Korridorium

♫ Thun­ders­now ♫

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51/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. I’ve never wound up inside the Vic­tory Column before. Pro­ba­bly just a tou­rist thing any­way. There are none here this time because the homic­ide squad has cordo­ned off the whole place. Uwe Albo walks up to me. “I’ve never seen any­thing like this in my life. Truly nasty. I’m gonna nail that bas­tard mys­elf, if…” He loses his train of thought. Looks ratt­led. I help him along: “The guy? Or the woman?” Albo blinks, but quickly rea­li­zes I could​n’t pos­si­bly know more than he does yet. “No woman would do some­thing like this.” He steps aside for me. The pho­to­grapher is busy working. His flash illu­mi­na­tes a stack of loose pages top­ped with a bloody lump of meat. A fresh heart, it seem​s—​most likely human, or Albo and the homic­ide squad would­n’t have shown up, and he would­n’t have cal­led me in so fast. Well, what a great way to end the year. I look around the cor­ri­dor, but I can’t spot any­thing psy­cho­lo­gi­cally note­wor­thy.

Later in his office, after wai­ting for what felt like twenty paper cups of bit­ter cof­fee, Detec­tive Albo hands me the pages. The blood has left dark red sta­ins on them. I’m pretty glad the crime lab sea­led every sin­gle sheet in a pla­s­tic sleeve.

“There are fifty of them,” Albo says. He looks espe­ci­ally tired today, as if the dark bags under his eyes have absor­bed even more of the worl​d’s suf­fe­ring. “Num­be­red sequen­ti­ally.” He drops into his swi­vel chair. “Tha​t’s all we’ve got. Suspect DNA, fin­ger­prints, foot­prints: zilch.” I flip through the pages. Type­writ­ten. Short texts. Sto­ries. No con­fes­sion let­ter, by the looks of it. No love let­ters, eit­her. “The heart?” I ask.

Albo rea­ches for his phone as if it just vibra­ted. But he must have been mista­ken; he slips it away with a barely noti­ceable shake of his head. “The heart, yeah. The vic­tim is male, jud­ging by the blood. No sign of the rest of him.”

I stand up and wave the stack of pages: “I’ll take a clo­ser look at these at home.” Albo sta­res at me like I’ve just ope­ned my jacket to show him a sui­cide belt. “You can’t take those! Have you lost your mind? Tha​t’s cru­cial evi­dence.” I take three steps to the copier and lift the lid. The docu­ment fee­der won’t do me any good here with the pla­s­tic around the pages. Albo looks like he wants to pro­test. A green glow sweeps beneath the glass. Can a copier light des­troy foren­sic evi­dence? Albo seems to decide tha​t’s pretty unli­kely. He slumps back into his chair. He must have known right away that we’re deal­ing with a sick mind. Other­wise, I would­n’t be here.

I place the second sheet on the glass. On the first page I set aside, the​re’s a lot of dried blood that left ugly black con­ti­nents on the copy, like inkblots in a Ror­schach test. The sta­ins pool around the text num­be­red 1 on the page. It’s just a sin­gle sen­tence. It reads: „I enter the cor­ri­dor …“

♫ Flight of Fancy ♫

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52/398

I enter the cor​ri​dor—​which isn’t really a cor­ri­dor at all, because at the push of a but­ton, I can trans­form it into a study, a TV room, or a guest room. Unfort­u­na­tely, over the many years I’ve devo­ted to buil­ding and out­fit­ting my motor­home, my tra­vel anxiety has grown ste­adily. As a result, I can’t make it any fur­ther in my rol­ling home than the local super­mar­ket to stock up on sup­plies; then, par­king back on the patch of grass in front of my little house, I sim­ply ima­gine I’m spen­ding my reti­re­ment on exten­sive tours across the con­ti­nent.

Not only is it more eco-fri­endly this way, but the way I pic­ture these tra­vels beco­mes incre­asingly pre­cise and vivid, until there is almost no dif­fe­rence as to whe­ther I am truly lin­ge­ring in for­eign land​s—and some­ti­mes, when I wake up in the mor­ning, I am grip­ped by an inex­pli­ca­ble home­sick­ness.

