Korridorium

♫ Silencer ♫

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151/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor lead­ing to the “Room of Silence” inside the Bran­den­burg Gate. Before Uwe Albo called me, I had no idea a place like this even existed. “Silence” is writ­ten on the wall in var­i­ous lan­guages. A pretty fit­ting place for Easter, really, but I already have a bad feel­ing about what’s wait­ing for me here.

Every­thing is cor­doned off. Albo’s col­leagues rec­og­nize me and wave me through. The detec­tive him­self stands in the small, unadorned med­i­ta­tion room like a lum­ber­jack in a per­fume shop. My gaze imme­di­ately drops to the floor, and sure enough, right on cue: in the mid­dle of the room lies a stack of paper, topped with a bloody lump of meat.

“Another heart,” Albo says when he sees me. “Num­ber three.”

A sharp wave of his hand scat­ters the young offi­cers. We’re alone. “This room is locked at night. Yet this morn­ing, the heart was sit­ting right here.” Albo grabs my arm. I can clearly see the whites of his eyes. “That bas­tard scares me, you know? He writes a story every day on one of his type­writ­ers, and when­ever he fin­ishes his run of fifty type­writ­ers, he calmly drops another one of his hearts some­where in Berlin—with​out us get­ting an inch closer to catch­ing him!”

I can smell Albo’s breath; he’s stand­ing that close. Is this a cry for help? Is he crack­ing? Is he at the end of his rope? But Albo relaxes his grip, lets go, and clenches both fists. His eyes nar­row to slits as he says, men­ac­ingly low, “I’m gonna nail him with these bare hands, and once I’ve got him, he can play all the hide-and-seek he wants in the cell where he’ll spend the rest of his life.”

He looks at me, as if look­ing for backup. I give him a stern nod. That seems to sat­isfy him. “Come on, let’s move. Foren­sics can han­dle the rest.”

Later in Albo’s office, we study copies of the new texts. Famil­iar themes, new twist​s—the play­ful, com­pul­sive streak shines through again and again.

“I paid the Inte­gral­ists a visit,” I say. Albo looks up, intrigued, hav­ing clearly for­got­ten he asked me to infil­trate Berlin’s Inte­gral scene in the first place. “Decent peo­ple across the board who think they’ve found the Philoso­pher’s Stone—a kind of cut crys­tal with a whole range of facets that all need to be accounted for when look­ing at human­ity and the world.”

“Facets?” Albo asks, frown­ing.

“Yeah, just like the killer’s texts. Every­thing can be viewed from dif­fer­ent angles and per­spec­tives…”

“Which I can then con­ve­niently pick and choose from.”

I shake my head. “No, no—the whole point of the inte­gral approach is that it’s holis­tic. You don’t just limit your­self to sin­gle aspects.”

“In other words: you felt right at home with them.”

“Point is, it’s a phi­los­o­phy that val­ues life in all its forms. It does­n’t breed killers, if that’s what you’re ask­ing.”

Albo scratches his stub­ble. “So where do we find him then?” I rap my knuck­les against my stack of copies. Our only lead.

A uni­formed offi­cer with a goa­tee and pony­tail knocks on the open door to grab our atten­tion. Albo steps over to him. I immerse myself in the pages in front of me. There’s men­tion of a twin. Inter­est­ing. A lead to the vic­tims, the first two of whom were appar­ently iden­ti­cal twins? “Then get back to work!” I hear Albo bark.

Snort­ing, he comes back into the office, wav­ing a thin folder. “The heart’s got the same DNA as the other two.”

“A third iden­ti­cal twin?” I ask, sur­prised. “Is that even a thing? Iden­ti­cal triplets?”

Albo slams the file onto his desk with a loud bang. “They’re so rare that every sin­gle one of them is reg­is­tered. But none of this makes sense, quite apart from the fact that no pair of triplets has been reported miss­ing.”

I let his “pair of triplets” slide. “Then they must be unreg­is­tered triplets. Or the lab made a mis­take…”

Albo nods, look­ing sud­denly exhausted. “Told them the same thing. They need to recheck every­thing, step by step.”

“—Or,” I con­tinue, “they’re clones.”

