Rain pattered the kitchen window. Grace, dressed in a checkered robe and fuzzy slippers, stood over the skillet frying eggs. The air hung heavy from a joint she’d stubbed out, the table behind her piled with unopened bills. Car payment. Rent. Student loans, the interest on them alone a stomach curdling amount.
Not that her business degree had done much good. Unless working the cashier at Retail King required a degree she didn’t know about. Cursing all the money she’d wasted on that useless piece of paper, Grace grabbed for the spatula and knocked a salt shaker off the counter.
Blowing hair off her face with an exasperated huff, she bent for the errant shaker. From the corner of her eye something dazzled. Between the cabinet and stove appeared a teal strip of light, no wider than a slip of paper, shimmering as if reflecting through a pool of water.
Squinting, unsure of the light’s origin, Grace traced the strange illumination with her finger. A breeze kicked up and a flash of teal enveloped her. Momentarily blinded, when her vision cleared she discovered she’d been transported out of her kitchen and into a squat little room. Bereft of any furniture, ornamentation, or inhabitants, it lacked any character save for the teal light illuminating it. The walls projected a low heat, as if fresh from the oven, and a dense, syrupy gravity smothered the room.
How she’d got here, Grace had no clue. Stranger still, she’d been rendered flat.
That was the only word that came to mind. Flat. 8-bit Nintendo flat. Two-dimensional flat. Her body held no contours, curves, or third dimensions. Her features; the narrow eyes, the stud pierced nose, the dark hair — all flattened into cartoonish caricature.
Grace figured she should be freaking out, but instead a preternatural calm reigned over her. In fact, she didn’t know if she’d ever been this chill in her whole life. It seemed impossible she could be in any trouble, the mere thought of danger making her snicker. How she knew this odd room, with its laden two-dimensionality, posed no threat, Grace couldn’t say. But she knew it with every fiber of her being.
She slipped across the two-dimensional room, her flattened legs carrying her with sliding, blocky movements. No hint of a door. No windows. No decoration or personality anywhere. Just teal light, dull warmth, and snug gravity.
Grace spread her arms as if sunbathing, basking in the thick stillness. “This ain’t bad,” she said. “But how do I get out?”
Teal light flashed and she popped onto her kitchen floor. Blinking, unsteadied by the sudden transition between dimensionalities, Grace had no time for catching her wind. The scent of burning eggs, coupled with acrid smoke rising from the skillet, demanded her attention. Swearing profusely, she rushed the frying pan to the sink.
Crisis averted, and now munching a pop-tart, Grace returned to the two-dimensional room, first proving her joint hadn’t been laced with hallucinogens and second confirming the room would allow her to come and go without difficulty. Satisfied of her sanity and safety, she entered and stayed.
In less than fifteen minutes she felt better than she had in weeks. Rested. Relaxed. Muscles loose as if freshly massaged. What had done the trick, the light, the gravity, the simplified dimensionality, all three together — Grace couldn’t say. But the trick had been done. No doubt about it. She felt fantastic.
Exiting, Grace lounged on the kitchen floor, deep in a meditative stupor, her skin still warm from the teal light. She wondered what to do with this discovery. Sure, she could post it on social, or call the police, or scientists, or whatever, but that didn’t feel right. This strange room was a treasure. A gift. And while it seemed inappropriate to put this mystery on blast, it also seemed wrong keeping it to herself.
Uncertain, she burned a joint and went walking. The rain had mellowed and cotton candy clouds painted the horizon. After twice around the neighborhood she knew what to do.
Forty-five minutes later Emma arrived, her frayed hoodie damp with rain. Grace started explaining the room’s fantastical properties, but laughter cut her off.
“Fuck me! What’d you take?” Emma said, cracking open the Arizona Iced-Tea she’d brought. “Why aren’t you sharing? You know it’s unhealthy tripping alone.”
“No no no,” Grace said. “We’re doing this sober.”
Emma’s bloodshot eyes went wide. “It’s too late for that, but I won’t get any higher.”