♫ Big Des­cent ♫

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53/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. The bath­rooms have got to be around here some­where. One last piss before the big show. In the hall, they’re going wild, dancing on the tables. My „busi­ness part­ners.“ Time to fire them up and whip them into a frenzy. Soon, Tina Tur​ner’s „Sim­ply the Best“ will blast over the spea­k­ers, and then I’m going to pull the strings.

Uri­nals are clean enough. I guess you can expect that from a five-star hotel, con­side­ring the price. Am I wired? Yeah, I’m wired! Love it. It’s going to go per­fectly. The suit fits; this gold tie has always brought me luck. I’m going to blow them out of their seats. Do I have the tal­king points down?

„Bet­ter than any orgasm.“ My ope­ner. And then, for the 350 sales­men in the hall: „What hap­pens out there on the front line​s—t​ha​t’s deter­mi­ned by you, by every sin­gle per­son in this room.“ Briefly men­tion the firing of the exe­cu­tive boar​d—​don’t harp on it, obvious​ly—​just move straight to truth, jus­tice, ethics. Tha​t’s what we stand for. „Eit­her someone is a hundred per­cent com­mit­ted to the cause, or they can go to hell. We want to enligh­ten Ger­many. We need per­so­na­li­ties who serve as role models.“ Always remem­ber to swear the room into the com­pany ethos: „We have one goal, and that goal is dou­ble-digits. We need to train new busi­ness part­ners for this war.“ And if there are any doub­ters in the hall regar­ding the fund returns—a​side from those vul­tures from the TV media—​well then, here: „A pro­duct with dou­ble-digit returns—I swear to you: that day will come, as sure as I’m stan­ding here.“ Let’s look at it soberly: if they believe in me, they believe in the cause. And to finally make those press flacks shut their mouths: „We don’t make pro­mi­ses, we have goals!“ Let them chew on that for a while.

Wash hands! I want to walk out of here with clean hands. And those ass­ho­les who throw dirt at us? I’ll tear them apart one by one. „Stu­pi­dity like that should be fatal.“ But always remem­ber that the broadside from the press is exactly what inspi­res and moti­va­tes me to fight even har­der for wha​t’s good and right. Cru­cial! Then I can really let loose, and no one can touch me. Just don’t screw up the bel­fry bit again. Bats, they say​—​bats in the bel­fry! Spea­king of which, let’s see if I can work in that bit about the brot­hel. Hoo­kers ins­tead of a 401(k), if you’re going to piss your money away any­way. And we pull in more returns than they do, regard­less.

Hey, tha​t’s me in the mir­ror above the sink. Yeah, Strike! „I can look in the mir­ror every mor­ning and every nigh​t—e​ven nake​d—and say: You’re the man!“

If I lose my place, I’ll just rail against the Church again, or the lot­tery, or the media tax and public broad­cas­ting. Works every time. The Wiki­pe­dia refe­rence: „Chris­tia­nity is the worl​d’s lar­gest cult.“ Is that still on there? Wha­te­ver. „So: get out! Give me the money ins­tead.“ Gua­ran­teed laugh. And when it comes to the lot­tery, take no pri­soners: „If I were dic­ta­tor, ever­yone in charge of that would be dead. Ever­yone should have three base­ball bats in their car: one alu­mi­num, one wood, one pla­s­tic. Swing away. Stu­pi­dity like that has to be era­di­ca­ted. Whe​re’s the radi­cal with the air­plane?“ When I’m wired like this, there won’t be a dry eye in the house. „Tha​t’s how you have to deal with these ass­ho­les, right?“ If it gets too gra­phic, I can always bleep it out of our promo video later. The main thing is that the room is boi­ling, and our crew can’t wait to swarm out and push our pro­duct on the mas­ses.