Albo stares at me. “Those were three hearts from adult human beings,” he says hoarsely. I nod.

Albo leans heav­ily on his desk and looks me dead in the eye, worn out. “Offi­cially, human clones don’t exist—and cer­tainly not adults.”

I nod again. “Offi­cially,” I say.

“Man,” Albo groans, slump­ing into his office chair. “Hous­ton, we have a prob­lem.”

♫ Falling to the Sky ♫

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152/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, com­pletely unsus­pect­ing, when sud­denly I’m struck by a blind­ing flash of a vision: Simul­ta­ne­ously with me, thou­sands, even tens of thou­sands of peo­ple around the world enter a cor­ri­dor. For some rea­son, I sud­denly sense them, feel their emo­tions, think their thoughts. I am, at the same time, old and young, sad and happy, relaxed and stressed, man and wom​an—it’s all there, all at once, in count­less cor­ri­dors.

An indige­nous child runs down a hall­way with a toy air­plane, mak­ing loud vroom­ing noises. A jan­i­tor pre­pares to get the boot out­side the exec­u­tive’s office at the prop­erty man­age­ment com­pany. A plumber searches for the cor­rect name­plate; a requested mas­sage ther­a­pist looks for the right room num­ber in a motel. Inside the mind of a young Chi­nese vio­lin­ist on her way to her les­son, a Mozart sonata soars, and an Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor with a thrown-out back on his way to his lec­ture hall silently recites a Shake­spearean son­net. A sense of rev­er­en­tial won­der creeps over a Bud­dhist pil­grim in a gold-adorned tem­ple, a Russ­ian cos­mo­naut floats through the sta­tion with a screw­driver in hand, and a mid­wife in Hawaii, almost run­ning late, hears the screams of pain from a woman in labor…

Col­leagues help me up. “Are you feel­ing okay?” “Should I call an ambu­lance?” “You look so pale!” I shake my head to wave them off. My knees are still com­pletely wob­bly, and I can barely stand on my own. “You passed out briefly. What hap­pened?”

“We entered the cor­ri­dor,” I mut­ter tone­lessly, with­out any of the bystanders hear­ing me. Although all of this only lasted for a split sec­ond, it has become indeli­bly etched into my mind. I retreat to the restroom down the hall, where I splash cold water on my face until I feel like myself again, and only myself.

♫ Sloe Sea­son ♫

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153/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor at the sta­tion, clutch­ing the stack of copies con­tain­ing the writ­ings of the triple mur​der​er—​texts lit­er­ally stained with blood. The blood of ille­gal clones?

Albo is engrossed in his files. I skip the pleas­antries: “Is there such a thing as iden­ti­cal quadru­plets?”

Albo looks up. “Just had some in Leipzig recently. Damn rare, but not impos­si­ble.”

I grab a cof­fee. No sugar left.

Albo keeps his eyes on me. “Why do you ask?”

“Because then it might finally be over.”

Albo laughs bit­terly. “Over? I have to catch a killer, regard­less of what hap­pens in fifty days!”

“—Forty-eight,” I cor­rect him. Albo gives me a look that would­n’t pass day­time TV cen­sor­ship.

“Ray Brad­bury,” he says then. I look at him, slightly con­fused. “Amer­i­can author,” I say.

Albo nods. “Any Friend of Nicholas Nick­le­by’s Is a Friend of Mine.”

I shrug. Albo tosses me a thin, worn paper­back: Ray Brad­bury’s I Sing the Body Elec­tric! “Any Friend of Nicholas Nick­le­by’s…” is one of the sto­ries listed in the table of con­tents.

“You read stuff like this?” I ask, sur­prised.

Albo shakes his head. “One of our foren­sic guys put me onto it. There’s a guy in there who thinks he’s Charles Dick­ens but can’t put any­thing worth­while on paper. He buys six dozen type­writ­ers and writes like a mad­man…” With that, he stands up, walks over, and takes the slim vol­ume back from my hand. He flips it open, finds the spot, and quotes: “The poem. The essay. The play trag­ique. The farce. The short story. And it was all bad.”

“What are you try­ing to tell me, Albo?”

