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 world’s suf­fer­ing. “Num­bered sequen­tially.” He drops into his swivel chair. “That’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? That’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 that’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, there’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 Turn​er’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 lines—that’s deter­mined by you, by every sin­gle per­son in this room.” Briefly men­tion the fir­ing of the exec­u­tive board​—​don’t harp on it, obvi​ous​ly—just move straight to truth, jus­tice, ethics. That’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 return​s—a​side from those vul­tures from the TV medi​a—well then, here: “A prod­uct with dou­ble-digit return​s—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 what’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, that’s me in the mir­ror above the sink. Yeah, Strike! “I can look in the mir­ror every morn­ing and every night—even naked—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 world’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. Where’s the rad­i­cal with the air­plane?” When I’m wired like this, there won’t be a dry eye in the house. “That’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. That’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 trompe‑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 that’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. There’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 sell​er​s—noth​ing 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 that’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. There’s men­tion of around four hun­dred texts in total: if we’re unlucky, it will con­tinue.”

“We’ll pre­vent that. That’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, that’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 every​thing—even 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.’!”

DNSchecker​.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 wrapped—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 lit​er​a​ture”—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—though 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: there’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 being—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​gu​i​ties—rather than let­ting myself be dis­tracted in the mid­dle and going down rab­bit holes. That’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.