KNOCKING THROUGH

Wavertree in Liverpool has seen better times. Many shops are shuttered, many houses look abandoned or are neglected. But rent is cheap, and you may find yourself living in a downstairs flat on a certain street. After a few days, you will be irritated by the constant hammering and thumping from upstairs. You are loathe to complain, because you have met the upstairs tenant coming and going a few times. A short, chubby man, he greets you with great politeness and warmth, and you feel bad about the things you have thought in your head that you want to say to him.
After a sleepless night though, you have had enough. The house isn’t big, and you can’t imagine what kind of work could require so much banging and thumping. You stomp out of your flat to complain, but see the short, chubby man disappearing off down the garden, out on one of his errands. You don’t want to miss the opportunity, so you go back in to your flat, scribble an anguished plea on the back of an envelope, and go upstairs to post it under his door.
As you lean forward to slide the envelope under, you stumble a little, bump the door with your shoulder, and you realise that it is open. You can’t resist, so you step through, and find yourself standing on a small wooden platform made from floorboards. Beyond the platform should be a plain and dull rented flat like your own, decorated with fading floral wallpaper, skirting boards painted the same bland colour as the door. But beyond the platform there are no sagging beds, no lampshades thick with dust, no thin beige carpets. There is no room.
An endless space stretches out in front of you, above you, below you, every direction a dizzying drop into nothing. Impossibly far away in the darkness, distant smudges of red and yellow light pulse, and it strikes you that they look very much like stars. You can hear a constant soft noise like the sound of waves dragging the shingle back from a beach, and every now and then, a deep bass humming which shakes the platform. Some of the distant lights disappear from view and then reappear seconds later, and it strikes you that something inconceivably large is moving slowly across them.
The short, chubby man appears beside you. “I’m sorry I left the door open,” he says, and he holds out his hand. You take it, and he walks with you along the platform, out towards nothing.