At the very end, get all moral and harp on respon­si­bi­lity: „Where are we when there is inju­s­tice in the world?“ Then off the stage with—uh, what was I going to close with? What was the big thing that welds us all tog­e­ther as front-line figh­ters? My new buz­zword, the new mythos for us? Right: „This is how I see us now: the Robin Hood of finan­cial ser­vices.“

Okay, one last polish of the com­pany logo on the lapel. „Sim­ply the Best“ is play­ing in the hall at full volume. Tha​t’s my cue. Yeah, let’s get this party star­ted!

Quo­tes: Daniel Shahin, Car­pe­diem GmbH, June 5, 2011

 

♫ Skolla­lei­kur (Exc) ♫

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54/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, one of dozens. Or was it hundreds by now? But some­thing is dif­fe­rent this time. The doors! They are merely pain­ted onto the walls on eit­her side. Decep­tively real, to be sure, but when I reach for the handle, my hand meets seam­less stone. The pas­sage at the end: ano­ther trom​pe‑l’œil. And as I run back to the ent­rance, plagued by a grim fore­bo­ding, all that awaits me there is the mere liken­ess of the arch­way through which I ente­red. I pound my fists against it, kick at the mock doors until my feet ache, but the truth remains: This is my final cor­ri­dor. The com­for­ta­ble illu­sion that it would go on fore­ver shat­ters against the hard, cold stone, where my fin­ger­nails don’t even leave a scratch.

♫ Under the Throne ♫

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55/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. The neon tube fli­ckers. Albo’s office door is slightly ajar. „Come in,“ he calls, „Happy New Year!“ He sits par­ti­ally bathed in the pool of light from his desk lamp. The rest of the room remains in dark­ness. Out­side, a few bela­ted fire­works go off. It’s long past mid­night.

„Happy New Year!“ I reply, alt­hough the grue­some dis­co­very from ear­lier today has­n’t exactly put me in a fes­tive mood.

„So?“ he asks. I know what he wants from me. Albo needs to catch a kil­ler, and I’m sup­po­sed to help him do it. I head for the cof­fee machine first. Its red power light gui­des my way. A bad habit, but defi­ni­tely bet­ter than imme­dia­tely rea­ching for the hard liquor.

It seems Albo is rin­ging in the New Year with cof­fee, too. I notice he’s made copies of the fifty pages as well. He’s pro­ba­bly read them as many times as I have over the past few hours. They woul­d’ve made decent New Year’s rea­ding if a human heart had­n’t been sit­ting on top of them.

Albo’s head stays in the shadows. Maybe tha​t’s for the best. I sit down across from him. „All typed. On a type­wri­ter, I mean. And dif­fe­rent type­wri­ters, jud­ging by the font.“

„Fifty dif­fe­rent type­wri­ters. I alre­ady had it che­cked out. The​re’s an eBay account, SpellingErrors68, that bought fifty old type­wri­ters a few months ago and then deac­ti­va­ted the account. We rea­ched out to eBay and the sel​ler​s—​not​hing useful so far, at least not what we could dig up on a holi­day. Looks like he covered his tracks tho­roughly.“

„Spel­lin­gEr­ror?“

„Yeah, there are tons of accounts with names like that. Why?“

„Because he does­n’t make any.“

„If you think tha​t’s a con­tra­dic­tion, it’s just one of many, isn’t it?“ Albo places his palm flat on the copies with spread fin­gers, as if lay­ing a curse on them. „Some­ti­mes a man, some­ti­mes a woman, some­ti­mes old, some­ti­mes young, play­ing dumb one minute, play­ing smart the next…“

„Who says the kil­ler wrote them?“

Albo pulls his hand back. „The ope­ning. Always the same. A cor­ri­dor. Remem­ber where we found the cut-out heart? In a cor­ri­dor.“

„Hardly proof,“ I say. „And bes­i­des, who says it was writ­ten by a sin­gle per­son? Could be mul­ti­ple peo­ple.“

Albo leans for­ward, dip­ping his stub­bly chin into the pool of light. „Come on, man,“ he says, „I need results, clues, leads, some­thing!“

I crumple the empty paper cup and toss it toward where the trash can usually sits in day­light.