“That’s him, don’t you see? The type­writ­ers, the dif­fer­ent texts. And then he sits…” Albo taps the book­let. “…at the back of a train and throws all the pages out one by one, and they flut­ter away. Thou­sands of them.”

“But that’s just a story, Albo. We have three dead bod­ies and a ser­ial killer.”

Albo slams the book onto his desk. “Just a story, you say? But these are all sto­ries, too! The type​writ​er​s—​don’t you get it? He knows the Brad­bury story and iden­ti­fies with it!”

“Take it down a notch, Albo. He iden­ti­fies with every­thing and noth­ing. That’s pre­cisely our prob­lem. He’s a shape-shifter, and we can’t get a grip on him. One minute he’s ‘inte­gral,’ the next he’s sur­re­al­ist. We don’t grasp him, get it? You can’t just pick out one facet and call it a day. Not here. Not with him. And six dozen type­writ­ers aren’t fifty.”

Albo looks like he’s on the verge of blow­ing a fuse. He must have latched onto this Brad­bury thing out of sheer des­per­a­tion. I don’t give him room to breathe: “Num­ber 122 is another one of those. Incom­pre­hen­si­ble gib​ber​ish…”—I pull the sheet from my copies—”…un​til you find the orig­i­nal.”

“Which orig­i­nal?” Albo asks, frown­ing at the page.

“A Braulio Are­nas is men­tioned, right? Chilean poet. Just so hap­pens he wrote a poem titled ‘Errata’ that lists a bunch of print­ing errors found in an unnamed text. A sur­re­al­ist poem.”

“And?”

“Num­ber 122 is that text. It con­tains every sin­gle error listed. For exam­ple, in the poem, it says, ‘Instead of mak­ing two hits with one shot it should be mak­ing two lips with one mouth.’ Sound famil­iar? Or ‘Instead of the youth the beauty the mill it should be the mill the beauty the youth.’ Ulti­mately, it was the miss­ing com­mas that tipped me off that his text was built on that poem.”

Albo looks at his copy, rubs his stub­ble, and thinks it over. Finally, he asks: “Does it make any sense?”

“None,” I say. “It’s just—and I quote—‘a grotesque par­ody of some­thing that is already absurd.’ ”

“Uh-huh,” Albo says.

I tap his copy. “There’s one error miss­ing, by the way.”

Albo’s brow fur­rows.

“One line reads: ‘Instead of I love you it should be I love you.’ ”

“Where’s the error?”

“That’s the whole point of Sur­re­al­ism. And the same goes for the killer. He’s no more Braulio Are­nas than he is Charles Dick­ens!”

Albo nods with­out look­ing up. “So how do we nail him?”

“Let’s talk about some­one who decided to stretch his bizarre mind games so far into real­ity that the homi­cide squad has to deal with them,” I say, hold­ing up the copies. “Let’s talk about incom­pat­i­ble claims and col­laps­ing belief sys­tems.”

Albo looks up. “Always a good idea,” he says. Do I spot a wry smile tug­ging at the cor­ners of his mouth? Maybe it feels to him, too, a bit like thirty or forty years ago, when we used to sit up all night debat­ing life, God, and the uni​verse—and all the insan­ity we humans inject into it.

♫ Still Echo thru my Mind ♫

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154/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, and ever since the sud­den vision that over­whelmed me right here the day before yes­ter­day, I’ve had this uneasy feel­ing every time I step out the door that it might hap­pen again: feel­ing con­nected with every­one else in that same moment, or even feel­ing as one with them.

This time, on my way to the cafe­te­ria again, it hap­pens. But it’s weaker and does­n’t knock me to the ground imme­di­ately. Again, I sense peo­ple inside me, though fewer this time, and it does­n’t feel quite so strange and diverse: as if I’m already famil­iar with these peo­ple, as if we’re old friends. For a split sec­ond, we are one—my broth­ers and sis­ters in spirit and I—peo​ple with whom I share a strong spir­i­tual bond, with­out know­ing them or even hav­ing guessed they might exist some­where in the world. The intense feel­ing of unex­pect­edly redis­cov­er­ing long-lost, unknown fam­ily mem­bers makes me stag­ger for a moment. Then, it’s over. A few col­leagues give me sus­pi­cious look​s—s​mall won­der after the inci­dent two days ago. But I don’t let on.

