KEEP PLANNING – Addison Zeller

Our Home If an apple falls from an old woman’s bag and rolls into the void, can it reach the bottom? Because it has to fall halfway first, then half the distance that remains, then half again, and so on: that’s the apple paradox. We rely on muscle memory; geography and history are barely studied in the tower; the names of our hallways are printed on maps under glass on every landing, but nowhere else. There’s a lower floors museum on one of the lower floors and a higher floors museum on one of the higher floors. The lower floors museum is far away, and the higher floors museum is on an uninhabited floor, which is unlit; the accent lights on the displays are the only points of orientation. Wax figures in faded regalia, luxurious furniture, gilded planters where real palms grew—nothing like what’s on the landings now, the functional seating and fluorescent tubes, walls bare other than clan posters and floor maps. In the elevators the cork panels crumble and peel; the buttons are temperamental. The staircases that hug the void are lit only by landing lamps or, higher up, by skylights through which the silhouettes of maintenance crew sometimes pass. Love Courtship and marriage between floors are rare, but some hallways have been familially linked for generations, especially short ones that wedding parties can cross before the motion sensor lights click off. In the dark, we often trip on uneven ground; leaks bunch the carpets and force us to steady ourselves on the walls. In our dreams, spiders poke out of the clammy maroon wallpaper and tangle their legs with our fingers. If our wedding parties must travel long hallways with unreliable lights, we wear chimes on our clothing, metal tubes that clink to warn any lurker, a prostitute or exhibitionist, to step into an alcove so we can pass in peace. Professional Runners If we’re quick, if we’re clever in our stairwell games, we’re trained to be runners. Heavy boxes are strapped to our backs and off we go—four flights, sometimes eight or nine—down to the food courts, our pockets stuffed with cash pooled by the hallway. We shop and run, or the food will spoil; the runner must run, sure-footed, and never reach for the flaking handrails. In the boxes are wheels of pork, cruciferous vegetables, all the cooking oils we need. The older ones boast of sturdier generations: runners who made long expeditions to the basements and saw the vast butcheries, placed colossal meat orders, and stood waiting, brows streaming in the thick steam. Suspended light cages made the steam sparkle, and when gusts roared through the clouds, shirtless men appeared, smoking over buckets as they stripped chunks from chained carcasses. They shouted over the liquid bursting through the drainage grates, the metal wetly scraping bone. Other bodies brushed past, almost invisible in the steam: sweepers, moppers, inspectors taking notes, electricians toweling their faces. Then the runners carried the new weight back through corridors laced with bundled cables, riots of wiring, rat-bait nailed to poles, private balconies dripping with laundry and caged under steel mesh, winding with dead ends. The wise runner never made a false turn, never lost his way in a cul-de-sac where a narrow window, propped open with a brick, revealed another window, through which sweat-beaded eyes peered back. Nightly Stroll In our exhaustion we lock our shops, roll down the shutters, and begin the long walk home, flashlights and dog repellent in hand. On certain levels, the motion sensor lights neither brighten nor dim but flutter like luminous insects. For long stretches the walker is alone. He calms his nerves with liquor and waves his hands to ignite each sensor. All he sees are fluorescent bulbs, maroon walls, olive carpets worn to the backing. He reaches his compartment and slides in on his back. At last he is not in motion. He occupies his narrow slot, prone on the bed mat, while the screen above plays on: dramas, comedies, procedurals, roller coasters gliding over candy-colored worlds. Maintenance logs in the lower corner alert him to leaks and hazards; news feeds report patrol routes, innovations in policing, new weapons fired at stole-wearing targets. Our screens can be dimmed, the volume adjusted; most of us keep them on low for the gentle buzz that feels like company. Our eyes part in our sleep to glimpses of scrolling logs. The roller coasters rise and fall over bright green grass-scapes. Our children sleep on their stomachs to avoid gazing into the ducts. The Clans The basement clan lives in the basement. The ceiling clan lives in the ceiling. The basement clan wears white stoles over red robes. The ceiling clan wears red stoles over white robes. Police posters on every landing show the two gangs side by side in full regalia. There have always been rumors of shadows in doorways, stoles briefly lit by motion sensors, but rarely on occupied floors: they prefer empty stories, unlit hallways, ducts, steam cages—places where crimes go undetected. Our businesses stay safe, placed near police kiosks or along patrol routes. But who knows what happens in the basements? They’re so far away, and the steam is so thick. Who knows who’s running beside you in the clouds? The clansmen appear and disappear, lift crimson masks to wipe faces half-eroded by swelter. They smell of meat and oil. The white stoles of these gangsters, knotted at the shoulder, jingle with iron hooks and meat-cleaver charms. They share meals in circles around subterranean reservoirs and blow steam whistles to signal passage through the slaughterhouses. No throat is safe from their flick knives: they’ll slice a