Albo ges­tu­res with his hands. „Is it a mad­man? An unre­co­gni­zed artist? A lite­ra­ture tea­cher? Someone whose texts were sto­len, see­king bloody revenge? Belie­ving it will get him on the front page of the local tabloids? You’re the pro­fi­ler, so tell me.“

„If it’s an aut­hor, and if he’s a male aut­hor – which I think is both likely – then he’s someone who likes to juggle with pos­si­bi­li­ties. And who appar­ently likes to play hide-and-seek.“

„What does that mean?“ Albo rum­bles, as he did in his prime. „That he wants us to chase him? That this guy sees mur­der as a game?“

I purse my lips and shake my head. Albo pro­ba­bly can’t see me any bet­ter than I can see him. But I need it for mys­elf. Making clear state­ments here means ven­tu­ring far out onto thin ice. „A game, yes. Or a kind of puz­zle course through cor­ri­dors. The​re’s men­tion of around four hundred texts in total: if we’re unlu­cky, it will con­ti­nue.“

„We’ll pre­vent that. Tha​t’s why I need some clues!“

„What do you want to hear? That he’s edu­ca­ted, pro­ba­bly has a degree, is well-ver­sed in the new Ger­man spel­ling, has a broad range of inte­rests, inclu­ding fairy tales, myth, history and sci­ence fic­tion pos­s­es­ses a dry sense of humor, seems to con­sider hims­elf a poet or ’short prose wri­ter,‘ gra­vi­ta­tes toward word play and exis­ten­tial tira­des, and has an obses­sion with cor­ri­dors? That he’s forty-three years old?“

„Forty-three? Does he write that?“

„Just a hunch, because of ‚SpellingErrors68‘—he migh­t’ve used his birth year. A lot of peo­ple do.“

Albo leans for­ward again, this time to make sure I see him smile. „Well, tha​t’s some­thing. We’re nar­ro­wing it down. What about the woman he wri­tes about at the start?“

„Could be a tra­gic love story. She turns up later as an ana​gram—I just hope the ‚cho­sen one‹‘ has­n’t been miss­ing her heart since yes­ter­day.“

Albo grunts. „The vic­tim was male.“

„Right, yeah. Maybe text num­ber 50 gives us a lead.“

Albo rum­mages through the copies until he finds the right one: „The the­ra­pist?“

„Yup. That could be some­thing: trauma, night­ma­res, the­rapy. And the bloody heart could be a mani­festo. Or a cry for help.“

„So I should have all the female trauma the­ra­pists in Ber­lin che­cked to see if they’ve got someone with a cor­ri­dor obses­sion on their couch…“

„I’d actually check the male the­ra­pists ins­tead. Ever­y­thing in these texts is twis­ted.“

Albo holds out one of the copies. „Who’s R. L. St.?“

I stand up and walk over to the win­dow. Rain is fal­ling, making the street­lights out­side the sta­tion look even gloo­mier than usual. At least from here I can spot two shim­me­ring reflec­tions in the dark hole where Albo’s head must be. „Robert Louis Ste­ven­son. Wrote Jekyll and Hyde, inspi­red by hal­lu­ci­n­a­ted little men.“

„Jekyll and Hyde. Great, this oughta be fun,“ he grunts.

„I need more time, Uwe,“ I say. Albo mut­ters some­thing I take as grud­ging agree­ment. I leave him alone. The new year is a few hours old now, and as I step out into the night, the rain stops, as if someone had sud­denly pla­ced a hand over the city.

♫ Find the Hid­den Wis­hing Well ♫

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56/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. One of the win­dows oppo­site the doors looks out onto a small cour­ty­ard where a foun­tain splas­hes. In a small clus­ter of palms, birds chirp care­free. I stand there for a long time, savoring the view and the fresh air waf­ting in. How I would love to be out there! But with these long horns, I don’t fit through the win­dow.