Who were all these peo­ple? Do they really exist some­where on this planet? And can they per­ceive me, too? Is there any way to track them down? And what does any of this have to do with this cor­ri­dor?

I’m absent-minded and use­less the rest of the day because these ques­tions weigh on me. But over the next few days, the expe­ri­ence fades, and since noth­ing extra­or­di­nary hap­pens when I enter the cor­ri­dor, I finally attribute the mat­ter to my over­wrought nerves.

♫ Glue Trapped ♫

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155/398

“I Enter the Cor­ri­dor” is the title of a col­lec­tion of texts with which an alleged author—​male or female, though likely a whole col­lec­tive of mali­cious sub​ver​sives—is attempt­ing to spread a dan­ger­ous intel­lec­tual virus via the inter­net.

Con­sciously, after the repet­i­tive “I enter the cor­ri­dor,” the read­er’s mind per­ceives only a more or less well-con­structed short story, which often loses itself in incom­pre­hen­si­bil­ity or non­sense and usu­ally lacks a proper punch­line. This is likely inten­tional, because sub­lim­i­nally, the mind absorbs some­thing else entirely dur­ing the read­ing process: The mantra-like rep­e­ti­tion of “I enter the cor­ri­dor” cre­ates a pro­gres­sively nar­row­ing tun­nel vision. Read­ers become par­tic­u­larly sus­cep­ti­ble to mes­sages below the thresh­old of con­scious­ness, con­veyed through hid­den arche­typal key­words.

On the sur­face, the mes­sage of the “I Enter the Cor­ri­dor” texts appears to be an ironic, post­mod­ern play with tropes. In real­ity, how­ever, anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-sci­en­tis­tic ideas—so​-called “pluridi­men­sional” and thus essen­tially occult ide​olo​gies—are sur­rep­ti­tiously trans­mit­ted, sub­ject­ing read­ers to a form of insid­i­ous brain­wash­ing. “I Enter the Cor­ri­dor” imper­cep­ti­bly opens the door to a men­ac­ing ide­ol­ogy, Cor­ri­dorism, which ulti­mately leads to para­noia and the delu­sion that con­spir­a­cies are every­where, and which, in all like­li­hood, ends in a com­plete shat­ter­ing of the nerves.

♫ Mare chro​ni​um––​Fo​cussing ♫

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156/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. Pas­cal’s Coq au vin smells deli­cious once again. The twelve strokes of the church clock are just fad­ing away. I’m a lit­tle early and stand wait­ing out­side Room 27.

“But I ordered us food!” I hear the voice of Mr. Korian­der, our guest for the night, from behind the door. Some­thing clat­ters. I can’t make out the response. “Oh, but you can, I insist!” Mr. Korian­der asserts. Some­thing bangs again. “Please wait at least for the meal!” Mr. Korian­der pleads. Even though I’m sure I’ll turn red with excite­ment, I decide to serve imme­di­ately. I knock. Mr. Korian­der opens the door. “See?” he says, turn­ing back toward the room.

A small man is stand­ing on the bed. He has a bald spot with just a few white hairs in the back, wears glasses, and has a rather amus­ing round face with stick­ing-out ears. How old might he be? Sixty? Eighty? Hard to tell…

“Oh,” he goes, and steps off the bed. He inspects my tray, and he seems to like what he sees. I serve them their meal at the table. “Just water?” he asks as I pour table water into two glasses. He has a slight accent that I can’t quite place.

“Of course,” Mr. Korian­der says. Then he opens his note­book and begins his ques­tions while his guest starts to cut up the chicken and pep­per it vig­or­ously. I step back a few paces beside the bed, hold­ing myself in readi­ness to top up their water.

At first, the con­ver­sa­tion revolves around Mars—I might have guessed. Since they’re speak­ing Ger­man, I under­stand every­thing this time. And yet I com­pre­hend almost noth­ing. “Arlan­thro­pos” seems to be the name for a Mar­t­ian that is merely a piece of brain inside a giant metal machine and shares no human inter­ests. Korian­der’s guest, how­ever, does­n’t seem inclined to talk about it and grum­bles dis­con­tent­edly again and again. Judg­ing by his accent, he seems to be from some­where in the East, Rus­sia per­haps, or Roma­nia. I’m not sure.

