Alice, Immured
Kathleen Laux
E
verything echoed. The ceilings must have been 15 feet high but Alice didn't have a
ladder so there was no way of knowing for sure. She would stand in the middle of
the cavernous room and stare upwards, brushing the rust-colored hair out of her eyes,
wondering what lay in the air between her and the ceiling. Sometimes she stood on the marble
kitchen counter and tried to keep the tape measure taut as she pushed it towards the ceiling,
but it would always bend and fall, violently, before it reached the top. This always brought out
her vertigo and she was left teetering and grasping at someone who wasn't there.
This was her new apartment, but it was not new to the world. It had lived and breathed
since it was born in 1890 during the height of what was referred to as “Philadelphia Society.”
When it had acted as one entity, generations of the same family had populated it's hallways,
stoked its fires (its “eyes” Alice called them), and slept under these same ceilings. Carved
brass doorknobs hovered over intricate keyholes that had been unlocked for over a century.
When she asked the rental company if they knew where they keys were, she was met with
laughter.
The apartment was now hers, in name, for one calendar year. She felt lucky, apprehensive,
and small. She spent her first hour walking the length of it, touching the light fixtures and
pressing her ear to the ground. Under the hard wood the floor felt soft beneath her feet,
as if she was standing on a wood-paneled marshmallow.
“Mom, I hear sizzling in the walls.” Alice hated talking on the phone, especially with the
dual echoes of the delay on her cell and in the corners of this apartment. Every word was
heard three times in her head, and once she caught up to one she had forgotten what the
next was to be.
“What do you mean, sizzling? Is there a fire? Call 911!” Alice's mom was an alarmist as was
Alice, and the f X\