♫ Sequax ♫

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57/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor with the amphi­bi­ans. My father has thought of ever​y​thin​g—e​ven pro­vi­ding tanks for the crea­tures that spend part of their lives in water but would­n’t sur­vive the Great Flood. The cages are small, but there has to be room for ever­yone. Despite the con­stant drum­ming of rain on the woo­den deck above, I can hear the lions in the big cat cor­ri­dor. They have been hun­gry for days. My father had­n’t accoun­ted for that. Yes­ter­day, we dis­cus­sed which ani­mals we should feed to our car­ni­vo­res. It’s a dif­fi­cult decis­ion because no mat­ter what we choose, those ani­mals will be extinct after the flood.

I defen­ded the cute rab­bits, the lively squir­rels, the ado­rable goats, and even the naked mole rats tooth and nail. Let Dad take the ugly Nasoba­mes. They smell hor­ri­ble and are of no use to anyone. He see­med to agree, but I suspect he’s going to start with the uni­corns after all. He’s had it in for them ever since the mare, right in the middle of a fee­ding, gouged out his left eye.

♫ Wicked Leaks (It’s easy / it’s not!) ♫

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58/398

* ***** *** *********

Pass­word check via pc112.eu: „Your pass­word ‚I enter the cor­ri­dor.‘ is inse­cure!“«

Via Pass​word​Checks​.com: „Medium! It will take about 8 months and 6 days for a com­pu­ter to crack your pass­word ‚I enter the cor­ri­dor.‘!“

DNSche​cker​.org: „Strong“

The Pass­word­me­ter: „Score: 100%, Com­ple­xity: Very Strong“

Secu​rity​.org: „It would take lon­ger to crack your pass­word ‚I enter the cor­ri­dor.‘ than the uni­verse has exis­ted. This should be suf­fi­ci­ently secure for any attack. It would take a com­pu­ter about 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 years to crack your pass­word.“

♫ Arrivo tar­divo ♫

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59/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor and pull the door shut behind me. The noise of the party is muf­fled into a dull murmur. Taking a deep breath, I remove my mask. I’ve never been in this part of the castle before. It’s likely a pas­sage for ser­vants lea­ding to the kit­chen. I open one of the win­dows to let the fresh air dry the sweat on my fore­head. It feels as if we’ve spent weeks here behind clo­sed doors with the draw­bridge rai­sed, indul­ging our­sel­ves in unres­trai­ned revelry.

In the win­dow glass, I see a blue dis­co­lo­ra­tion of the skin near my col­lar, but I attach no fur­ther signi­fi­cance to it. Ins­tead, I curiously examine the small, tied bundle on the win­dows­ill. I unfold a long black cloak in which a mask, a large hour­glass, and a scy­the are wrap​pe​d—​the handle of which folds out. I drape the cloak over my should­ers and sud­denly feel young and full of pur­pose again, even dar­ing a few small dance steps and pirou­et­tes. The mask depicts a skull. Mine has become use­l­ess; I sim­ply toss it out the win­dow. It lands some­where in the depths of the cour­ty­ard, lying in a dark­ness the pale moon­light can­not reach.

The scy­the in my right hand gives me a good fee­ling. The clock strikes. It is time to go back among the reve­lers.

♫ Explai­ning Don­key Hea­ven ♫

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60/398

(The Kor­ri­do­rium was ori­gi­nally a blog with daily pos­tings. The fol­lo­wing „inter­view“ refe­ren­ces this and Cory’s plan to sub­se­quently delete the entire web­site, a move the publishers were able to pre­vent.)

“I enter the cor­ri­dor”: Do all 398 blog ent­ries truly start with this sen­tence?

Yes. Almost. If you find any devia­ti­ons, con­sider framing them as kee­p­sa­kes.

Why will the blog be dele­ted on Decem­ber 21, 2012? Does that have some­thing to do with the end of the Mayan calen­dar?