“Where has Golem XIV van­ished to?” Mr. Korian­der wants to know, but his guest informs him that that’s not how it works and that entirely dif­fer­ent things mat­ter, espe­cially given the short amount of time.

Mr. Korian­der seems a lit­tle miffed. He presses his lips together and snaps his note­book shut. His guest smiles, takes it from his hand, looks inside, and says, “Pirx.” But Mr. Korian­der shakes his head. He wants to talk about evo­lu­tion and con­scious­ness.

His guest smiles mis­chie­vously and asks, “In a small black box?” Mr. Korian­der bites his lip and says, “Trurl.” “Kla­pau­cius,” says his guest. Their crazy con­ver­sa­tion goes on like this. Some­how I gather that the vis­i­tor has evi­dently given far more thought to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and nan­otech­nol­ogy than oth­ers. For a while, they talk about some­thing they call “Phan­tomat­ics,” then about a cer­tain bac­te­r­ial “Erun­tics.” They might as well have been speak­ing Ancient Egypt­ian for all I under­stood.

Finally, it’s time to clear the table. Mr. Korian­der looks some­what des­per­ate as he stud­ies the long list of unasked ques­tions in his note­book. His guest laughs, and I can still hear his laugh­ter as I stand by the ele­va­tor and the church clock strikes one.

♫ Tem­plescape ♫

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157/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, almost hav­ing for­got­ten my visions that had sud­denly and with­out warn­ing over­whelmed me there some time ago. How­ever, I find myself stand­ing there, almost beside myself, some­where in the moun­tains, gaz­ing up at an old man with a white pointed beard, wear­ing a sim­ple, faded robe. My heart flies to him; he is the Mas­ter, my Mas­ter, call­ing me to the Himalayas to become his dis­ci­ple and receive the pre­cious spir­i­tual gifts he has pre­pared for me.

“Hey there,” greets me a pass­ing col­league. I don’t respond, still enrap­tured by my vision and the over­whelm­ing desire in my heart—a devo­tion, an enthu­si­asm that I had almost for­got­ten I was capa­ble of, back when I was a young woman.

Late at night in bed, the Mas­ter comes to mind again, and my heart aches briefly with long­ing. How­ever, my hus­band, peace­fully snor­ing beside me, would nei­ther under­stand nor approve. What could I tell him? And where in the Himalayas should I search? Cer­tainly, it would be an adven­ture to give up every­thing at once, to go into the unknown and seek a new spir­i­tual home there. It sounds like some­thing that could bring some excite­ment back to my life! On the other hand…

As my eyes close, the long­ing fades away, and I find my well-earned sleep.

♫ Hunt­ing Spree ♫

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158/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor of the precinct and close the door to the john behind me. Every now and then a good idea hits me while sit­ting on the throne, but this time, my mind is a blank slate. I’ve been holed up with Albo for way too many hours, going through the killer’s hun­dred and fifty texts with him like we’re piec­ing together a puz­zle. Some­where in there, a clue has to be hid­den about who he is and why he carves the hearts out of inno­cent triplets.

Albo is on the phone when I get back. This late at night? It seems true that the homi­cide squad never sleeps. Albo hangs up and stares at me with blood­shot eyes. “The con­verted dou­ble-decker bus that tours through the back­wa­ters at night…” I resist the urge to grab another cof­fee and sit down instead. “With chill-out music and philo­soph­i­cal self-dis­cov­ery.” Albo holds up the page in ques­tion. “Made it up. Does­n’t exist in real­ity. I had my guys check.”

Fig­ured as much. It started with the fifty type­writ­ers. The guy who sup­pos­edly bought them one by one, sec­ond­hand, only exists as a for­mer eBay han­dle, “SpellingError68,” with a Berlin address and a Pay­Pal account. He’s since deleted all the accounts, and no one’s lived at that address for years. Every trace has been metic­u­lously erased; all inquiries lead to dead ends, just like in the texts: as far as we know, hotel chef Pas­cal is just as fic­tional as house­boat dweller Norbu or some Cory d’Or, male or female.