Grace guided her friend’s hand onto the teal doorway. Whoosh of air, flash of light, and they were inside. Already growing accustomed to the environment’s peculiarities, Grace drifted in the quiet calm, relishing the squeeze of the heavy gravity. Everything from the outside world; her bills, her shitty job; all of it slipped away.
After a timeless tranquility, Grace opened her eyes. Emma had vanished. Worried her friend might have hated the teal room, she thought her way out.
Emma lay sprawled on the kitchen floor, arms and legs splayed as if making snow angels. “Fuck me,” she said in an awe-staggered tone. “My mind is blown in every way.”
Stretching out beside her friend, Grace didn’t know the last time she’d felt this good.
“How do I get me one of these?” Emma asked absently, the question directed nowhere.
Grace had no idea. All she knew, and all that mattered, was that this one was hers.
#
Grace worked doubles at Retail King the next two days and had little time for two-dimensional exploration. But when her day off arrived, she was prepared. She’d bought a case of hard seltzer, three packs of blunt wraps, and a half dozen mushroom caps, the latter explicitly for use in the room. A science experiment, Grace thought with a chuckle.
But Emma arrived looking serious, announcing she’d found their first customer.
“Our first what?”
“Our first customer!” Emma lit a blunt, coughed her lungs out, and passed it to Grace. “This can be like a therapy spa. Or a salt room. I asked around and Madison jumped.”
“Her?” Grace coughed and passed the blunt back. “Madison?”
“Don’t be a bitch,” Emma said. “We’re meeting her in twenty at Pint & Pub.”
They arrived late. Pint & Pub was a crappy hole in the wall, nothing more than a smoky room with barstools and a jukebox. The odor of old cigars soured the air. Shoes stuck to the floor. How Grace wasted so much time at a dive like this, she had no idea. But she did, typically spending money she didn’t have.
“Don’t look so bummed,” Emma said after they’d ordered.
“Madison just wouldn’t be my first choice.”
“Please. She’s perfect. Into weird shit and has a big mouth.”
Grace knocked back her hard seltzer. She didn’t dislike Madison. The girl could be a laugh and usually had great molly. But sharing the two-dimensional pantry, as her and Emma had taken to calling the teal room, made her uneasy. It was her discovery. Her sanctuary. And turning it over to someone like Madison seemed an etiquettical violation. Liking smoking cigarettes in a church.
But think of the money, Grace scolded herself, remembering the student loan bills stacked on her kitchen table, their interest growing while she downed drinks she couldn’t afford.
She was ordering her second when Madison finally arrived. Coming in hot, the girl arrived mid-sentence, talking a thousand miles a minute about her dog, her co-workers, and her two sorta boyfriends. On and on, without pause. Getting her focused required a martini and half an hour.
“Price is twenty-five up front and twenty-five after. Full disclosure, you’re the pantry’s first customer,” Grace told her, not so secretly hoping she’d back out.
“This’s gonna be a trip,” Emma reassured, shooting Grace a look.
Madison stretched her neck and grimaced. This week her hair was dyed a garish magenta. “I’ve been so stressed lately. Nothing works. Yoga. Massages. Sleep therapy. Microdosing. Nothing.”
“Wait ’til you try this.” Emma motioned for their tab.
On their way out, Madison asked, “Why do you call this thing a pantry?”
Grace and Emma looked at one another.
Emma shrugged. “Because… it’s in the kitchen?”
“Didn’t know there’d be a test,” Grace muttered, struggling to conceal her annoyance.
“Pantry sounds quaint. Cute.” Madison giggled. “I like it.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “Thank goodness.”
At home they sparked a blunt to calm any jittery nerves and got down to business. Teal doorway. Kicking breeze. Warming light. Beautiful flatness and its accompanying gravity.
And yet…
The pantry felt stuffy. For one person there had been all the space you needed, and for two plenty of room. But three? Three was tight.
Or maybe Madison was just a mouth breather.
Either way, after a few minutes, Grace thought her way out. Emma came a few minutes later, but a half hour passed before Madison reappeared.