The Mayan calen­dar does­n’t actually end; the so-cal­led Long Count sim­ply resets. Whe­ther this cycli­cal nature extends to the end of the world remains to be seen.

But could­n’t the blog, in its enti­rety of 398 ent­ries, sim­ply remain as an archive?

One of the the­mes explo­red in the blog is tran­si­ence, so a final dele­tion seems only con­sis­tent.

Is the aut­hor someone well-known, or why is such a secret being made of the iden­tity of „Cory d’Or“?

Iden­tity is ano­ther one of the the­mes illu­mi­na­ted here.

This sec­recy is just a publi­city stunt, right?

Among other things, it makes pos­si­ble one of the blog’s serial sto­ries, which beg­ins with text No. 51.

Is what you write actually lite­ra­ture? And if so, what would you call it?

My fri­end Norbu once cal­led it “frac­tal lite​ra​tu​re”—I assume he means a col­lage of texts that relate to each other asso­cia­tively and the­ma­ti­cally, exhi­bit a cer­tain self-simi­la­rity on the the­ma­tic level, and are “frac­tu­red” in their dimen­sio­na­lity by inclu­ding con­tra­dic­tions, alter­na­tive ver­si­ons, and meta-per­spec­ti­ves. The mix of dif­fe­rent gen­res could per­haps also be cal­led post­mo­dern or eclec​tic—t​hough I try not to get stuck in a shell game of set pie­ces. And given the mode of publi­ca­tion, it is, of course, also web-based elec­tro­nic lite­ra­ture.

Hmm. I quite like the fan­tasy stuff, but I can’t really get into the sci-fi sto­ries.

The cate­go­ries and tags for the indi­vi­dual texts under the menu item „What else to find?“ are inten­ded to allow my rea­ders a more or less tar­ge­ted sel­ec­tion among the various blog ent­ries. My Twit­ter account might also help: the​re’s a small teaser tweet with a link for each tex​t—if I’ve sparked your curio­sity: just click and enter the cor­re­spon­ding cor­ri­dor.

Spea­king of „What else?“: What do tags like „K.“, „Nous,“ „Plu­ri­Dim“ … mean?

True, that might have tur­ned out a little cryp­tic. “K.” stands for the epony­mous cha­rac­ter in Kafka and thus for, uh, Kaf­kaes­que situa­tions. “Nous” is a Greek word I use to denote the intellec­tual dimen­sion of the human bein​g—​the same root as “noos­phere.” Ever­y­thing rela­ting to con­scious­ness, the super­na­tu­ral, and the meta­phy­si­cal gets the label “Nous.” “Plu­ri­Dim,” in turn, is an abbre­via­tion for a plu­ri­di­men­sio­nal, mul­ti­di­men­sio­nal per­spec­tive on exis­tence and refers to par­al­lel worlds and mul­ti­ver­ses…

The sto­ries are some­ti­mes rather cute, but often just way too long. Can’t they be shorter?

I am aware that the atten­tion span for rea­ding on the web tends toward the length of tweets. Howe­ver, I refuse to give up the chance to occa­sio­nally go deep. That brings to light tre­asu­res that can­not be unear­thed at the sur­face…

Why are the infor­ma­tio­nal links lis­ted below ins­tead of being lin­ked directly in the text?

This reflects my per­so­nal rea­ding habits: finish rea­ding first, then rese­arch open ques­ti­ons and ambi​gui​ties—ra​ther than let­ting mys­elf be dis­trac­ted in the middle and going down rab­bit holes. Tha​t’s pre­cis­ely the pur­pose of the links.

I’m a Ger­man tea­cher and would like to use one of your texts in class.

Please cont­act me at Cory@Korridorium.com—I will then get in touch with you.

**I’m a book­sel­ler and would like to invite you for a rea­ding of your texts.

I’m afraid I have to dis­ap­point you there. Since entry 51, I have been wan­ted by the police and have had to stay in hiding.

Will the FAQ also have one of your noto­rious Dada pun­ch­li­nes?

But of course. This one, in fact.