“A rid­dle wrapped in a mys­tery inside an enigma,” I’d mut­tered ear­lier in the evening.

“Hape Ker­kel­ing,” Albo had offered with a nod, but I shook my head. “Win­ston Churchill.” Albo smirked crookedly. “Either way, all clues lead nowhere.” Which holds true for me, too, as a psy­chol­o­gist and—as Albo likes to ele­vate me—a pro­filer. Even the “KISTe,” the Fed­eral Crim­i­nal Police Office’s text analy­sis data­base used to eval­u­ate writ­ten state­ments by crim​i​nal​s—​con​fes​sion let­ters and ran­som notes—​could​n’t get us any fur­ther.

We’d last been debat­ing the alien. “I would have so liked to speak with him about God. Then it must be done this way,” it reads in Num­ber 106, right as the alien kills the human astro­naut with whom com­mu­ni­ca­tion seems impos­si­ble. Crazy story. Who comes up with this stuff? A reli­gious fanatic?

I step over to the win­dow. The city is silent. Even if Berlin never truly sleeps, around 3​:30 in the morn­ing it at least drifts into a brief half-slum­ber. “Maybe he thinks he’s doing some­thing good,” I say. “There’s a movie where a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor fakes a mur­der that turns out to be a sui­cide at the last sec​ond—but as a cri­tique of the death penalty and the Amer­i­can jus­tice sys­tem, he waives his appeal and goes to the exe­cu­tion cham­ber as the alleged killer.”

Albo stretches his back with a groan. “How do you pic­ture that? The triplets were in cahoots with him? He bred clones of him­self, breath­ing husks with­out feel­ing, and he’s cut­ting them open to cri­tique the moral­ity of our sci­en­tists?”

I tug at the win­dow, try­ing to pop it open. It’s been stick­ing for years. “I’ll get it fixed,” Albo says, and for a sec­ond I feel like I’m trapped in a time loop, hav­ing heard him say that at least a dozen times. “I say that every time, don’t I?” Albo asks, clearly hav­ing the exact same thought.

“If he were a psy­chopath, he could­n’t put him­self in other peo­ple’s shoes the way he con­stantly does in these texts.” I real­ize I’m start­ing to lec­ture as I pace back and forth. “Of course, we’re still not sure if the texts even came from the killer. Maybe they came from the triplets. But assum­ing the mur­derer wrote them: then the texts point to the mur​der​s—and the mur­ders, in turn, point to the texts.”

“We’ve cov­ered that ground. We’re going in cir­cles, pal,” Albo grunts sul­lenly.

“No,” I say, “because your flash of bril­liance about a cri­tique of the sci­en­tific estab­lish­ment is the best idea we’ve had so far. Mur­ders that aren’t really mur​der​s—meant to raise ques­tions and shake peo­ple up.”

“Switch­ing sides now? Plan­ning to cozy up to him, grab a drink, be his buddy?”

I stop pac­ing. Albo’s sore. No won​der—the case is tak­ing a nasty bite out of his pro­fes­sional pride.

“I would​n’t be sur­prised,” I say, “if it was his own heart. Sym­bol­i­cally, I mean—that he’s tear­ing it out as the author of these texts because some­thing in them cuts him to the quick, because one of these texts is gen­uinely real and he’s reveal­ing him­self to us. Maybe with what­ever he’s stor­ing behind the black door? Or the busi­ness with the shat­ter­ing world­views?”

Albo looks at me, tired but with a slight provoca­tive edge. “In a case like that, you look at the sus­pects and cross off every­thing until only the most likely ones are left, right? So go home, man, and do your home­work.”

Dawn is already break­ing when I step out of the precinct. The crisp air feels good. The Life of David Gale sud­denly pops into my head​—with Kevin Spacey. That was the title of the movie about the phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor. But how did Cory d’Or man­age to tear their own heart out three times and plant it at three dif­fer­ent Berlin land­marks? My thoughts haven’t made sense for a long time. High time to get some sleep.