“Wow,” she said when she did, glassy-eyed and spaced out. Laying on the floor, she crossed her ankles and folded her hands behind her head, the magenta hair forming a crown. “Wow.”
“Sure took your time,” Grace said, frowning at Madison’s nonchalance. They were sharing something transcendent with her, something unique in this world, and already this bitch had her feet kicked up.
Madison rolled onto her knees, excitement crackling her face. “I want back in.”
Grace and Emma looked at each other.
“It’s kinda late…” Emma started.
“…I have to work in the morning,” Grace finished.
But Madison offered them another fifty bucks, then a hundred. So they let her back in.
#
That’s how it started. Madison spread the word and the clients rolled in. Pretty soon they had a week’s worth of appointments and drop-ins gathering on the porch.
Not that the pantry lacked challenges. For starters, with all these customers crowding in, Grace got less time inside. Quick morning sessions and visits after everyone left for the night were the best she could manage. But between this side hustle and her shifts at Retail King, most nights she barely managed crawling into bed, to say nothing of getting two-dimensional.
She also didn’t love all these randos traipsing about inside the pantry. It left her with a profound ick. Not that the room bore any signs of these new guests. The light shined just as teal, the gravity still heavy and warm, no sign of wear or tear or any difference at all.
But Grace knew. Even in the morning before the first customers of the day, she sensed these new visitors. Her two-dimensional skin crawled at the echoes of their presence, her flattened features recoiling at the thought of those bodies crammed in with her.
It totally harshed any mellow. Inevitably she’d leave the pantry convinced of its diminishing properties, swearing to Emma they’d broken it. But the streams of satisfied customers proved her wrong, one after another raving about how rejuvenated they felt, those same customers returning again and again.
Grace didn’t understand why her peace no longer came. But it didn’t, so she spent less and less time inside. Instead, she fell back on old reliables like weed and alcohol, hard chasing a buzz the pantry no longer provided.
That wasn’t the only problem.
Madison not only became their spokeswoman, but also their best customer. After her first trip, she returned the next day. And the day after that. And every day for the next week. Sustained two-dimensionality had no ill effect on her, but her sustained presence wore Grace out. So first they imposed a five hour maximum rule, then an every-other-day-rule.
And still Madison kept coming.
On a Saturday night, after the day’s last clients left, Grace palmed two edibles and flopped onto her couch. She’d thought of visiting the pantry, but couldn’t mount the effort. These edibles, she thought, they’re a sure thing.
Just as a comforting fuzz tickled at the edge of her mind, the doorbell rang. She groaned, loud and long, discovering Madison on her doorstep, her hair newly dyed a vibrant teal, the shade disquietingly close to the pantry’s. Beside her stood some five foot nothing dude sporting a faux-vintage Guns & Roses shirt.
The dude tipped his head back. “Sup.”
“Sure.” Grace turned to Madison. “You were here yesterday. Rules.”
Madison held up both hands. “I know, I know. But Dominic lost his job and we both could just really, really, use the pantry time. You know, cool out. Get our heads straight. Please.”
Oh damn, Grace thought. She wavered, physically, the edibles coming on nice.
“This isn’t a good time.” She started closing the door. “Try again tomorrow.”
Dmitri, or whatever his name had been, stuck his foot in the door frame. A shitty grin stained his face, and Grace remembered there wasn’t anyone else in the house. His grin stretched further, as if he knew this too.
“Look, rules are rules,” he said, his speech lilting as if talking with a child. “But we’ve had a rough day. If what Mads tells me about this pantry is true, I think it could help.”
“Go fuck yourself and see if that helps,” Grace said, kicking his foot aside and slamming the door.
But that didn’t get rid of them. They knocked, rang the bell, knocked, shouted what a bitch she was, and knocked again. Madison called, four times, leaving long messages, before pounding one last time and finally leaving.
By then Grace’s high was totally gone.
#
When Emma came over the next morning, Grace dropped the hammer. Madison was banned. Done. Finito. No more pantry.
Setting down her Arizona Iced-Tea, Emma hit the offered blunt. “Fuck me. She’s our best customer.”