face down to the eyeballs. And what do we know of the conduits where the ceiling clan travel on their fists? The low access spaces, the thin-aired attics. They wear loose, lightweight robes so they can flatten and blend with the concrete and dust. Their stoles are tied at the waist, studded with metal. Goggles and dust masks conceal their faces. At night: that’s when they move. Children know to be quiet, though they strain at the vents to listen for quadrupedal migrations, the hiss of whisper tubes, the dismal thud of pebbles thrown into the abyss to announce the passage. A Photo Circulates A photo is circulating of a low-ceilinged room where the upper clan leaders perform their rites, divide loot, issue orders. A dim space, crowded with glass cases of paraphernalia, regalia, headdresses, wands for exorcising ghosts from the ductwork, police badges and elevator buttons, pipes, syringes, sharpened lengths of rebar, and a skull seemingly made of fiberglass. We all know the tale of the police informant, unmasked and hurled down a shaft, banging and screaming past every vent on his long way to the bottom. And there’s the story from the basement: the underboss and his hotheaded young lieutenant arguing in the steam, a knife flicking through a robe and the hothead dashing into clouded kitchens and slaughterhouses, crimson gangsters in pursuit, stoles jangling with amulets, until cornered fatally in the hollow of a suspended carcass. Armored kiosks, heavy boots, and police rifles multiply. Long hallways are patrolled. The police have built rest stations on the rooftops, where they smoke and raise pigeons. Concerned Citizens We might not remember the names of our hallways, but we know there are problems in this building. With a gang in the ceiling and another in the basement, and armored police patrolling our corridors, how are we supposed to sleep in our narrow compartments? Even the roller coasters no longer lull us into good dreams. Who’s with us on the stairs, a solid citizen or a gangster? We ask this in life and in dreams. In dreams even more so, because then we can see the eyes glaring at us from over the raised collars of our neighbors. We think we detect the hint of a stole. So often it’s then that we fall into the void: panic seizes us and we fall. Then we wake to the quietly scrolling log, the candy-colored flowers blowing under the cars of our roller coaster. There’s a rumor that the elevator magnates have struck a deal: vigilantes from the ceiling now moonlight as night operators. We don’t know if it’s true. The police won’t tell us, and we’re afraid to ask the operators themselves. What if a flick knife appears in their hands? What if they turn away from the temperamental buttons and direct their attention to our faces instead? The problem is growing, not shrinking. The police commissioners like to talk about deals made with bosses: ceiling clansmen will work in the basements, cutting up pigs; basement clansmen will repair ductwork in the ceilings. That’s not what we want to hear. How can we be sure they’ve reformed? And with their identities protected, how can we distinguish them from anyone moving among us on the stairs or in the elevators? We have held our own meetings in the common areas, proposed independent surveys of the vents and slaughterhouses; a delegation of neutral citizens has been elected and sent to demand, in prose as clear as water, a true account of the world we inhabit. That information can’t be divulged, the commissioners reply. It would not be fair to the others. The others? The recidivists. The people who dwell in two spheres, or even three: those who are citizens and secret police, or citizens and secret clansmen, or citizens, secret police, and secret clansmen. If transparency exposes people like that, people who dwell in various levels of society, won’t they lose their place everywhere? They’d become a caste in themselves, untrustworthy and unwanted, forced to wander, to sleep in hallways under piles of torn-up carpet, stealing what they can, a sausage on a string, a roll on a baking sheet; in the stairwells, they’ll sit cross-legged, tugging at our trouser legs, shooting up empty palms and feigning illness. Already, on sparsely populated floors, such people exist. Are they then to be absorbed into the workforce? Will they flood the elevators in clean clothes, commuting to the ceilings and the butcheries? None of us are satisfied with this answer. There are people like that, secret police among us? Secret clansmen? Now we’re more awake than ever. When honest citizens buy pork or request ceiling maintenance, whose hand are they paying? That question robs us of sleep. We sleep on our feet. Men climb the stairs and nod off in the light, fall headlong and are lost forever. Happier Matters In daylight the stairwells echo with games, laughter, bouncing balls, squeaking shoes, and chatter. Women, seated on the functional chairs, talk among themselves as they watch the children and listen, curious, when runners appear on the landing. The excited children stop the runners to ask what they saw on the stairs, hopeful for stories of the clans. The runners relish this attention. They set down their loads, catch their breath, and invent stories, variations on what they heard as children: masks in the elevators, whispers in the vents. They know it charms the women, who love to see them glisten with sweat, rosy with confidence, with the optimism of mounting a staircase.

*** Addison Zeller lives in Wooster, Ohio. He has contributed to many journals, including 3:AM Magazine, The Cincinnati Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and minor literature[s]. 23 April 2026