.” 

“Let me out,” I choked, feeling my hands start to desperately claw at the doors.

“You got on the lift so assuredly,” the voice spoke again. “You must have known.”

The lift continued moving, endlessly, until the outside seemed to blur into one long drag of motion. I stared at the glass, trying so hard to see, until I saw it. 

I saw it, one figure, looking out back at me. My own face, in the glass, waiting, desperate, trapped, trying to leave. 

“You will understand. You will be ready.” 

Alone. Is this how Emma left? Alone, swallowed in darkness, with only herself to see. 

You cannot leave until you are ready. Do you understand?

This is worse than dying.

You have chosen the fourth floor. You cannot leave until you are ready.

I did know. Nobody lives here. I know. 

Ready? Ready? Ready? 

There is a home in all of us. Everywhere. Mine is choking, hurtling towards nothing, dissolving in yellowed wallpaper, the tv crackling, the mahjong table rattling, the kitchen sink flooded, the lift shaking.

Do you understand?

Nobody lives here. The decor is empty. We must put up new floorings, new curtains, and the windows should be open. I’ll feel the breeze in my hair, the waves of wind rolling through, the promise of a world, new, outside and in. 

Do you understand?

Yes, I do. I am coming home. So is Emma, one day. 

Welcome to the fourth floor. 

By Hazar Roshan