Member-only story
Stair Flights
Some people will do anything to get out of exercising
Searing sweat etches pockmarks into the stairs as if it were acid, burning my eyes on its way down. The relentless climbing is good for my lungs, heart, bones, immune system, and a hundred other bodily functions I can’t name, but there are a thousand other things I’d rather do than suffer the monotony of step, step, step. I climb head down because if I look up, I’ll see the floor number, and then the discontinuity of where I hope I am, just a few fights from the top, and where I actually am, not even halfway there, will detonate shock waves of despair through me.
I’m not here by choice. My wife’s words whip me upwards. “Keep it, Liam. You’ll lose that belly in no time. You’ll be in great shape.” I asked for a kiss before the stairs, but instead she slipped a dayglo carrot in between my lips. “Eat the carrot now for vitamins, and the kiss will be yours when you return.”
If I sit on a stair for thirty minutes and pretend I’ve done all fifty-nine flights, will she know? Yeah, she’ll know.
The steps and walls are beige, and the handrail is brown. There’s a black sneaker smudge on the thirteenth stair between the nineteen and twentieth floors. I try not to see it, because then I’ll know I have dozens of flights left to scale. Each landing has a motion-sensor…