♫ Grimm örlög ♫

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159/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. The hunters are already search­ing for me here as well. Before they can pounce on me, I dart aside. A long stair­case begins here, for which my four legs are actu­ally too short, but mor­tal ter­ror pro­pels me upward. The war­riors are fol­low­ing me. In front of me, I see a man open­ing a heavy tim­ber door. I fol­low him, run between his feet, knock him over unin­ten­tion­ally, and hud­dle in a cor­ner of the room, trem­bling.

“Close the door, cook!” thun­ders a voice. Obe­di­ently, the man rises from the floor. Out­side the door, a few of the Ein­her­jar stand silently, star­ing in. The cook closes the door and turns around. His face is black­ened by soot. I rec­og­nize him! He’s the cook who set the hunters on me and wants to throw me into his caul­dron.

I do not know the other man, the one stand­ing by the win­dow open­ing. Two ravens sit on his shoul­der, but now they flap their wings and fly off, croak­ing into the open air.

“My Lord, the boar…” the cook begins and falls silent.

“I see.” The man at the win­dow has just one healthy eye. It fixes on me. My entire body trem­bles as I try to make myself as small as pos­si­ble.

“The boar did­n’t want to go into the for­est today to be hunted. It ran back to the fortress, and then… obvi­ously…” Again, the cook falls silent.

“Obvi­ously straight to me. Spare me expla­na­tions for things that are plain to see. Maybe the boar does­n’t want to be hunted; maybe he does­n’t like that?” The cook nods.

“Maybe he does­n’t want to be butchered and cooked? Only to rise again from his bones the next morn­ing, only to be hunted, butchered, cooked, and devoured again by war­riors, valkyries, and my wolves? Day after day, week after week, year after year?” The cook stands motion­less.
“Or would you, per­haps, find plea­sure in such a fate, cook?” The man with the soot-black­ened face shakes his head. He, too, seems to want to make him­self as small as pos­si­ble.

“So let us deliver him from his fate.” The man at the win­dow steps aside and takes a gleam­ing spear from the wall.

“But my Lord!” the cook inter­jects. “What am I to serve at the feast tomor­row? What are the Ein­her­jar sup­posed to eat in the future? And what should your wolves feed on?” He ven­tures for­ward, but sud­denly real­izes whom he’s rep­ri­mand­ing and bows deeply, mov­ing back­ward until he backs into the dou­ble doors.

The man by the win­dow laughs. “Tomor­row, cook, when he is restored to life, the boar will know noth­ing of the fact that his god had promised him deliv­er­ance.”

And with that, he throws the spear. Every­thing hap­pens too quickly for pain. Sud­denly, I am entirely weight­less, and I gaze down on the world from far above. I can see every­thing from up here. It seems a mas­sive feast is approach­ing, where rivers of mead will flow. And under a large caul­dron, the cook stokes the fire…

♫ Haunted by the Zeit­geist ♫

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160/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, feel­ing a bit excited. It’s my first time expe­ri­enc­ing this trend called Cor­ri­dor­ing. Yeah, sure, I know you should­n’t jump on every viral inter­net fad, but there’s some­thing about this one that res­onates with me. Maybe because it hides behind masks. Or because of its con­nec­tion to an ancient myth. Any­way, the thought of craft­ing a bul­l’s head mask and cap­tur­ing a photo of myself wear­ing it in a cor­ri­dor of my choice—the idea trig­gered some­thing deep inside me, and I just had to be a part of it. I can only hope that oth­ers will also post their pho­tos in the gallery, show­cas­ing their home­made bul­l’s head masks in a cor­ri­dor of their choice. Over time, this could grow into a vast net­work of hall­ways and pas​sages—the mag­i­cal land of Cor­ri­do­ria, so to speak, a vir­tual world­wide labyrinth tra­versed by a soli­tary, bewil­dered hybrid being.

It’s kind of a nice expres­sion of our zeit­geist, isn’t it?

Well, the Atom­ium def­i­nitely has plenty of cor­ri­dors to offer for such a photo. It imme­di­ately came to mind when there was talk of cor­ri­dors, and as it turns out, I just need to get inside early enough so there aren’t tourists run­ning around every­where and the Horned One is truly alone in the pic­ture.

I set up my cam­era, pull the papier-mâché mask from my back­pack, adjust the self-timer, and hang my head as I get into posi­tion…