Now you sound like the Mixed-up Man.

He thought about that two weeks’ notice. He imagined days off. What he might do, where he might go. The GAG, Perish Park, the Domino. He’d relax on the lawns he once mowed. He’d walk the marble floors of every municipal building he once mopped.

It sounded nuts, Dirk guessed, but he missed the days when he picked up all the trash and threw it all away.

Dirk fingered the paper in the pocket of his brown pants and smiled.

This was his last tour, he realized. Last one for the day.

The children lolled absently, waiting for the big guide to tell them what to do next. Dirk wiped sweat and rain from his face and said, “That’s it. Thank you for touring. Thank you for coming to the—”

BOOM!

The Goblin sky erupted. The tour takers ran down the path covering their heads. Dirk stood still in the rain and watched them. He heard siblings racing. He heard parents chase after them. He heard cars start and wipers start and tires squash the fresh-fallen water. A parking lot of lights turned on at once, battling the gray-green of early evening and a rain they all knew wasn’t going to leave them alone.

Dirk watched it and thought,

This is what the end looks like.

And then his mind connected some loose dots.

That’s it, he thought. There was an end.

The rain slid from the brim of his brown hood.

And I saw it.

21

Soon there is a break in the steel. Dirk holds the light near. There is a space. Two inches where the steel ends and then continues.

Cautiously Dirk extends his fingers toward it and to his surprise they slip through. He feels air. Real air.

Outside, he says.

He holds the light against the open space. He can’t see far but he sees there is no fog here. He leans forward and breathes the air in. It feels good. Very good. The children mimic him. One by one they experience the air in the break. While they do so Dirk steps to the other side of the corridor and sees there is a twin. A duplicate break in the opposite wall. He sets the lamppost head down for the first time since entering and grips the two sides of steel. He tries hard to widen the space. The children think he can do it. They’ve seen him tear a lamppost in half. They’ve seen him break a little girl’s arm.

But for all his might, Dirk can’t bend the wall.

He leans forward and takes in another great gulp of the outside. It fills him with a renewed vigor for getting to the end. Dirk wonders if that’s what the space is for. To give him enough strength, just enough, to keep him going.

He goes.

Things slither across the ceiling with more regularity now. Sometimes Dirk sees the entire back of a man. A woman’s profile. Toes and fingers.