“Why is everything so hard?” Grace waved clouds out of her face. “This whole thing is becoming an enormous hassle.”
Emma’s brow furrowed and she hit the blunt again. “There’s this big dude at work. Kinda scary, but a chill enough guy. Always talking about how he knows MMA or jie-jitsi, or some shit. Maybe for a few bucks he’d hang around. Madison and her man-bag might not be the last to mess around.”
Fantastic, Grace thought. Now we need bouncers. She looked at the clock. Her shift at Retail King started in half an hour. Taking a quick hit off the blunt, she rushed out the door and nearly collided with a trio of teenagers waiting on the porch for their appointment.
“Damn bitch, watch it,” one of them said, getting a snicker from his friends.
Lacking the mental energy for a retort, Grace flipped them two birds and headed for the bus stop.
#
Emma’s guy, Bryce, assumed steady hours on the porch. Hulking muscles squeezed inside a tank top, he posted in a wicker lawn chair and chain-smoked Menthols. How much martial arts he knew remained unclear, but he looked scary enough that Grace felt better.
The business grew, so much so she finally started making headway on her bills. For the first time in a long time she paid more than the monthly interest on her student loans. Even had a little left for some new Crocs and a glass bong she’d had eyes on.
She’d just loaded that new bong when her manager at Retail King called.
“I need you in early today,” the manager, a middle-aged lady with a rasping voice, said.
Through the kitchen window Grace watched her first client come up the driveway, Bryce lifting off his wicker chair to pat them down. “I can’t. I’m working my other job.”
Her manager sighed with finality.
“Look, if you can’t make it here within the hour you’re fired.”
Grace hung up and raised the new bong to her lips. It was fine. Or, it would be. She made better money off the pantry than at Retail King. Hell, three or four times better.
But nagging uncertainty, followed by terrifying words like UNEMPLOYED and BROKE, polluted her mind. What if the pantry stopped working? What if it disappeared just as suddenly as it had appeared? What then?
Her chest tightening, her breath catching, Grace rushed for the pantry.
Black scuffs and the sticky imprints of shoe soles covered the floor surrounding it. Inside was the same as always; warm, heavy, and flat. But the teal light seemed dimmer than she recalled, the extra gravity more like a thick sweater on a warmer than expected day. And the quiet. Has it always been this quiet? It was eerie, that absence of any sound at all.
She slipped across the room, back and forth, back and forth, but nothing felt right.
Grace exited and sat staring at the teal doorway. She squirmed, afflicted by an itch that couldn’t be scratched. By a high no longer attainable. Its absence hit her in the gut and she thought she might be sick.
She’d ruined it. This strange, beautiful gift. She’d ruined it.
“What a mess.” Grace took her head in her hands.
“Um… Boss?”
Grace turned, finding Bryce and her first customer at the edge of her kitchen. The client looked shady as hell; dark hoodie over a scuffed ball cap, grease stained jeans, tats covering his neck and face.
She wiped her cheeks, her face heating as the two men stared. Something hardened in Grace. This pantry is just a thing, she thought, and if it wouldn’t work for her she’d ring everything out of it she could.
“I’ll let you know if you’re needed,” she told Bryce, tipping her head toward the porch. He opened his mouth, but her cocked eyebrow declared her disinterest in anything he had to say.
Alone with the client, Grace said, “Pantry costs three hundred now.” Her voice was sharp, as if challenging him. “Got a problem with that, follow Bryce right out of here.”
From beneath his cap a pair of hard, blue eyes stared out. Tobacco stains clouded his teeth. A reek of sweat and unwashed clothes wafted off him. He withdrew a rolled wad of hundreds from his hoodie pocket and broke several off. “Pretty lucky you having this in your kitchen,” he growled. “Must be hard staying out.”
“You’d think, right?” Grace took his money and gestured at the misbegotten pantry’s doorway, knowing she’d never cross its threshold again, that its two-dimensional peace would no longer comfort her. “But how about you? You ready to feel good?”
End
About the Author
G.D. Benton is an author of speculative and science fiction living in Las Vegas, NV. He hopes you are having an excellent day!
